tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51385712024-03-10T18:13:00.055-04:00Rabe Ramblings"Even I barely care..."Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.comBlogger1422125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138571.post-52557517108657722052013-07-02T17:23:00.003-04:002013-07-02T17:23:45.335-04:00On the Death of a Friend, 30 Years Later<i>Tomorrow, July 3, 2013 is the 30th anniversary of the death of a close childhood friend of mine. I originally wrote this post in 2008 on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of his death. It seemed appropriate to post it again this week. After I'd written it, I heard from many members of his family (including his mom), which was more moving and gratifying than I can describe.</i> <i>This is my little way of saying I still remember.</i><br />
<br />
My next-door-neighbor was a year and a half older than I was, and we
had known each other since I was a toddler. Sometimes with my wife and
kids, I look at the grainy Super 8 movies my parents used to take.
There we are, two preschoolers sitting in a little plastic wading pool
on the patio. There he is pulling me around in my old red Radio Flyer
wagon, both of us decked out in godawful early '70's attire. I think
he's actually wearing white shoes and a white belt. What were our
parents thinking? There we are at my seventh birthday party. There he
is, about to enter high school, playing with my new puppy.<br />
<br />
Looking
at it now, a 19-month age difference isn't much, but it seemed like a
lot at the time. Richie was older, seemed to know the ways of the
world, and was willing to grab my hand and guide me through the maze
like a big brother. He showed me where my classroom was on the first
day of first grade, and did it again on the first day of middle school.
He gave me my first exposure to Billy Joel and Steve Martin records
(smuggled out of his older brother's bedroom). He interceded with a
bullying classmate of his to leave me alone. Though it's virtually
unthinkable to me now, I applied to, was accepted at, and nearly
attended an all-boys Jesuit high school simply because Rich was a
student there.<br />
<br />
In St. Louis, you grow up a baseball
fan. You play baseball, you watch it, you listen to it, you talk about
it, and back then you collected the cards that went with it. Rich was
of Lebanese and Syrian descent, so he was quite a haggler. My mom would
take us to baseball card shows (hey, we were really into it), and I
would watch in a combination of disbelief and envy as this 14-year-old
kid would begin bartering with these grizzled baseball card dealers.
"How much is the Mickey Mantle?" "Fifteen bucks." "Okay, how 'bout
this? I'll give you ten for both the Mantle and the Mays." This would
be followed by the dealer laughing a "you're crazy" laugh and Richie
heading off undaunted to the next table.<br />
<br />
One day he
came over and told me he had something to show me. We went back over to
his house, where he produced a 1954 Bowman Ted Williams card that he'd
bought from some poor sap at a yard sale for about a dollar. I think
the market value at the time was something like $600. He also had what
appeared to be the hat first baseman Keith Hernandez was wearing when
the Cardinals clinched the 1982 World Series. It's provenance was
complicated, but in the on-field scrum after the victory (this was back
when everyone would rush onto the field after big game like that),
somebody grabbed Hernandez's cap with the number 37 written right there
under the brim, and somehow (I told you he was a haggler) it ended up in
Rich's possession. He also did the first <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Shannon">Mike Shannon</a> impression I ever heard. In St. Louis now, <i>everybody </i>does a Mike Shannon impression, but in the early 80's it was revolutionary.<br />
<br />
Rich's
family had a little, yappy schnauzer named Tuppins. (I have since come
to assume that the name came from that Julie Andrews song in "Mary
Poppins," but I never thought to ask. Come to think of it, I suddenly
recall being <i>really </i>impressed at about five years old that Richie
was able to sing the part of "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" where
they sing it <i>backwards</i>. Big time stuff for the preschool set.)
He'd make the reluctant and fearful Tuppins play goalie in garage
hockey games, facing a barrage of plastic pucks. Rich also had a
hamster named Harbey (and no, that's not a misprint--it was Harbey with a
"b". Again, I never figured out why, and never thought to ask.) By
hamster standards, Harbey was virtually immortal. He lived in this
huge, labyrinthine Habitrail in Richie's room, and I'd swear that
hamster lived to be like eight years old. <br />
<br />
On July 3,
1983, my childhood ended. It sounds narcisstic to put it that way, and I
don't mean it to. The end of my childhood isn't the main point, and 14
is about time to start growing up anyway. But I also can't seem to
separate the events of that day from how they affected me and how much
everything changed. That was the day Richie died. It was a boating
accident. I never got all of the details and it seemed to morbid to
ask, but apparently on a family Fourth of July weekend trip at a
Missouri lake, some friends of his were goofing around in a motor boat
and the motor caught Rich's life jacket and pulled him under and hit him
in the head.<br />
<br />
It happens to different people at
different points, but that was the day when I realized that the carefree
summer vacation days of childhood are a mirage. For the first time, it
truly dawned on me that death was real, that you never know what a day
might hold, that some things are gravely serious, and that life is
incredibly, terrifyingly fragile. For the first time, I came face to
face with the reality that none of us gets out of here alive. And for
the first time I came to know that dull throbbing of loss deep within
the gut that lasts until you fall asleep and then hits again like a wave
seconds after you wake up. Over the years, that grief has gotten less
and less, of course. But if I stop and look for it, I can always find a
little piece of it still there.<br />
<br />
Richard John Kilo was
16 years old when he died. He's now been gone far longer than he was
here. His parents, thankfully, are still around, and they stay in touch
with my folks back in St. Louis, though they moved out of the
neighborhood a few years after Richie's death. They were, and remain, a
wondeful, loving, warm, inviting family. My mom told me the other day
that they'd called her after watching <a href="http://johnrabe.blogspot.com/2008/05/continuing-blatant-self-promotion.html">the thing</a> I did on C-SPAN a few weeks back and said kind things. <br />
<br />
I remember in the horrible, agonizing days immediately following Richie's death, his mom would ask his friends--even <i>beg </i>them--to
please never forget him. I can imagine her fear that, with her son
only now being here in memory, his friends would grow up, have careers
and wives and kids, and lose those memories which would seem to make
Rich's short time here a little less real. I was 14 then; I'll turn 40
later this year. I guess this is just a way of saying: I won't forget.
I never do.<br />
<br />
Richard John Kilo, May 26, 1967 - July 3, 1983.Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138571.post-56012015243859516592012-09-10T17:44:00.000-04:002012-09-10T17:55:19.589-04:00Mike Responts 1960-2012I’d had enough. Sitting behind my microphone co-hosting the morning show on the SportsFan Radio Network in 1997, my blood was boiling as my co-host was ripping my argument to shreds. Not only didn’t he buy my position, but he strongly hinted that I was incredibly stupid for holding it in the first place. “Stupid” was his strongest indictment, and a word he hurled around frequently. Snapping, I yanked my headphones off my head, threw them down on the table, and stormed out of the radio studio. Live, on the air, in a program being carried on stations all over the country.<br />
<br />
Only one person was ever able to make me that mad on the air. And he was also my friend. Looking back 15 years later, the two [more or less] years I did radio programs with that co-host, “The Sports Pig” Mike Responts, was the most fun I ever had in radio. On Saturday I got the unwelcome news that Mike died last week in Las Vegas at 52.<br />
<br />
You probably shouldn’t be surprised when you hear of the death of your friend--the self-proclaimed “Sports Pig"--who often tipped the scales near the northern side of the 300’s, who referred to his own tenuous physical condition as “my retirement plan,” and who jokingly noted many times that his blueprint for the future included keeling over dead at 50. And yet I was still stunned. Though never the picture of health, Mike was like a force; an experience of life to be reckoned with.<br />
<br />
“The Pig” was my first full-time radio partner. He was hired on at the SportsFan Radio Network in 1996 to do the morning show, and I was paired with him as his co-host. Even before Mike had arrived, my bosses Phil Hall and Charlie Barker kept saying, with what seemed to be a cross between relish and foreboding, “Wait until you meet this guy!” Mike seemed nice enough at our first meeting, though he was physically, uh...memorable...and then it came time for Program Number One. As soon as the mics were cracked open...well, all I remember thinking is, “Oh my. Oh my oh my oh my. What have I gotten myself into?”<br />
<br />
“The Sports Pig” on air, as everyone who listened to him or knew him can attest, was hilarious, vulgar, intelligent, rebellious, infuriating, contemptuous, often-incisive, and occasionally gave vent to some of the most insane conspiracy theories I’d ever heard. My ostensible role on the program was to be “the voice of reason.” Good luck. Though his theories often sounded insane to me, there wasn’t usually much I could do to rebut them, aside from merely protesting, “That’s insane!” An early adopter of the Internet, Mike came to every show loaded for bear, having printed thick stacks of articles loaded with nuggets of info. He was TMZ before there was a TMZ, reveling particularly in the police blotter and tales of hypocrisy and malfeasance among athletes and the rich & famous. His greatest dream at the time was to get hold of the results of the Wonderlich test, the intelligence test given to college football players as part of their evaluation for the NFL. Actually having documented <i>proof </i>that one athlete or another was <i>clinically stupid</i> was, to him, the Holy Grail.<br />
<br />
When Mike felt he’d gotten off a particularly good line on you, he’d join his little hands--which barely reached each other--across his enormous torso, lean back in his chair, and make this guttural, growling noise in the back of his throat, like the very beginning rumblings of what the kids like to call, I believe, “hocking up a loogie.” He’d rock back and forth in his chair with a look of self-satisfaction that said, “Ha! What are you going to do with <i>that?</i>”<br />
<br />
Like with many of his on-air sparring partners, Mike knew how to push my buttons. But he also had an enormous sweet side, and seemed genuinely horrified when it became apparent that he’d gone too far. Two or three times in our partnership, I just unloaded on him (though frankly I forget whatever the actual issues were now). When I did, Mike would apologize profusely. “You’re right. You’re right. I’m sorry. You’re right.” Like everyone in radio, he had a healthy ego, but he was also willing to take his medicine. If you called him a particularly vile name, his likely retort would be, “Hey, I can’t argue with that.” At the end of the day, he wanted to still be <i>friends</i>.<br />
<br />
