black & white & loud

Election Night 2010

2010-11-03T00:31:00.000-07:00

Testing. Does this work??

[Edit 1] Wow. Ok, it sorta works but is not syncing? I'll have to upload this to youtube... ;)

Explanation (and Double Date!)

2010-07-07T11:10:00.000-07:00

I have this weird thing where I feel like I need to keep my personal life separate from my politics. Because I get so riled up and passionate that sometimes I push people away. Or something.

But that keeps me from writing for both. So from now on, I'm just going to write (or say) whatever. Real life, politics, emotional vomit - all in one place. I'll probably lose a lot of readers for it - they'll walk away saying "she's crazy", which may or may not be a legitimate point. Two of my sisters think I am, if that counts for anything. (It shouldn't.) ;)

Anyway, last night was a lot of fun. And by a lot, I mean A LOT. Nano and I went on a double date with his best friend Cory and Cory's (newish?) girlfriend Laila. (Not Lila, by the way. LAY-luh. Get it right, people.) It was a blast.

Nano picked me up from work and we were going to head back to my house for a bit since it was taking Laila a bit to get ready. We were sitting on 5th and 45th waiting for the light when suddenly Nano said "I want a donut!"

I laughed. "Dude, I just tweeted that!"

It was settled - we needed donuts. Ly's Donut's is around the corner (sorta) from my place in the U-District so we stopped and each got a donut. Good idea, babe! Then we went through the oddest carwash ever at the Shell station nearby. The soap made Nano's Acura smell like bubblegum. Needless to say, we were scared.

Then the call came - Laila was almost ready to go! (Full disclosure: I have no idea what was actually said during the call. I wasn't on it. But I assume it was something like "Laila's almost ready to go!" It takes me forfreakingever to get ready so no hate from me, Miss Laila.) We jetted down Eastlake to pick them up.

So really, before going further, it needs to be said that Cory and Nano being together is like all the Williams siblings being together. On our own we have everything from quirks to outrageous oddities about our personalities but together, we're more entertaining than a circus that's caught fire. It was just fun to be around (save for the hollering of Portland Timbers songs, but that was later.)

At Cory and Laila's suggestion, we had dinner at Via Tribunali. It was a fantastic little place with a really fun vibe and great pizza. It was great because Laila navigated the entire way from the condo to the restaurant. I suck at navigating so I was relieved.

When the gal came to take our order, Cory ordered right away for all of us. Being the most indecisive person ever created, I was relieved again. It was then that I realized I wanted Cory and Laila around ALL the time. My life would be so much easier! (Selfishness for the win!)

After dinner we headed to King's Hardware in Ballard for drinks. Well, everyone else was there for drinks. Being allergic to alcohol, I was there for DD.

Awesome thing about King's Hardware - they have Skee-ball! We probably played 20 or 30 games while we were there. Laila was a natural, getting 330 and 300 on her first two times playing EVER. We were sitting at the table closest to the two skee-ball machines(?) and Cory took to egging on the people who were playing while we weren't. It was the funniest thing ever. (SIDE NOTE: I can't wait till the white iphone 4 comes out so I can record this stuff easily!)

We winded down at King's and decided to head back to the rad condo on Eastlake for roof top bocce ball. When we arrived, I noticed Nano had on a drunk face. (He would insist that I tell you he wasn't drunk, so to comply with that insistence, he was not in fact drunk. Hence my description of "drunk face".) It was quite funny. In the end we passed on bocce ball and settled for taking pictures on the roof and having on more drink (juice for me!) and going our separate ways.

All in all a good night! :)

Karl Rove & Northwest Red States

2010-04-06T19:47:00.000-07:00

I've been doing a bit of homework on the recent voting history of Oregon, specifically. The optimist in my is working overtime with this crazy goal. Hey, things seemed impossible when this country was founded. Let's see what liberty-minded folks can pull off in the PNW.

Future Conservative

2010-04-05T16:53:00.001-07:00

So this gal I met better look out. I have every intention of converting her to conservatism. Just sayin.

American Exceptionalism

2010-04-01T00:36:00.000-07:00

A few thoughts on healthcare and American exceptionalism in my rather unstructured format. :)

First Video Blog!