I realized as I’ve reminisced over the past couple of days that I probably worked more closely with Mike than with anybody in my professional life. It would make an already lengthy eulogy much, much longer if I tried to pour out all the stories about him that come to mind. Instead, a few representative ones will suffice:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>The guy was really funny. I’ve never laughed harder on the air than I did at his monologue about then-Seattle Mariners general manager Woody Woodward (a favorite target), where he insisted, “It’s too bad that we don’t have a sense of ‘face’ like they do in Japanese culture. Because if we did, Woody Woodward would sit down in his office, pull out his letter opener, and disembowel himself all over his desk in shame.” </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Mike and I once shared a memorable limo ride with Pete Rose. Pete did a daily program for us at SportsFan, but he was mainly based in Florida at the time. But the whole staff gathered in Lake Tahoe to do our programs from the NBC celebrity golf tournament that takes place up there every year. For some reason, Mike and I needed to get back to Las Vegas earlier than the rest of the staff, and Pete graciously offered to give us a ride to the Reno airport—about an hour from Tahoe—in his hotel-provided limousine. For whatever reason, Mike was an object of great interest to Pete. Every few minutes during the ride, he’d just look at Mike and smile and say, “Sports Piiiiiiig!” Pete mentioned how beautiful lake Tahoe was, and how he’d like to stay there longer. “Well, Mike and I have to get back, but there’s no reason you can’t stay,” I noted. Pete pulled out his empty wallet, waved it around, and said, “Stay? Stay with what, Johnny? I ain’t got any [bleepin’] money left!” Well, the hotel did have a casino, after all.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>For some reason, Mike was the only person in the universe who hated Arnold Palmer. He spent many, many programs arguing that Arnold Palmer, winner of 62 PGA tournaments and ten majors, was a purely mediocre golfer. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>If he’d been running the company that operated SFRN, it might still be around today. The geniuses in upper management became enamored of the Internet in ’96 or so, and began pushing more and more of the network’s resources into the online entity. Mike prophetically and repeatedly pleaded with anyone who would listen, voice rising in pitch, “These idiots are going to destroy the network! They’ll never be anything better than the seventeenth biggest sports website out there [even at that early date ESPN and Sportsline.com had already established dominance-JR]. But they’re already the second biggest sports radio network around. Let’s see [holding hands as if they were opposing scales], seventeenth or second? Seventeenth or second?” He was right. The entire mismanaged company—radio network, website, and corporate parent—are now all long-defunct. They squandered the second-largest sports radio network in the nation.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>He always looked out for me and our other co-workers. He was older and more experienced in radio than the rest of us, and had a more finely-tuned sense of when the company was sticking it to us. It could get a little overactive at times, though. Once he went full-Norma Rae on us, insisting that we all tell each other exactly how much we were each getting paid because “knowledge is power.” I think he thought if we saw how paltry everyone’s compensation was, we’d rise up in some sort of overthrow. But he was also protective. On one memorable morning, I said something accidentally that you’re not supposed to say on the air. The kind of thing you can get fired for saying, and local stations can lose their licenses for saying. I honestly don’t know how it slipped out, but the next thing I know, Mike is screaming to Johnny D., our producer behind the glass, “HIT THE DUMP BUTTON! HIT THE DUMP BUTTON!” He also made sure I got the master tape of the program (all the shows were recorded) and erased the offending section, in true Nixonian style. Not that he ever let me forget it, of course. Just a few months ago in a Facebook interaction, annoyed at some mildly political comment I think I’d made, he hinted to all my Facebook friends what "the Rev. Rabe” had done that morning on the air 15 years ago. </li>
</ul>
Every few minutes, I think of another story. Maybe I’ll eventually write them all down. I haven’t even scratched the surface.<br />
<br />
I was often driven bonkers by him, and I also loved him. He wanted to do radio shows that were, first and foremost, entertaining. He knew provocation was entertainment, and though not nearly as well-known as many other national sports radio figures (including some of his former co-workers), I really think he was a true innovator in his approach to sports media.<br />
<br />
Mike would occasionally email me to tell me I needed to get back into radio. I’ve not been often tempted to do that, but when those emails came, the thought of going back on the air with him sparked a tug for at least a moment. Mike Responts was sometimes infuriating, often annoying, always good-hearted, and.without doubt the most fun person I’ve ever done a radio show with.<br />
<br />
And even more sure than that is the knowledge that he'd be absolutely disgusted by this tribute. If he were here, he'd have read halfway through this and professed a desire to barf. So there it is--a final bit of ipecac for my departed friend.Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138571.post-44921109618495955962011-12-08T16:28:00.002-05:002011-12-08T16:40:09.016-05:00The End Of An Era<span style="font-style:italic;">Nothing has drawn me out of hiding to post here in over a year, including even the 2011 World Series, which was the most enjoyable sports moment of my life. But today I feel the need to write something down. My one post for 2011:</span><br /><br />I feel an ache in my gut today. I know that I shouldn’t. I know it’s silly, but there it is, gnawing at me.<br /><br />For some reason, I keep recalling the scene in the classic football film “North Dallas Forty,” where a player at the end of his rope rails at the team’s duplicitous head coach. “Every time I call it a game, you call it a business. And every time I call it a business, you call it a game." <br /><br />Professional sports are a business. But they’re dressed up to look like a game. As a result, to paraphrase the late Bart Giamiatti, they’re designed to break your heart.<br /><br />We fans allow ourselves to harbor the illusion that they’re not a business. We imagine a connection between us and our team. We allow ourselves the conceit that the players are out there on our behalf, fighting for <span style="font-style:italic;">us</span>, championing <span style="font-style:italic;">our city</span>. Deep down, we know that it’s not really true. Every year brings us more evidence that it’s not. But still we think maybe…possibly…once in a blue moon…we might find one who shows us there is something more important, more lasting. We get sentimental over a business. And as the Corleone family taught us, you can never get sentimental over business. <br /><br />I wanted to think that somehow Albert Pujols and the Cardinals were exceptions to that inviolable rule. This situation seemed different; special. Albert Pujols was not just some carpetbagger. He wasn’t some guy who lived in a hotel and wore the uniform. He and his family <span style="font-style:italic;">lived </span>in St. Louis, had taken to the city, had become woven into its DNA. They operated a charity there, did good deeds for the city, and said all the right things to sooth the Gateway City’s perpetual inferiority complex. Here was an athlete that was destined to be one of the greatest players of all time--and he understood and loved St. Louis and the history of the Cardinals. Surely, someone like that wouldn’t leave. Surely the Cardinals wouldn’t allow someone like that to leave.<br /><br />But this morning it happened. The Los Angeles Angeles of Anaheim swooped in with a ten-year, $255 million offer, and the Cardinals opted not to match it. Just like that, the soul of a city, the heart of a team that had just won the World Series, the marriage between one of the game’s greatest teams and one of its greatest players, were torn apart.<br /><br />What stings for me is not the fact that Albert’s bat will no longer be in the Cardinals’ lineup. His ability will be difficult to replace—but not impossible. He’ll be 32 years old next month and his production has already started the steady decline you expect to see at that age. <br /><br />What stings is that the history this city, this team, and this player were going to share is now lost forever. The sentimental future that was supposed to unfold will now never be. We were supposed to see El Hombre wearing those birds on the bat when he hit home run number 500, home run number 600, hit number 3000. There was supposed to be an Albert Pujols statue out in front of Busch Stadium, next to the one of Stan Musial--the other greatest Cardinal of all time. My son was supposed to stand at that statue and tell his son that he grew up watching Albert Pujols play baseball, just as my dad and grandpa stood there and told me about Stan the Man. A retired Albert was supposed to stand next to a Hall of Fame plaque depicting him in the familiar STL cap. Fifteen years from now he was supposed to stand out there on the field before World Series games wearing his red jacket alongside Bob Gibson and Lou Brock and Ozzie Smith, the living face of the National League’s greatest franchise. <br /><br />And now none of that is going to happen.<br /><br />What has already been accomplished remains. Albert Pujols put up the best 11 seasons of anyone playing in my lifetime, and he did it in a Cardinal uniform. He powered the team to three pennants and two World Series championships, the last of which was the greatest sports experience of my life. He provided me and my son with some of the greatest sports memories we will ever have. I don’t have any anger toward Albert, or toward the Cardinals, for that matter. I wish Albert well, and I know the Cardinals will be fine. <br /><br />But this could’ve been something different. Something historic. Something that defines a person, a team, and a city. You can’t get that back. It’s gone with the stroke of a pen. What remains is merely the business of baseball. The ordinary. Business as usual. The memory of a few moments of shared success before each side moved on to the next opportunity. <br /><br />I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I feel heartbroken today. That’s what happens when you get sentimental about a business.Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138571.post-35347951817020670472010-08-03T11:12:00.003-04:002010-08-03T11:27:38.113-04:00For Whom The Ball BouncesJust when you think it can't be done any more perfectly, just when you go and name your list of people who are improbably still alive "Fess Parker Memorial" list (after he who, after dying a few months ago, left the entire world asking the question, "Wait. Fess Parker was still <span style="font-style:italic;">alive</span>?"), just when you make the assumption that <span style="font-style:italic;">nobody </span>could possibly better embody the ethos of that list, something like this happens:<blockquote><span style="font-weight:bold;"><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/02/AR2010080202954.html">Mitch Miller, record executive and 'Sing Along' host, dies at 99</a></span></blockquote>I'm 41, and I (to the extent I ever thought about him) assumed that Mitch Miller had probably died sometime right around when I was <span style="font-style:italic;">born</span>. Instead, he kicked it yesterday at 99.<br /><br />I hate to be so fickle, but there's no way I can stand by my previous decision in light of this. Therefore, the I Can't Believe They're Still Alive list shall henceforth be known as the Mitch Miller Memorial "I Can't Believe They're Still Alive List." Unless I find out next week that Sergeant Schultz has just died or something.Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138571.post-90034874227550508022010-05-27T11:52:00.002-04:002010-05-27T11:56:32.386-04:00Admit It: You Thought Of MeMore and more, when some old famous person that nobody realized was still alive dies, I get people saying to me, "I thought of <span style="font-style:italic;">you </span>when I heard." <br /><br />So, c'mon, 'fess up. When you heard that Art Linkletter died yesterday, did you think of me? You <span style="font-style:italic;">know </span>you did.<br /><br />The updated Fess Parker Memorial "I Can't Believe They're Still Alive" list:<ul><li>Doris Day</ul></li><ul><li>Harry Morgan</ul></li><ul><li>James Arness</ul></li><ul><li>Conrad Bain</ul></li><ul><li>Jack LaLanne</ul></li><ul><li>Rose Marie</ul></li><ul><li>Al Molinaro</ul></li><ul><li>Barbara Billingsley</ul></li><ul><li>Larry Storch</ul></li><ul><li>Jane Russell</ul></li><ul><li><del>Art Linkletter</del></ul></li><ul><li>Don Pardo (still working at Saturday Night Live, no less!)</ul></li><ul><li>Sid Caesar</ul></li><ul><li>Jayne Meadows</ul></li><ul><li>Charlotte Rae</ul></li><ul><li>Kirk Douglas</ul></li>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138571.post-48612869692014819262010-05-25T09:58:00.004-04:002010-05-25T10:03:03.015-04:00Requiescat In PaceI see that Paul Gray, bassist for the death metal band Slipknot has died. <br /><br />That's too bad. He looked like a nice guy.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRBII0lAO5NztQaf9lpKBFc9RdLKn-HV3nHNxhkQMvOWw-4Jjd3KblqmN68chcrchXbQsmJIYVdwFjf7AcBtTRrLyr4Hh5JLKlhzJzO3zUFcAApcrwcoc4CmeM2BrkwKzQDyYx/s1600/Slipknot+photo.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 169px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRBII0lAO5NztQaf9lpKBFc9RdLKn-HV3nHNxhkQMvOWw-4Jjd3KblqmN68chcrchXbQsmJIYVdwFjf7AcBtTRrLyr4Hh5JLKlhzJzO3zUFcAApcrwcoc4CmeM2BrkwKzQDyYx/s320/Slipknot+photo.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5475207111704255202" /></a>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138571.post-5458687187593339652010-05-18T17:09:00.007-04:002010-05-20T15:13:02.982-04:00Odds And Ends<ul><li>Now a good couple of years into my 40's, I do not find evidence for my rapidly advancing age wanting. As I often tell people, it's as if around the age of 33 someone hit "fast-forward" on the tape player of my life. If asked when something occurred, I've now learned to fully <span style="font-style:italic;">double </span>every time estimate that pops into my head. If I would guess something happened a year ago, it was two years ago. If I'd guess two, it was four.<br /><br />More evidence of age accrued over the weekend. I finally got around to showing my teenage kids the movie <span style="font-style:italic;">Back to the Future</span>. I remember greatly enjoying it when it came out, but I avoided showing it to my kids when they were younger because I recalled a fair degree of profanity and a bit of suggestiveness. Anyway, early in the film, Doc Brown, as he explains to Marty that he's built a working time machine, announces that he's planning to travel 25 years into the future. And a horrific thought occurred to me: <span style="font-style:italic;">that's now</span>. The film takes place (and was released) in 1985. That far-away, unimaginable future is now <span style="font-style:italic;">here</span>. And Crispin Glover's still weird.</ul></li><ul><li>Something rather unusual happened to my friend and co-worker Jerry Newcombe this week. About four years ago, Jerry co-wrote a humongous, 1200-page book with Peter Lillback of Westminster Seminary called <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/George-Washingtons-Sacred-Peter-Lillback/dp/0978605268/ref=pd_ts_b_3?ie=UTF8&s=books">George Washington's Sacred Fire</a></span>. It's a comprehensive examination of Washington's religious beliefs. Yesterday morning, that book stood at number 479,955 on Amazon’s book sales rankings. Then Glenn Beck mentioned it on his radio and TV programs and urged everyone to buy it. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/ref=pd_dp_ts_b_1">Today at Amazon</a>, Jerry's book (as of this hour) sits at <span style="font-style:italic;">number 2</span>. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Of every book on Amazon.</span> <br /><br />Apparently, that's the power of Glenn Beck. I can see now why leftists of every stripe soil their drawers over him.</ul></li><ul><li>I'm playing fantasy baseball again this year. Today, Andre Eithier, my best player, joined Asdrubal Cabrerra (broke his arm last night), Curtis Granderson (the always entertaining "groin injury"), and Jorge De La Rosa on the disabled list. Instead of dragging it out over a period of days, maybe it would be quicker and less painful if my entire team just ran out in front of a bus.<br /><br />Oh yeah, and I also have Jonathan Papelbon, who was on the mound during last night's already-legendary collapse against the Yankees. Thanks for the 54.00 ERA, big J.</ul></li>UPDATE: Beck had Pete Lillback, <span style="font-style:italic;">Sacred Fire</span>'s co-author, on his TV show last night. This morning (as of 10:24am Wednesday morning) it's number <span style="font-style:italic;">one </span>at Amazon.<br /><br />UPDATE #2: The book is still Number 1 today at Amazon. But they're out of them. The books are <a href="http://store.coralridge.org/ProductDetails.aspx?pc=114270">in stock here</a>, however, and ready for order.Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138571.post-64853350690410746752010-04-08T15:28:00.004-04:002010-04-08T16:11:06.294-04:00Sorry, CharlieSince I know you've been dying for me to acknowledge it (get it? <span style="font-style:italic;">Dying </span>for me to acknowledge it? I kill me.), despite being caught up in Butler's NCAA title bid, it did cross my radar that John Forsythe passed on the other day, and thus passed <span style="font-style:italic;">off </span>of my rapidly dwindling <span style="font-weight:bold;">Fess Parker Memorial "I Can't Believe They're Still Alive"</span> list.<br /><br />The updated list:<ul><li>Doris Day</ul></li><ul><li>Harry Morgan</ul></li><ul><li>James Arness</ul></li><ul><li>Conrad Bain</ul></li><ul><li>Jack LaLanne</ul></li><ul><li><del>John Forsythe</del></ul></li><ul><li>Rose Marie</ul></li><ul><li>Al Molinaro</ul></li><ul><li>Barbara Billingsley</ul></li><ul><li>Larry Storch</ul></li>Because the list is getting so small, I feel it's time to add some new names, since there are still lots of people that you'd never guess are still alive. So, please also welcome:<ul><li>Jane Russell</ul></li><ul><li>Art Linkletter</ul></li><ul><li>Don Pardo (still working at Saturday Night Live, no less!)</ul></li><ul><li>Sid Caesar</ul></li><ul><li>Jayne Meadows</ul></li><ul><li>Charlotte Rae</ul></li><ul><li>Kirk Douglas</ul></li><ul><li><span style="font-style:italic;">Michael </span>Douglas (Okay, I'm kidding about this one. But have you looked at him lately?)</ul></li>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138571.post-29500876964099586742010-04-05T11:51:00.005-04:002010-04-05T15:29:31.665-04:00One Shining MomentIn light of Butler's appearance in tonight's NCAA Championship game (a sentence I cannot believe even as I write it), I thought it would be appropriate to adapt and revise some thoughts I posted here two years ago when the Bulldogs were on a Sweet 16 run and my former Butler classmate Thad Matta was about to coach Ohio State to the Final Four.<br /><br />In 1987, I left home for Butler University in Indianapolis for my freshman year of college. They had an excellent broadcasting program (which was my interest), and a beautiful, semi-urban campus. It was not, however, a pleasant year. Living in the Ross Hall dormitory, I did my best to dive in and become a Hoosier. The soundtrack for that year was Seymour, Indiana native John Couger Mellencamp's new album <span style="font-style:italic;">The Lonesome Jubilee</span>. I read <span style="font-style:italic;">Season on the Brink</span> and began watching Bobby Knight on television wherever I could find him (since, in addition to Butler, which was small potatoes, you had to pick one of the state's <span style="font-style:italic;">real </span>teams to root for: either IU, Purdue, or perhaps Notre Dame). I took visiting friends and family to the Indianapolis Speedway. The memories now are mostly fond, but for some reason at the time, it didn't take. I liked city, I liked the school, I liked the people, and I've maintained the Mellencamp and Knight devotion up to the present, but...I think I just wasn't ready to be out on my own yet. I was homesick and lonely, and wound up transferring as a sophomore to the University of Missouri-Columbia where I already had lots of old friends from high school (thus beginning my attendance at what became a truly breathtaking succession of colleges and universities).<br /><br />During that difficult 87-88 school year, one of my lifelines was Butler Bulldog basketball. My roommate and I, and the two guys across the hall [I wish I'd kept up with all of them; they were good guys, and impossible to find now except one who I recently located on Facebook. My roommate's name then was <span style="font-style:italic;">Pete Smith</span>. That should narrow it down to a few million...] had season tickets and went to every game, where we were part of an average crowd of about 500. It was so sparse at the games that we broadcasting majors could just stroll in and plop down <span style="font-style:italic;">courtside </span>and "broadcast" the games into a tape recorder for practice if we wanted--no press pass or clearance necessary.<br /><br />The Bulldogs played (and still play) in this incredible old-time field house where the championship scene of the movie "Hoosiers" was shot the year before I got there. To this day, it's the greatest place I've ever watched a basketball game. When the team wasn't using it for a game or practice, we'd sometimes play late-afternoon pickup games right on that court; it was open to everybody.<br /><br />The season I was there, I think Butler finished something like 14-14 playing teams like Wabash, Valparaiso, and Indiana State. I remember one night watching ESPN with my friends (our dorm had just been wired for cable) and getting really excited that they actually <span style="font-style:italic;">mentioned the score</span> for the game we'd just attended. It kind of felt like it might feel if you played ping pong in your basement one evening and later saw Dan Patrick give the score on the air.<br /><br />Which is why I keep using the word "inconceivable" about this game, even cognizant of that term's potential misuse [thanks to <span style="font-style:italic;">The Princess Bride</span>: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."] The Butler Bulldogs are playing Duke for the <span style="font-style:italic;">national championship</span> tonight. Of course, it's unlikely that they will win. Duke is a number one seed and a perennial powerhouse. 4,200-student Butler is the smallest school to reach the NCAA finals in 40 years. But stranger things have happened. Butler's already knocked one top seed out of the tourney, and you don't get to the NCAA finals by merely being lucky. This is a legitimate championship contender. Just the notion of Butler <span style="font-style:italic;">playing </span>in the biggest game of the Big Dance is beyond anything I would have ever let myself imagine.<br /><br />As recently as a few months ago, whenever my time at Butler would come up in conversation, the usual response was, "Butler? Where's that at?" Whatever happens tonight, Butler will hereafter be a school that's been in the NCAA Final. Now, everybody knows where it's at.<br /><br /><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Butler+University" rel="tag">Butler University</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Final+Four%2c+NCAA+Tournament" rel="tag">Final Four, NCAA Tournament</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/NCAA+Championship" rel="tag">NCAA Championship</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Duke+University" rel="tag">Duke University</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Butler+Bulldogs" rel="tag">Butler Bulldogs</a>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138571.post-77477710167590778482010-04-01T11:19:00.003-04:002010-04-01T18:53:40.765-04:00Scroogy ChristianityIn our pampered, Western, American lives, rich with comfort and luxury, there is no question that Christians can (and often do) become lazy and complacent. Our concern for the lost and zeal for the glory of God can easily be eclipsed by a passion for keeping the car looking nice, staying up to date with the stuff recorded on the DVR, and planning the next vacation. Our hearts are, in the words of the great Reformer John Calvin, idol factories, producing God substitutes at an alarming rate. There is a fearful danger in this, and the sobering words of Jesus in the Bible should brace us: "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven" (Matt. 7:21, ESV).<br /><br />That said, there is an expanding species of glum Christian speaker/teacher/preacher/writer that has risen to prominence in the evangelical world mainly by scolding the faithful. These guys (and I won't name any of them for the moment, though I'm sure you know a few of whom I speak) are reputed to deliver "convicting," "challenging," and even "shocking" messages that specialize in taking the Christian conscience, smelting it into a makeshift pickax, and burying it in your forehead. Such messages ostensibly call Christians to put aside their complacency and be more devoted to Christ. In reality, they merely shoot fish in a barrel.<br /><br />The kind of scold I have in mind can most easily be identified by his use of guilt. If he tweets, he'll tend to write things like, "1000 people died of starvation today. Hope you enjoyed 'American Idol' on TV." His Facebook statuses usually say things like, "Are you as upset about your neighbor going to Hell as about your NCAA tournament bracket?" If he has a bumper sticker, it's likely to say something like, "So much need, so few care."<br /><br />If he preaches, he'll tend to load up his messages with ample illustrations of how <span style="font-style:italic;">you just don't care enough</span>. One of this ilk, for instance, recently chastised his hearers for driving expensive cars while so many in the world are in need. It's an easy shot, and most likely amps up the requisite guilt in the hearers, but it's also may be facile nonsense, based on a whole host of unchallenged assumptions. Consider, for instance: <br /><br />1). The preacher has no idea how much his hearers have <span style="font-style:italic;">also </span>given to missions and charity. [In fact, studies show that the people in his usual evangelical audience are far more likely to have donated--and donated <span style="font-style:italic;">more</span>--than any other group of people.] <br /><br />2). He's assuming a Marxist, materialist view of the world--that somehow <span style="font-style:italic;">you </span>having an expensive car here is causing something to be taken away from someone <span style="font-style:italic;">else </span>in Guatemala. <br /><br />3). He's misunderstanding the nature of the wealth to begin with--and coming close to spitting on God's blessing. The Bible assures us that there are dangers associated with wealth, to be sure. But we must also recognize that the material prosperity of the Western world is a direct result of Reformation Christianity, with it's traditional emphases on creativity, free exchange, hard work, and innovation. Are we supposed to apologize for living in a civilization that has reaped God's blessing for operating for much of its history in the way that He designed? Are we to feel guilty that God, who has appointed the time and place of our dwelling, put is in a culture that has benefited from centuries of (admittedly now-waning) Christian influence? Is a preacher who tries to "convict" you about having air conditioning spurring you to godliness, or just scoring a few cheap rhetorical points so you'll feel like something happened?