2010-03-30T10:53:00.000-07:00

I'm totally laughing right now. I take myself too seriously. :) Enjoy my mini-rant from last night.

I Don't Know Why I Do This To Myself

2010-03-10T21:45:00.000-08:00

Today I finished reading The Communist Manifesto.

It sucked.

The end.

But seriously, I didn't give it a fair shake; I had an opinion going in. It was better and worse than I had anticipated.

The entire thing is an exercise in fallacy – primarily appeal to probability and negative proof. Marx and Engels made a host of claims and were either unaware that they were supposed to, or, believe themselves to be above providing any empirical data to prove their points.

They specifically spoke of arguments that they claimed were not worth addressing – as though they were somehow transcendent enough to determine which arguments held any weight. It struck me as the epitome of arrogance.

It seemed to me that the logical end of the argument should have lead to some sort of peaceful anarchy until the end of chapter two, where the ten points outline how the state will make classes disappear by running everyone's lives. My dear friend Parker makes a good point that both Marx and people like Shane Claiborne are dangerously naïve. I tend to agree.

Whether this was apparent before any government had implemented Communism, I'm not sure, but in the end, the state becomes the bourgeoisie and the people become the working class: the very problem Marx and Engels were working to solve. The whole endeavor was a plan of attack against a straw man, and in my opinion, a little embarrassing. It's really depressing to me that this pathetic 40 pages changed the world.

On Courage And Consequences

2010-03-10T03:03:00.001-08:00

As some of you may have figured out, often times on my blog, I have no idea what I'm talking about - I just rattle off my observations and perspective, which don't really help a lot of people. It still hasn't even been a year since I began to change my mind about politics and began heading towards the right. Up until that point, all I had was CNN's opinion - which I was very good at recounting.

So now, I'm trying to figure out how things actually work using empirical evidence instead of emotions. It's not particularly easy.

I will always defend my right to come to my own conclusions.

I excitedly picked up Karl Rove's book last night (tonight?) and dove in headfirst. Not sure why but the first chapter where he talks about his father's passing really reminded me of my grandmother's passing. I teared up when I read it and tweeted that I was loving the book a chapter in.

Well, about an hour later I saw someone respond (not to me, just in general) saying that anyone who cried reading Rove's book wasn't worthy of a follow. I lose followers on Twitter everyday. (And somehow gain even more. Go figure.) It wasn't that big of a deal to me, but I wanted to know where said person was coming from - a luxury that he had not afforded me. I thought we were making progress but it quickly turned into a free fall when he started making personal accusations. This was not an individual who knew the first thing about me. So I checked out.

At first I'd attempted to explain that I really knew nothing about Rove which was why I wanted to read the book. My opinion of him was that he was evil - that's what CNN told me, and I believed it. It seemed like it would be most fair to give Mr. Rove a chance to speak for himself and that is what I decided to do. I will always defend my right to come to my own conclusions. Unfortunately, that wasn't good enough for Twitter dude.

He assumed that I knew everything that went on in the Bush administration, that Karl Rove was merely using his book to whine and justify himself and beyond that, asserted that Mr. Rove was going to hell. Clearly an unbiased and scholarly opinion if you've ever heard one. While I'm not an angry person, I understand some people are, especially in regards to the Bush administration. However, spewing CNN's drivel back to me is not a convincing argument. If you know me, you know that.

The writing in Courage And Consequences really sucked me in. There's nothing I love more than a well-articulated tragedy. After spending a long time wading through Malcolm X's anger and utter naivete (I'm still not finished) it was a relief to read someone who didn't use their autobiography as a flamethrower. Beginning with the story of his family was a good move, at least for softies like me.

All this to say that I am making up my own mind about Mr. Rove. If you want to share your opinion, fine. I may post your comments, I may not. Please do not expect me to just go along with whatever you believe, hook, line and sinker as I have no idea where you got your information. That would be very stupid of me and I'm just tired of being stupid.