<br /><br />4). Furthermore, such preachers often fail to answer certain key questions all this should raise, such as, how much affluence is too much? Could you give me a dollar figure? And what about <span style="font-style:italic;">your </span>car, Mr. Preacher? <span style="font-style:italic;">You </span>live here too. You've declared a $100,000 Mercedes to be sinfully extravagant, but what about your $16,000 Ford Focus? How many people worldwide could be fed on $16,000? How much missions work could be done with the money you spent on that suit? In these situations, it's usually <span style="font-style:italic;">your </span>life that's sinfully extravagant, while <span style="font-style:italic;">his</span> just happens to be right at the God-approved level of frugality. The bottom line is that in America, you could <span style="font-style:italic;">always </span>have given more than you did.<br /><br />While many of the charges of the glum Christian guiltists are based on faulty, unexamined views of economics and motivation, there is also often a cracked theological foundation underlying the whole enterprise. <br /><br />First, I suspect that the main driver behind such guilt-inducing appeals is a concern about nominal Christianity. And there, at least, the sourpuss killjoy has properly diagnosed a real problem. Our churches <span style="font-style:italic;">are </span>filled with people who don't seem to behave any differently than the world. But while he gets the diagnosis right, the cause seems to elude him, and thus, so does the cure. Much of the nominal "easy-believism" filling churches today is the result of revivalistic evangelism, imported from the 19th century, which equates emotional, one-time professions of faith with actual <span style="font-style:italic;">conversion</span>. Having been presented with a sub-gospel of "Jesus loves you and wants to live in you," it appears that many "Christians" produced by such appeals really <span style="font-style:italic;">do </span>care more about their flat screen TVs and stock portfolios than they do about Jesus. But the answer to <span style="font-style:italic;">that </span>problem isn't "do more!"--it's to repent and believe the gospel.<br /><br />Another problem lurking a little further beneath the surface is an incipient dualism, also a product of the revivalism. As the downgrade in theology made its way through American evangelicalism during the 18th and 19th centuries (speeded along by many of the unbiblical and pragmatic practices we adopted), the Reformation emphasis on the cultural mandate was almost completely lost. In a robust, biblical, Reformed worldview, the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. <span style="font-style:italic;">All </span>things done to the glory of God in fulfillment of our God-given vocations ("callings") are spiritual, which is why Martin Luther once said that changing a diaper is as spiritual as preaching a sermon. Asked what he would do if he knew Jesus were returning tomorrow, Luther is said to have responded "I'd plant a tree." As revivalistic Christianity came to be more and more about "saving souls," and less about what Luther and the Reformers saw as the Kingdom of God, that which was non-material and churchy came to be seen as truly "spiritual." Evangelism, missions, and church activities came to be seen as "Kingdom work" while the mundane activities of life (i.e. the stuff we necessarily spend most of our days on, like our jobs, our families, our daily chores) came to be seen as worldly (if necessary) distractions. In this way of thinking, which absolutely saturates evangelicalism, only that which directly benefits missions and evangelism is of value. Thus, the "worldly person" is the one who goes to his plumbing job each day in order to feed his family and pay his mortgage. The best value he can hope his work will have is that he might get to share the gospel with someone while on the job, or make some money that can be contributed to missions and evangelism. Meanwhile, the truly "spiritual person" is the one floating above the ether, conveying concepts to minds, preferably working in full-time ministry, and making the plumbers feel guilty about spending 40 hours of their week at work. As a result, evangelical Christianity is a fruitful pasture for the work of the scolds. Most Christians already feel guilty about not doing enough "Kingdom" (i.e. church) work, and this kind of message punches them right in the solar plexus.<br /><br />Now, to be clear, being more devoted to Christ is a good thing. It's a <span style="font-style:italic;">necessary </span>thing. But that's precisely where my problem with these preachers gets its traction. We could <span style="font-style:italic;">always </span>be <span style="font-style:italic;">more </span>devoted to Christ. There are undoubtedly Christians who need to be shaken out of apathy. But guilt trips like this are too easy because of the basic fact of sin: <span style="font-style:italic;">all fall short of the glory of God.</span> The bottom line in the message of the furrowed scolds is that you're not faithful enough.<br /><br />Well guess what? You're right. I'm <span style="font-style:italic;">not </span>faithful enough. I fall short of loving Jesus enough. Too often, I'm concerned about my own comfort. And you know something? All that is true of <span style="font-style:italic;">you too</span>, Mr. Evangelist. It's called sin, and you're stuck with it just like I am. Every single one of us falls short in all of those areas. There has never been a single nanosecond where <span style="font-style:italic;">either </span>of us has loved God with our whole heart, mind, and strength. <br /><br />So now what? Rather than offering the cool refreshment promised by the Gospel, such preachers instead lay guilt upon guilt, chain upon chain, all the while drawing praise for their fearless, "convicting" message of condemnation. But guilt is easy, especially when dealing with a roomful of Christians. [Puffing yourself and some of your hearers us with notions of how much <span style="font-style:italic;">more </span>you care than everyone else is a real danger here as well. You can often spot an immature Christian who has just sat through such a message by his insufferable sanctimony.] A Christian with a properly working conscience will <span style="font-style:italic;">always </span>feel the weight of her own failures in such a message. <br /><br />Of course, there is a place for a strong message of conviction and repentance, and many of the people who dabble in this kind of guilt-tripping generally have good ministries otherwise. There are those who occasionally take an easy shot at Christians without being <span style="font-style:italic;">characterized </span>by it. But getting Christians to figuratively tear their robes in anguish is just an easy stage trick, like getting the audience to gasp while you appear to be sawing the lady in half. Preaching the <span style="font-style:italic;">gospel </span>is <span style="font-style:italic;">hard</span>. God justifies lazy people? God justifies those who don't love their neighbor as themselves? God justifies people who are sinfully preoccupied with their own comfort? God justifies people who bought iPads with money that could have been given to Haitian missions? That's a message the self-righteous human spirit rebels at. <span style="font-style:italic;">That's</span> scandalous.Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138571.post-85001175055314997472010-03-22T16:05:00.003-04:002010-03-22T18:21:15.392-04:00And So It Is DoneNot surprisingly, the craven Congress has passed the health care bill, meaning that in just a few short years, your health care will be in the safe hands of the people who revolutionized airport security in the wake of 9/11.<br /><br />Much has already been said, but a few comments stand out. Perhaps most astute are those of the always-reliable <a href="http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NWI3MGNjMjVlMmJmYjEwNzdlYTYzZWYwNDlmNWIxNzg=">Mark Steyn of National Review Online</a>. The ramifications of this bill are hard to overstate: <blockquote>If Barack Obama does nothing else in his term in office, this will make him one of the most consequential presidents in history. It's a huge transformative event in Americans' view of themselves and of the role of government. You can say, oh, well, the polls show most people opposed to it, but, if that mattered, the Dems wouldn't be doing what they're doing. Their bet is that it can't be undone, and that over time, as I've been saying for years now, governmentalized health care not only changes the relationship of the citizen to the state but the very character of the people. As I wrote in NR recently, there's plenty of evidence to support that from Britain, Canada, and elsewhere.<br /><br />More prosaically, it's also unaffordable. That's why one of the first things that middle-rank powers abandon once they go down this road is a global military capability. If you take the view that the U.S. is an imperialist aggressor, congratulations: You can cease worrying. But, if you think that America has been the ultimate guarantor of the post-war global order, it's less cheery. Five years from now, just as in Canada and Europe two generations ago, we'll be getting used to announcements of defense cuts to prop up the unsustainable costs of big government at home. And, as the superpower retrenches, America's enemies will be quick to scent opportunity.</blockquote>One does not have to be a fan of America's recent military adventurism to recognize that Canada, England, and most of the western European welfare states have been depending on a strong America for their own defense for decades. (Anyone seen a French fighter jet buzzing around lately?) I don't regret the end of the free ride for America's ostensible allies, but I <span style="font-style:italic;">do </span>regret that America will soon be among the simpering, helpless giants depending on some other nation to defend us. (And who will <span style="font-style:italic;">that </span>be? China?)<br /><br />It has also become clear that, incredibly enough, we have an entire political party in America--indeed, one currently holding the <span style="font-style:italic;">majority</span>--that is almost completely devoted to <span style="font-style:italic;">the killing of unborn children</span>. Lest anyone think this is a partisan statement, let me be quick to add that Republicans, on the main, have been mediocre <span style="font-style:italic;">at best</span> in defending human life. But as the Stupak debacle shows us, the "pro-life Democrat" is now a purely mythical creature. The fact is, as a national entity, the Democratic Party loves it some baby-killin'. Infanticide has become the party's <span style="font-style:italic;">sine qua non</span>. And so we should not be entirely surprised to find God's judgment falling upon us. <br /><br />Other civilizations have similarly been toppled at comparable points in their histories, and a nation whose sexual proclivities have driven us to require a blood sacrifice to the tune of 50 million human lives can only ask what took so long. Repentance is the only way out, and it takes a mighty strong faith to imagine such a thing having gone this far down the road.<br /><br />Such repentance will need to begin with the Christians, who frequently look just like the world when it comes to such matters as sexuality and being the recipients of stolen goods via government redistribution programs. The LORD was willing to spare <span style="font-style:italic;">Sodom </span>if just ten righteous men could be found there. Only when Christians, who ought to know better, stop bowing the knee to Baal will the Lord relent from treating us like Baal-worshipers. What we're seeing is Romans 1 in action, and it was promised long ago.<br /><br /><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Obamacare" rel="tag">Obamacare</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/health+care" rel="tag">health care</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Bart+Stupak" rel="tag">Bart Stupak</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/abortion" rel="tag">abortion</a>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138571.post-48649503270968627612010-03-18T16:08:00.002-04:002010-03-18T16:20:28.014-04:00Who Knew?<a href="http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/03/18/daniel-boone-actor-fess-parker-dead-at-85/?hpt=T2">Fess Parker from "Daniel Boone" has died</a>. To which I say, "Fess Parker was still <span style="font-style:italic;">alive</span>?!?" No way anyone knew Fess Parker was still living.<br /><br />Parker is so emblematic of the phenomenon captured in my oft-heralded <a href="http://johnrabe.blogspot.com/2009/07/did-he-leave-home-without-it.html">"I Can't Believe They're Still Alive List"</a> that I'm actually going to start calling it the Fess Parker Memorial "I Can't Believe They're Still Alive" list.Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138571.post-18877839702612681952010-02-25T09:52:00.003-05:002010-02-25T11:27:46.009-05:00Sick About Health Care "Reform"As the health care summit/charade opens today in Washington, a few thoughts come to mind. First is the recognition of what's really happening here when you boil it all down. Undoubtedly, all the incredible minutia is confusing (a fact that the statists use to their advantage), but when all is said and done, it still funnels out to a few basic principles. What kind of country are we going to be? <br /><br />For much of America's history, <span style="font-style:italic;">liberty </span>was its primary value. Our Constitution set out a cherished set of negative rights: things the government <span style="font-style:italic;">could not do to us</span>. Now, those rights are being stripped away one by one in favor of the newer, progressive notion of "positive rights"--those things that the government <span style="font-style:italic;">must </span>do <span style="font-style:italic;">for </span>me (which, as it turns out, is pretty much everything). Barack Obama has been unvarnished in his view on this. <a href="http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/10/mccain-to-attac.html">He (now famously) said</a> in a 2001 radio interview: <blockquote>The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society...[T]he Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf....I'm not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. The institution just isn’t structured that way.</blockquote>Well, he's found another way. In all the health care debate, know this: whatever else health care reform movement is about, it's about dramatically <span style="font-style:italic;">curtailing </span>liberty.<br /><br />The other day driving home from work, I was listening to a program on NPR ("where thousands work so that hundreds may listen"). I used to think the reason I arrived home cranky every day from my commute was because of the traffic and horrible South Florida drivers. Now I'm realizing it might be because of my "entertainment" choices. Anyway, this particular program (<span style="font-style:italic;">On Point</span> with Tom Ashwood) was discussing health care, and as expected, they had a balanced panel: one proponent for universal health care from Princeton University, and one proponent for universal health care from the leftist Center for Media and Democracy.<br /><br />Discussions like this happen all over the place every day, so it's not as if this were a sudden, isolated bolt of insight. I was just impressed by how clearly the matter was stated. It's bald Marxism ("From each according to his ability, to each according to his need")--and predictably on NPR, nobody flinched.<br /><br />The guest was Uwe Reinhardt, who is a professor at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. The snippet begins at 15:25 <a href="http://www.onpointradio.org/2010/02/curbing-health-care-costs">of the program</a>:<blockquote>REINHARDT: The problem is that health care in America is very expensive. It's twice as much as it costs in Canada, per capita. <br /><br />HOST: Mmm hmm.<br /><br />REINHARDT: And some people, this lady who just called, are simply too poor to be able to afford health care for their families out of their own income, and they need help from their fellow citizens who have more money or who are healthier. And that's really the debate. To what extent do I have to...or should I be...my brother's and sister's keeper with health care in America? All other nations have solved this. They have said, "If I'm healthy, I should subsidize the sick. If I'm rich, I should subsizize the poor." Americans have not agreed. When Senator McConnell says the American people don't want this bill, I am not so sure. Because that lady who just called definitely wants this bill. [Chuckles]<br /><br />HOST: Yeah.<br /><br />REINHARDT: There are richer people who need to be asked to the cashier's window, uh, myself included, by the way. Uh, some rich people may not want this bill because they don't want to pay any more.<br /><br />HOST: But do you think that the plan that went so far in the Senate and then ground to a halt, and now is kind of back, and that's the president's plan...would that control the costs that you're talking about, enough that even if we're sharing...uh...the burden, it would work out?<br /><br />REINHARDT: Not in the short run. I have said...I've put it in writing...in the short run, say in the next five years, even the Pope couldn't do it. It is very difficult to control costs, because...I always joke and say there's Alfred E. Newmann's equation: every dollar health spending is someone's health care income, including fraud, waste, and abuse. So when you're talking in the business community, when they're talking cost control, they're really talking about controlling the income of doctors and hospitals and pharma and device manufacturers, so you have tremendously powerful lobbyists protecting the income of these providers. It'll take at least a ten year wrestling match between Congress and these, uh, interest groups before you can ever have costs under control...</blockquote>Read that last section again. In order to get "health care reform," you'll have to get costs "under control." And in order to do <span style="font-style:italic;">that</span>, the federal government will have to begin <span style="font-style:italic;">controlling personal incomes</span> of people in 1/6th of the American economy. Reinhardt later enthusiastically affirmed that the current health care bill is a good first step toward putting us on this road.<br /><br />And they <span style="font-style:italic;">will </span>get us down that road. Looking over the landscape in the last few days has brought to mind just how pitifully ineffectual the Republican Party has been in opposing the statist, socialistic agenda over the past, oh, 50 years. With Obama's health care reform plan seemingly going down in flames at the time of Scott Brown's election in Massachusetts, Republican after Republican could be heard pathetically squeaking about how this was really about "getting a seat at the table" and "having our voices heard." They actually seem to consider it a victory when they can kick a field goal in the other guy's stadium, on the other guy's field, playing by the other guy's rules. By sitting down to "negotiate" the nuts and bolts of the health care bill, they've once again adopted the premise and are now simply sorting out the details.<br /><br />In 1993 when Bill Clinton came to office, he floated a universal health care plan (Hillarycare) which got eaten alive. But liberals spent the next 16 years pushing the concept anyway. Now, Republicans are willing to have some give and take on it. In another 16 years, complete, universal, socialized health care in this country will be a <span style="font-style:italic;">fait accompli</span>. The shills of the GOP long ago swallowed the statist hook. They've long since conceded the notion that government should be involved in most areas of American life. As a result, all that's left to argue about is how much it's going to <span style="font-style:italic;">cost</span>. <br /><br />The Democrats want massive government programs and entitlements to bankrupt us to the 13th generation; the Republican "opposition" only wants them to bankrupt us to the 10th. As always, we must reject the idolaters wherever we find them. Statists are idolaters, believing that the government is God and can provide for our every need. And that's true whether they have a D- or an R- next to their name.<br /><br /><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/health+care+reform" rel="tag">health care reform</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/NPR" rel="tag">NPR</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Tom+Ashbrook" rel="tag">Tom Ashbrook</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Uwe+Reinhardt" rel="tag">Uwe Reinhardt</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Barack+Obama" rel="tag">Barack Obama</a>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138571.post-51036365024752568812010-02-23T15:35:00.003-05:002010-02-23T17:28:01.972-05:00Haigiography<a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2245618">Chris Hitchens does today</a> to Al Haig what he usually does to <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2101842/">high</a> <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2226780/">profile</a> <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2090083/">dead</a> <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2166337/fr/flyout">folks</a>. While there's much truth in Hitchens' gleeful torching of the corpse--Haig was a notorious schemer and maneuverer even by Washington's standards--it seems to me that Haig ends up yet again wrongly pilloried for his most celebrated incident.<br /><br />Everyone remembers (or has heard about) the sweaty, bug-eyed, out-of-breath Haig taking to the White House podium in the wake of the shooting of Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981, and uttering those now-infamous words:<blockquote>Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the President, the Vice President and the Secretary of State in that order, and should the President decide he wants to transfer the helm to the Vice President, he will do so. He has not done that. As of now, I am in control here, in the White House, pending return of the Vice President and in close touch with him.</blockquote>The first problem with this, of course, is that it was factually incorrect. Haig, as Secretary of State, was actually <span style="font-style:italic;">fifth </span>in line, constitutionally. After Vice President George H.W. Bush, constitutionally, there was the Speaker of the House (Tip O'Neill), President Pro Tempore of the Senate (Strom Thurmond), and <span style="font-style:italic;">then </span>Haig.<br /><br />Hitchens sums up the popular sentiment, hardened into history, about the episode: <blockquote>...[T]his neurotic narcissist seized the microphone and made a clumsy attempt to seize power....nothing could equal that day's performance, which evinced all the sweaty, pasty-faced, trembling symptoms of a weak king or of a slobbering dauphin who could not wait to try on the crown.</blockquote>Haig, without doubt, had his flaws, and power-hunger was among them. Still, I've always felt that he got a bad rap on this, and that--in context--he actually did the right thing.<br /><br />What is almost always forgotten about the incident is what directly preceded it. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, there was a great deal of confusion. It was not even known that Reagan had been hit for at least half an hour. White House press secretary James Brady had been gravely wounded. That left assistant press secretary Larry Speakes, who was back at the White House, to address reporters in the White House press room. <br /><br />Vice President Bush was aboard Air Force Two, which was en route back to Washington from Texas. Understandably, with Reagan wounded and the VP in the air, the press asked who was in charge of the country. Speakes, giving one of the most disastrous press briefings in history, answered "I cannot answer that question at this time."<br /><br />According to the reports of those who were there, Secretary of State Al Haig, the man in the administration charged with keeping the closest eye on the Soviet Union at one the highest-tension periods in the Cold War, watching the disaster unfold on television as Speakes essentially tells the world that nobody seems to be in charge for the moment, shoots out of his chair and bolts down to the press room. I've asked myself, "What would I have done if I were in Al Haig's shoes that day, as the highest ranking person in the White House?" The answer I always come back to is: I would've run downstairs and assured the world that the United States was not rudderless and asleep at the switch. I would've wanted to send the message that <span style="font-style:italic;">someone is in charge here.</span><br /><br />Did he argue incorrectly from the Constitution? Yes. Would it have been better if he hadn't? Of course. But if Haig's concern at that moment was that the world see there was someone at the helm (as he maintained ever-after), then he did about the only responsible thing one could do. Read it again, with the context in mind. This is not someone trying to pull off a <span style="font-style:italic;">coup d'etat</span>:<blockquote> As of now, I am in control here, in the White House, <span style="font-weight:bold;">pending the return of the vice president and in close touch with him. If something came up, I would check with him, of course.</span> [Emphasis added]</blockquote>Haig's press conference can be viewed in the last few minutes of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpl9qdysbv4&feature=related">this</a> and continues into the first few minutes of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KFYKrA1zco&feature=related">this.</a> (The second bit is interesting in that it is followed immediately by a discussion between Bernard Shaw and Daniel Schorr on the nascent Cable News Network. Schorr, who was about 85 even <span style="font-style:italic;">then</span>, has always been a left wing kook even among <span style="font-style:italic;">journalists</span>. He immediately goes after Haig on the constitutional misunderstanding, saying that "the alacrity with which he fills vacuums has been well-noted." One wonders if this is where the harshly negative casting of the incident in the "conventional wisdom" began?)<br /><br />Much of the criticism of Haig's life and legacy is deserved. But in his most infamous moment, he was actually doing the right thing where history has immortalized him as doing the wrong thing.Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138571.post-74163197656728888342010-01-25T15:32:00.001-05:002010-01-25T15:35:03.625-05:00Organic Moralism<a href="http://www.dougwils.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7320:the-whole-hipster-food-industry&catid=123:creation-and-food">From Doug Wilson:</a><blockquote>When it comes to food choices, I think catholic and eclectic is good -- live and let live, eat and let eat. What I can't abide is moralism about food. In the absence of any word from God on it, it would be wisdom on our part to keep quiet about what we see on the other fellow's fork. But we don't. We legislate for others, and make censorious faces at them. We launch crusades.<br /><br />In short, a sexually guilty people have accepted as "normal" the most unnatural practices imaginable, and they have then demanded that their food be "all natural." Wisdom is vindicated by her children. This guilt-driven desire has resulted in an entire industry springing up that caters to the deep desire that a morally inferior people have to feel morally superior. That's hard to do, and so there's money to be made there if you pull it off. You have to pick something out at random, and then make people bad for deviating from the new arbitrary norm.</blockquote>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138571.post-37238324684439709422010-01-22T17:03:00.002-05:002010-01-22T17:52:22.601-05:00The "Told You So" EditionA couple of events that transpired this week demonstrated the profound, prescient, and...I don't know--I'm looking for one more "p" word here...pusillanimous?--former nature of this blog, back when I actually used to write it.<br /><br />First, baby-faced congenital liar John Edwards <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/us/politics/22edwards.html">finally admitted</a> this week to being the father of his former mistress's baby. That should have come as a surprise to absolutely no sentient human being (except perhaps Mrs. Edwards), and should particularly not have been a surprise to any regular Rabe Rambling's visitors. On the day Edwards finally admitted the affair in 2008 (after the National Enquirer got the goods on him while the mainstream media determinedly looked the other way), he was quick to assure us that the baby was not--<span style="font-style:italic;">could not have been</span>--his. <a href="http://johnrabe.blogspot.com/2008/08/do-you.html">I helped you understand</a> that <span style="font-style:italic;">of course</span> it was his baby, and that he was a huge liar:<blockquote>Elizabeth Edwards' cancer reoccurred in March 2007. Assuming normal gestation, this child would have been conceived in May 2007. If that child belongs to John Edwards, he's the world's biggest cad, and as a politician he knows this. It's over for him. So he claims that the affair ended in 2006....But does that claim withstand even a moment's scrutiny? If the affair ended in 2006 as he claims...[w]hy was he photographed in his former mistress's hotel room <span style="font-style:italic;">holding some other guy's baby? </span></blockquote>I also noticed this week that the liberal radio network Air America finally <a href="http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/01/liberal-radio-network-air-america-files-for-bankruptcy/1">gave up the ghost</a>--just as I said it would, and for the reasons I said it would--<a href="http://johnrabe.blogspot.com/2004/03/spectacular-flop-that-will-be-liberal.html">on the very day of its launch</a> back in 2004:<blockquote>The spectacular flop that will be "the liberal talk network" (known officially as Air America Radio) launched moments ago, in case you hadn't heard....you'll want to tune in quickly (if, that is, you happen to live near one of the five enlightened radio stations carrying this insightful commentary). Something tells me it might not be around for long.</blockquote>Frankly, it's amazing that it was able to limp along for nearly six years. It was non-entertaining, unfunny, and just bad radio. It started <a href="http://johnrabe.blogspot.com/2004/04/my-guess-proved-correct-air-americas.html">bouncing checks</a> only weeks after its debut, and seemed to be in near-constant bankruptcy proceedings. Don't worry, though--it's only a matter of time before media chuckleheads begin claiming that AA failed <span style="font-style:italic;">not </span>because it was terrible radio run by business incompetents, but rather because its target audience was just too darned smart to listen to talk radio anyway.<br /><br />I also <a href="http://johnrabe.blogspot.com/2009/07/did-he-leave-home-without-it.html">obliquely</a> predicted the death of Artie Lange last year, and while he is still alive, he did try to <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/stern_sidekick_in_suicide_try_5m9Hwhn1OvpONlzbsiW3oJ">kill himself</a> a few weeks ago. So I get at least partial credit for that.<br /><br />Let the lesson be learned: <span style="font-style:italic;">I know stuff.</span> If you wish to know what future months and years hold, just go back and read the archives. And Harry Morgan--I've got quite a track record, so you'd better be looking <a href="http://johnrabe.blogspot.com/2009/07/did-he-leave-home-without-it.html">over your shoulder</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Air+America" rel="tag">Air America</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/John+Edwards" rel="tag">John Edwards</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Artie+Lange" rel="tag">Artie Lange</a>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138571.post-21577211657786683682010-01-04T13:20:00.002-05:002010-01-04T14:22:35.779-05:00Happy New Year!A few notes to start 2010 off on the right foot.<ul><li>It shall henceforth be pronounced "twenty-ten," NOT "two-thousand ten." We had a bit of confusion during the first decade of the new millennium because of those double-zeros. It would have sounded strange to say, for instance, "it's twenty-oh-seven." So we got a bye for the first decade. But that's it. Nobody walks around saying, "I was born in one thousand, nine-hundred and sixty-eight." If we continued along our current pronunciation path, we'd be encumbering future generations with an awful burden. So, henceforth, we are adopting "twenty." Hey, that's the way it was in all the futuristic predictions anyway (e.g. "Why, by the year twenty-thirty seven, people will no longer have saliva but will instead have their food digested for them by specially built androids!") So twenty-ten it is. Your immediate assent and cooperation is appreciated.</ul></li><ul><li>Please, someone needs to stop Dick Clark. I liked the guy as much as anybody, but it has to stop. It's not getting better--it's getting worse. Retirement's not bad; he can spend the time counting his piles of money. I as much as anyone appreciate his apparent desire to refrain from inflicting the full measure of Ryan Seacrest on us for as long as possible, but things are getting embarrassing. Perhaps the only thing more embarrassing is that I was in front of the TV watching "Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve" at midnight on December 31.</ul></li><ul><li>Since we were in front of the tube, though, I do appreciate ABC's consideration, as my kids got to see Jennifer Lopez in a see-through unitard (though I don't think that's actually why Dick Clark was drooling) and to hear the Black Eyed Peas tell us how bad they want us (ooh, ooh, ooh). Keep it classy, ABC.</ul></li><ul><li>For Christmas, I received a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/COLLISION-Christopher-Hitchens-Douglas-Wilson/dp/B002M3SHTO/">DVD copy of Collision</a>, the documentary film chronicling series of debates and discussions between vehement atheist Christopher Hitchens and devout Christian <a href="http://www.dougwils.com/">Doug Wilson</a>. I highly recommend it. It's thought-provoking and instructive as two of the best champions for their viewpoint slug it out. As in the <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/mayweb-only/119-12.0.html">Christianity Today exchanges</a> that launched the film project, Hitchens repeatedly (and necessarily) avoids answering the question of where he finds the stringent moral standard he urges upon all of us in his writing. As Wilson points out, in the atheistic worldview, there is (as John Lennon famously sang) "above us only sky." Which means, above Auschwitz, only sky. Above Buchenwald, only sky. The bare universe doesn't care whether you help old ladies across the street or run over them, but Hitchens cannot bring himself to write as if this were really true. I recommend the film, and as far as I can tell, Hitchens is pleased with it too (having appeared on numerous programs to promote it after it was completed). It's something most modern "debates" are not: thoughtful.</ul></li>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138571.post-32482276354793050072009-11-20T12:32:00.005-05:002009-11-20T12:55:41.936-05:00Should "Global Warming" Be "Warmer"?According to <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/global_warming/index.html?story=/news/feature/2009/11/19/cooling">an article in Der Spiegel</a> (a name that always cracks me up, as does most of the German language in the post-war, Mel Brooks era), many climate scientists are "baffled" that the catastrophic global warming they've been hysterically predicting doesn't seem to be showing up in the actual...uh, how do we say?...<span style="font-style:italic;">temperatures</span>.<br /><br />Among the nuggets as stunned climatologists try to reconcile the data with their nonsense predictions:<blockquote>The Earth's average temperatures have stopping climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year.</blockquote>Now, this is Der Spiegel's statement rather than that of one of the scientists, but read that statement over a couple of times. Surely there's a government entity involved here somewhere. Let me rephrase what that sentence appears to be saying: "Global warming stopped a long time ago. And this year, it looks like global warming might stop in its tracks!" I'll assume it's a problem in translating from the German.<br /><br />Some more (entirely predictable) fun:<blockquote>Just a few weeks ago, Britain's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research added more fuel to the fire with its latest calculations of global average temperatures. According to the Hadley figures, the world grew warmer by 0.07 degrees Celsius from 1999 to 2008, and not by the 0.2 degrees Celsius assumed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And, say the British experts, when their figure is adjusted for two naturally occurring climate phenomena, El Niño and La Niña, the resulting temperature trend is reduced to 0.0 degrees Celsius -- in other words, a standstill.</blockquote>And:<blockquote>Despite their current findings, scientists agree that temperatures will continue to rise in the long term. The big question is: When will it start getting warmer again?</blockquote>Yes, that is the big question. Because it's <span style="font-style:italic;">empirical science</span>, you see? It <span style="font-style:italic;">has </span>to start getting catastrophically warmer. Didn't you see <span style="font-style:italic;">An Inconvenient Truth</span>?Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138571.post-86471200674687028402009-11-10T12:28:00.003-05:002009-11-10T13:31:54.445-05:00Around The HornHey, 'dya forget about me? Sure you did. However, all is forgiven because it's November and that means it's time for another post! Some quick hits:<ul><li>I see that Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano (still single as of this writing) is <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j8GOiUlCCnhCsRp1Xvs94KDJh8owD9BR9GPG0">on the lookout</a> for any potential anti-Muslim sentiment in the wake of the Ft. Hood massacre: <blockquote>Janet Napolitano says her agency is working with groups across the United States to try to deflect any backlash against American Muslims following Thursday's rampage by Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan</blockquote>Here's kind of a crazy thought, but how about we start worrying about the <span style="font-style:italic;">front</span>lash? You know, where people are actually getting <span style="font-style:italic;">killed</span>. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Recent deaths from Muslim extremists in U.S.:</span><br /><br />--9/11: 3000 killed in hijacking attacks<br />--John Alan Muhammed: 16 shooting deaths<br />--Nidal Malik Hasan: 13 shooting deaths<br />--One daughter <a href="http://blogs.kansascity.com/crime_scene/2009/10/update-man-ran-over-daughter-for-being-too-americanized-ariz-cops-say.html">run over</a> in Arizona<br />--Two daughters "honor-killed" <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,321486,00.html">in Texas</a><br />--Three shot, one killed in <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/01/arkansas.recruiter.shooting/index.html">Arkansas recruiting office</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Recent deaths from "anti-Muslim backlash": </span><br /><br />--Still zero<br /><br />Glad you're on the case, Janet.</ul></li><ul><li>Great to see <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/sports/stories.nsf/blues/story/A667CB07A9A266468625766A0015C1E1?OpenDocument">Brett Hull inducted</a> into the Hockey Hall of Fame last night. I covered the "Golden Brett" in St. Louis for a few years in the early '90's, and though he had a reputation for sometimes being a bit cantankerous, I never found him to be anything other than great fun. I once handed him my then-infant (now 17-year-old) son John for a photograph. John began instantly crying, and Brett held him like he was a pillow full of smallpox. (We still have the picture in one of our photo albums.) "Get used to it," I told him. "Your time is coming." Within four years, Hull had three of them. (Children, not smallpox pillows.) Always honest, always a great quote, the best hockey scorer I've ever seen, and a smile that kept you from being offended when he called you a "puke" (which he called everybody). The Blues should have never let him go.</ul></li><ul><li>When I last posted, it seemed like the St. Louis Cardinals could be on their way to the World Series. I got a little busy...how'd that turn out, anyway?</ul></li><ul><li>As insane as he usually drives me (which is documented <a href="http://johnrabe.blogspot.com/2006/10/have-cards-run-out.html">here</a>, <a href="http://johnrabe.blogspot.com/2006/11/its-italian-for-russa.html">here</a>, and <a href="http://johnrabe.blogspot.com/2007/07/another-attack-of-genius.html">here</a>, among other places), it is good, proper, and right for the Cardinals to bring Tony La Russa back for another year. Is he an excruciating over-manager? Without doubt. Is he loyal to a fault? If it were up to him, Chris Duncan would still be playing left field and Juan Encarnacion demonstrating taking one-eyed at-bats. But I know this: the Cardinals have been a contender almost every year since La Russa got there. Don't mess with success. It will also be interesting to have Mark McGwire around next year. This needs to happen. The steroids thing is over; good heavens, Andy Pettite and A-Rod were having statues carved of them during this post-season. Big Mac needs to come back, talk about it, put it behind him, and go to the Hall of Fame where he belongs. Even in the juiced era, the guy left everyone else in awe. Time to move forward.</ul></li><ul><li>Speaking of the aforementioned John Allen Muhammed, he is scheduled to be executed tonight in Virginia. No word yet as to whether Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, or Danny Glover have chained themselves to the jailhouse yet. The events in Ft. Hood brought back to mind the coverage of the night that Muhammed was caught after his weeks-long terror spree in the D.C. area. The entire evening, the networks tried to avoid using his adopted (and legal) name "Muhammed" and instead kept calling him "John Allen Williams." And they scrambled to cite his Gulf War I experience, abuse as a child, and hatred for a spouse as possible motives for the shootings. CBS's Vince Gonzalez <a href="http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20021025.asp#1">reported the next day</a>, "About the same time he joined the army Muhammad converted to Islam, but authorities say religion was not a motive." <a href="http://sweetness-light.com/archive/ibd-cnn-drops-jihad-from-dc-sniper-story">Subsequent evidence</a> proved definitively that the shootings <span style="font-style:italic;">were </span>carried out as an act of jihad. Surprise! Keep that in mind as you watch the media's Ft. Hood coverage.</ul></li>And that, ladies and gents, is how we play "Around the Horn." After my last post, I jokingly added, "Have a nice autumn." And here I am in November. So considering the way these postings are actually going, I'll refrain from saying, "Have a happy new year."<br /><br /><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Janet+Napolitano" rel="tag">Janet Napolitano</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Nidal+Malik+Hasan" rel="tag">Nidal Malik Hasan</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Ft.+Hood" rel="tag">Ft. Hood</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Radical+Islam" rel="tag">Radical Islam</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Brett+Hull" rel="tag">Brett Hull</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/St.+Louis+Cardinals" rel="tag">St. Louis Cardinals</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Tony+La+Russa" rel="tag">Tony La Russa</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Mark+McGwire" rel="tag">Mark McGwire</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/John+Allen+Muhammed" rel="tag">John Allen Muhammed</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/" rel="tag"></a>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138571.post-26398310445913613562009-09-23T16:38:00.003-04:002009-09-23T17:40:38.965-04:00September Already?Hey, it's been a while. What're ya gonna do? Life gets busy sometimes. In the meantime, here are some interesting things I've been looking at today:<ul><li>Salon.com has a fascinating, three-part <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/09/21/glenn_beck/index.html">profile</a> of the early radio career of Glenn Beck. It's clear that the author is no fan (whereas I generally like Beck, though I preferred the Glenn-Beck-on-the-radio version of about three years ago to the Howard-Beale-Prophet-of-Doom that I see on Fox News). About the early, pre-Mormon Beck, virtually all seem agreed: he was not a good guy. For a radio geek like me, a story like this is like catnip.</ul></li><ul><li>Even the liberals over at <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2229194/">Slate</a> are starting to get a whiff of the unpleasant stench of nannystatism that is descending upon the land. They take a look at a draconian paper in the New England Journal of Medicine advocating taxes even on diet soda--because it may cause you more in your heart to want real sweets. After all, since we're going to put health care under state control, the state now has a direct interest in your eating habits. Slate notes:<blockquote>If you're trying to sink health care reform, this is a good way to do it: Show everyone how subsidized health insurance will entitle other people to regulate your eating habits.</blockquote></ul></li><ul><li>Like the previous article, TIME's Joel Stein <a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1924497,00.html">points out</a> that liberals have just as tenuous relationship with science as they're always claiming conservatives do. Talking about the resistance to getting vaccinated for swine flu among his circle of friends, he says:<blockquote>while the far right gets a lot of crap about not believing in science, the left isn't crazy about it either. Only instead of rejecting facts that conflict with the Bible, it ignores anything that conflicts with hippie myths about the perfection of nature. That's why my neighborhood is full of places you can go to detoxify with colonics, get healed with crystals and magnets and buy non--genetically engineered food.</blockquote>Unfortunately, however, Stein's answer to the problem leaves him in no better a spot:<blockquote>When presented with doubts, I don't search for detailed information from my side. I go with the consensus of mainstream media, academia and the government. Not because they're always right but because they're right far more often than not, and I have a TiVo to watch.</blockquote>And just when he was so close to making sense.</ul></li><ul><li>On Bruce Springsteen's 60th birthday (a fact that just makes me want to crawl into a hole somewhere), <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2226603/">here's a cool piece</a> about the birth of <span style="font-style:italic;">Born to Run</span>.</ul></li><ul><li>And <a href="http://deltackett.com/2009/09/22/a-new-television-program-cross-examine/">here's a note</a> about an, ahem, awesome television program that will be making its way to the airwaves next year.</ul></li>Hey, great seeing you. Have a nice autumn.Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138571.post-88309315153535713422009-08-27T13:34:00.003-04:002009-08-27T17:16:26.302-04:00The Lyin' Of The SenateThere is a natural and proper tendency, following someone's death, to speak words of grace and admiration. Even if the deceased was an opponent, death tends to evoke a natural bonhomie that calls for at least muted words of praise.<br /><br />For the past day, we've been inundated with tributes to the late Senator Ted Kennedy. Perhaps more than anything, it has been noted how grief-stricken his senatorial colleagues across the aisle are at his passing, since Kennedy was of the old school where "you could fight like dogs by day and then at 5 o'clock go have a drink together." In the clubby atmosphere of the Senate, conviviality is prized above all other attributes, and by all accounts, Ted Kennedy had that in spades.<br /><br />I've tried to join in the eulogizing. After all, a man has just died. But after a day and a half of trying, I must finally admit: I just cannot do it.<br /><br />Ted Kennedy was deeply harmful to the country. He espoused policies that have been damaging in so many ways that a full-length book could only begin to scratch the surface. <br /><br />"But that's the 'before 5pm' stuff! You're supposed to let that go, Rabe." <br /><br />Okay, let's do that for a moment. The problem is, Ted Kennedy was a terrible person <span style="font-style:italic;">after </span>5pm too. I do not doubt that he was fun to be around and friendly to his colleagues. But as old-fashioned as it may be, I have a sticking point: I just can't seem to get beyond that dead girl in the car.<br /><br />"Oh, good grief. Chappaquiddick? Are you still on <span style="font-style:italic;">that?</span> That was <span style="font-style:italic;">40 years ago</span>. Can't you just let it go?" <br /><br />Well, no. From the time that Sen. Kennedy careened off the bridge on that fateful night in 1969 to the moment he arrived back at his cottage, 40 minutes elapsed. Kennedy reported the accident the next morning--<span style="font-style:italic;">after </span>the car had already been fished out and the license plate identified. Authorities believe that Mary Jo <a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=cP0NAAAAIBAJ&sjid=zXsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4079,182936">may have lived</a> for two <span style="font-style:italic;">hours </span>in the car after it plunged into the water. In other words, to put a finer point on it, while Senator Kennedy was back in his cabin making calls to his advisers and plotting his next move, Mary Jo Kopechne was still possibly fighting for her life inside that sunken car, watching it gradually fill with the murky water that would finally drown her.<br /><br />Through the rape trial of his nephew, William Kennedy Smith, we discovered that Ted Kennedy had not become any better a person in the 22 years following Chappaquiddick, either. The indelible image presented at the trial of the then-59-year-old senator heading out to Au Bar with his son and nephew, followed by his infamous pants-less appearance before the ladies in his living room later that evening, conclusively demonstrated that Kennedy's lifelong dissipation continued.<br /><br />Expelled from Harvard for cheating; culpable in the death of a 28-year old girl; parading around in front of women without pants on; notoriously drunken womanizer...sorry to be so out of touch with the zeitgeist, but this was <span style="font-style:italic;">not </span>a good man. The fact is, he got 40 extra years of life that he didn't allow Mary Jo Kopechne, so I have no mournful feeling that somehow his time was cut too short. <br /><br />It's not simply political or ideological. I could find complimentary things to say about lots of people whose policies I abhor: Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and hundreds of others. In Ted Kennedy's case, I've tried to join the national mourning. But when I dig down for something complimentary to say about this guy, I'm afraid I find there's just nothing there.<br /><br /><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Ted+Kennedy" rel="tag">Ted Kennedy</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Mary+Jo+Kopechne" rel="tag">Mary Jo Kopechne</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/William+Kennedy+Smith" rel="tag">William Kennedy Smith</a>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138571.post-43168920556314022732009-08-18T15:04:00.002-04:002009-08-18T16:16:29.649-04:00Wilsonian WisdomDoug Wilson <a href="http://www.dougwils.com/index.asp?Action=Anchor&CategoryID=1&BlogID=6845">ably dissects</a> the liberal jokers who justify abortion by claiming the body's freedom from government interference on the one hand while supporting state-run health care on the other:<blockquote>This is just like that other popular saying on the Left -- keep the government out of bedrooms. Okay, I'm for that. Currently the government tells us how far apart the sheetrock screws have to be, how big the windows have to be for egress in case of fire, how far apart the electric outlets have to be, what kind of chemicals can be in the paint, and whether or not we can cut that tag off the mattress without getting the FBI involved. Sure, let's get government out of our bedrooms. Oh, you didn't mean that? You just meant you wanted them to be mute where God actually revealed something to us (as in, no, you can't marry your sister), and having begun the disobedience there, to legislate endlessly and like crazy about everything else, dictating the most minute details about your bedroom?</blockquote>For nanny-staters, "freedom" is merely a slogan used to gain control. (Remember the "Employee Free Choice Act" that would've stripped workers of the secret ballot regarding unionization, and instead expose them to threats and intimidation? That's "freedom" to a liberal.) When liberals start talking about "freedom," always rest assured that they are getting ready to rob you of a heaping dollop of it.Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138571.post-20820076700375413392009-08-11T17:51:00.001-04:002009-08-11T17:54:12.456-04:00You'd Have To Be A Rock Not To See ItI came across an <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/article1026122.ece">interesting story</a> earlier today. A 9-year-old Florida boy at summer camp discovered an unusual rock on July 31st. He took it to a camp leader, who then took it to an amateur archaeologist friend, who then took it to some experts. According to the story, archaeologists at St. Leo University:<blockquote>confirmed that the small piece of worked rock was a [6000 year old] Newnan spear point. It dates to the middle Archaic period when humans, who had been previously nomadic, started to settle in larger groups in various regional areas of Florida.</blockquote>All of this raises an interesting question. The artifact was found on a wilderness trail among many other rocks. What made this boy think this particular rock was different from the others? And what makes archeologists believe, as one of them said, that “[p]eople took a lot of time to make these”? The answer is obvious: it shows all the marks of having been designed. Indeed, recognition of design and purpose is at the center of sciences like archaeology and forensics. <br /><br />It’s also intuitive. This young boy isn't a scientist; he simply recognized that this rock bore the evidence of having been acted upon by an intelligent force where the other rocks did not. When we come home to an empty house, we know that note on the kitchen counter is not the product of blind chance and the continuous laws of nature. We know--and are held legally <i>accountable</i> for knowing--that a stop sign is not a random product of nature, but something designed to convey a message.<br /><br />However, when it comes to biology, we're expected to<i> ignore</i> clear evidence of design. In fact, militant atheistic evolutionists have argued against Intelligent Design theory (ID) on the grounds that it is "unscientific" because it infers a designer from the appearance of design and fails to rely purely on naturalistic, undirected processes for explaining biological complexity. This was exactly the argument they made in the infamous Dover case, which a federal judge endorsed. Yet Richard Dawkins, strident atheist and author of <i>The God Delusion</i>, defines biology as “the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” That's a very telling definition. Dawkins insists, however, that such things <i>must not</i> have been designed, trying his hardest to make the evidence fit his preconceived conclusion.By defining "science" as "explaining things in purely naturalistic terms with no recourse to design or purpose," they try to rule ID out <i>by defintion</i> rather than on the evidence. <br /><br />Though clear evidence of design is an obvious scientific principle in archaeology and forensics, when it comes to biology the design inference is suddenly and inexplicably considered to be “unscientific.” Despite the existence of a universe that is almost inconceivably fine-tuned to support human life, the properties of language and information found in the tiniest cells, and the irreducible complexity of numerous biological structures, all life, the militant atheistic scientists say, must be the accidental product of blind, purposeless forces.<br /><br />For them, every rock is just a rock--including those meticulously cut into the shape of arrowheads.Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138571.post-29413509978768005082009-08-07T14:52:00.004-04:002009-08-07T15:11:56.538-04:00John Hughes, R.I.P.<span style="font-style:italic;">[I never do this, but with the passing of John Hughes yesterday, it seemed appropriate to re-post some thoughts I had on him <a href="http://johnrabe.blogspot.com/2006/01/whither-hughes.html">back in 2006</a>. I had always hoped he'd make a comeback, but in the words of Del Griffith, one of Hughes' more endearing creations, "I guess that's not gonna happen. Not now, anyway." If you were, as I was, a teenager in the mid '80's there's a pretty good chance that this guy was your Shakespeare.]</span><br /><br />I've lately been pondering the career of John Hughes. (And yes, I'm aware of how sad that is.) <br /><br />My recollections were occasioned by a <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/10/ew.dvd.ferris/index.html">CNN.com/Entertainment Weekly</a> review of a new DVD version of "Ferris Bueller" that's coming out.<br /> <br />I don't know that there's ever been a bigger seven or eight year streak in the history of movies. From 1983 to 1990, he either wrote or directed (and in some cases both) the following films:<blockquote>Mr. Mom (1983)<br />Vacation (1983)<br />Sixteen Candles (1984)<br />The Breakfast Club (1985)<br />Weird Science (1985)<br />Pretty in Pink (1986)<br />Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)<br />Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987)<br />She's Having a Baby (1988)<br />Uncle Buck (1989)<br />Christmas Vacation (1989)<br />Home Alone (1990)</blockquote>I haven't even included some others during that period that stunk, like "European Vacation" and "The Great Outdoors." <br /><br />Isolate only at the ones he directed. In one six year period as a writer/director, he cranked out:<blockquote>Sixteen Candles<br />The Breakfast Club<br />Weird Science<br />Ferris Bueller's Day Off<br />Planes, Trains, and Automobiles<br />She's Having a Baby<br />Uncle Buck</blockquote>I think that's virtually unprecedented. These films might not be to everyone's taste (and with the exception of “Ferris” and “Uncle Buck,” none of them pushed the $80 million box office mark), but for people of my generation, these are seminal pictures. There's not a clunker in the bunch (though I know some might quibble with one here or there). There's not one on there I don't stop to watch when I pass by it flipping through channels. <br /><br />Who has ever put a list together like that in that amount of time? Granted, he wasn't doing gritty, edgy stuff like Scorsese or something, but this guy was the Frank Capra of his time. "Home Alone" is the highest-grossing live-action comedy of <em>all time</em>, for goodness sakes.<br /> <br />And yet the guy hasn't directed a movie since "Curly Sue" in 1991--15 years ago. It's Jim Brown. It's Barry Sanders. It's Jordan, if he had stayed retired the first time. How do you put together that career in six years and then disappear? Where is he? <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000455/">At IMDB</a> (which is where I got all this info), he appears to only be cranking out lousy, straight-to-video sequels of "Home Alone" and "Beethoven" as a writer anymore. Under a pseudonym, no less.<br /><br />Related Tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/John+Hughes,+movies,+Brat+Pack,+Ferris+Bueller,+directors,+80's" rel="tag">John Hughes, movies, Brat Pack, Ferris Bueller, directors, 80's</a>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138571.post-2741323013988676612009-07-31T15:46:00.002-04:002009-07-31T17:30:11.484-04:00A Real ClunkerWell, it turns out the the "Cash for Clunkers" program is <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/31/cash.for.clunkers/index.html">a huge hit</a>, and why shouldn't it be? People know a sucker when they see one, and you'll never have trouble drawing a crowd to line up for free money.<br /><br />The problem, of course, is that, as the old saying goes, there is no such thing as a "free lunch." Somebody is <span style="font-style:italic;">always </span>paying for it. That's also true of inflated payouts for junkmobiles: someone is paying for it. When Joe takes in his '89 Reliant station wagon (book value: $135) into the dealer and gets a check for $4500, that money is coming from somewhere; in this case, that "somewhere" is all the people who are <span style="font-style:italic;">not </span>gulping out of the public trough.<br /><br />They rifled through the first $1 billion allotted for the "Cash for Clunkers" in only a couple of days, but lo and behold, it turns out there are a lot more people in the country with cars worth less than $4500 who would like to get wildly-above-market prices for them. History has proved that the best way to get a wildly-above-market price on something is to have the <span style="font-style:italic;">government </span>buy it, and this proves to be no exception.<br /><br />But tough times call for tough measures, right? We need to stimulate the economy, so now is no time to be worrying about where the money is coming from. Can't we worry about all that later? <br /><br />Well, not exactly. The major rationale for the "Cash for Clunkers" program is that it will supposedly stimulate the economy. Will it? Well, it will certainly stimulate one part of it: the moribund auto industry. But what benefit will that be to the economy overall? <br /><br />Normally-sane, sensible people frequently seem to forget one fact: every dollar the government spends is a dollar it has taken from someone else, by force. (This is true even when the government turns on the magic printing press, thus devaluing the dollars everyone else is holding.) When the government gives a billion dollars to people who were still clinging to their Dodge Darts, it's a billion dollars that has been taken from other people, by force. And in addition to the simple moral wrong of stealing from one to satisfy the covetousness of another, we often overlook the fact that that's a billion dollars that won't be <span style="font-style:italic;">spent </span>somewhere else.<br /><br />All the government has done in such a scenario is take a bucket of water from one end of the pool and pour it into the other end of the pool, triumphantly declaring the water level to have been raised. What is unseen are all the things that money will <span style="font-style:italic;">not </span>now be spent on. We see the benefit to the car owner and the car dealer, but what about people and companies to whom that money really belonged? They will now <span style="font-style:italic;">not </span>be spending any of that billion dollars on opening a new branch, raising worker salaries, paying for medical insurance, building a house, or taking a vacation. They will not be investing it in mutual funds (which sends the money to companies which use the money to do things) or putting it in the bank (where it will be lent to people starting businesses or needing new capital). One sector of the economy benefits from the car deal, but it's at the cost of an untold number of other sectors that are hurt by it.<br /><br />I see Congress is now scrambling to pump more money into the "Cash for Clunkers" program, since--surprise!--it's proving to be wildly popular. As I've heard the inimitable Walter Williams say, "Politicians love a visible beneficiary and an invisible victim."<br /><br /><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Cash+for+Clunkers" rel="tag">Cash for Clunkers</a>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09049099152698919505noreply@blogger.com0