Owning Slaves Versus Selling Racism

2010-03-09T14:46:00.000-08:00

Recently, it has seemed kind of wise to avoid those who make a living talking about a specific problem. Especially when said talkers are making millions of dollars. Certainly there are problems that need to be addressed. But when you're primary source of income is waxing eloquent about say, the black struggle or the environment, how motivated are you really to see that problem go away?

My point is this: Dyson, West, Sharpton, Jackson, Gates, Gore and others make a living talking about issues. If those issues (my primary beef today is with racism but Gore and climate change also belong here) were to go away, there would be no more money talking about them. Sure Gates would still have a job teaching about the history of racism and Dyson could go back to being a preacher.

But there is always money to be made in shilling problems, so instead, these men continually harp on their respective issues. It's in their best interest to continue to bring racism to the forefront of the American consciousness. As long as there are racists, this band of agitators will be needed to stand up on behalf of their brothers and sisters, to make long speeches about how racism is tearing this country apart, to the be face of racism's mortal enemy. But really? Is that what they sincerely want? What is their exit strategy? What will they do for work once the great evil or racism has disappeared?

What I do not understand is how these self-proclaimed leaders of the black community can stand in judgment on our Founding Fathers for owning slaves when they themselves make a tidy profit off of racism. It's disgusting and not dissimilar. If racism continues to exist in some invisible realm, the problem really will never go away and our black "leaders" will continue to make bank simply because they have problem to talk about. At least the Founders sincerely wanted slavery to go away and did what they could to stop it. These guys are just a bunch of jokers by comparison.

And Just When I Thought I Was Getting Along With The GOP...

2010-03-08T11:25:00.001-08:00

This morning my friend Karl sent me this link to an article at The Patriot Room about the primary in Illinois' 8th district. The winner of the primary, Joe Walsh (pictured here with his cute family), ran more as a Tea Party candidate and handily beat a field full of Rs. But the RNC will not support him in his race against three-term incumbent Melissa Bean, saying that they are focused on races where they have the clearest paths to victory.

Ok, perhaps Walsh doesn't even have a shot. The 8th *historically has tended towards blue when it comes to electing representatives. But it doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility for a conservative to win here, especially with all the tumult that the current administration is causing.

So what's the RNC's deal? This is a good example of why the further up you go in the party, the less I like what I see. Don't misunderstanding my title; this isn't dissuading me from becoming a Republican in the near future. I'm a realist; no party will ever be perfect. But to someone who fully admits to being courted by the GOP, the politicking has become bigger than the issues. And that is very unappealing.

*I cross-referenced Wikipedia (which I abhor) with the Congressional Biographical Directory search results for Illinois US representatives.

My (Shrinking) Problem with the GOP

2010-03-04T09:35:00.000-08:00

Back in September I wrote about my problem with the GOP. I only thought it would be fair for me to revisit the issue since it seems to be going away.

Since I've moved to Washington, I've had the opportunity to really see the GOP from the ground level. And I have to admit, I think it's in great shape. These people are really concerned about the issues and are really hurt when their representatives don't hold to party principles. Beyond that, Republicans are really genuine; salt of the earth. Upset? Yes. With people on both sides of the aisle. But good people.

There is a disconnect between Washington DC and the party on the ground, but that gap is - at least on the Right - being closed. It has become apparent that not everyone on the Hill thinks that the Tea Party movement is "the fringe". (Apologies to the McCains - Senator and Meghan. Hate to break it to ya, but you're wrong.)

My exposure to the actual party - not the one conveyed by the media - has been really good for me. It was only a few weeks ago that I told a friend that it might be another 15 year (when I'm 40) before I have an R after my name. But that sentiment is very quickly changing for me.

Monday night I was reading Daniel while driving from Seattle to Portland (I wasn't the one driving) when the thought suddenly hit me: my refusal to be a Republican because of some unprincipled people in DC was similar to refusing to follow Jesus because of some Catholic priests. My alibi was the epitome of poor logic.

That said, I am very seriously considering putting an R behind my name. Not because they are perfect (how stupid is it that I feel like I need to clarify that issue?) but because I'm beginning to realize they are the best option.

Falluja & Fallacy

2010-03-04T00:01:00.000-08:00

A Twitter friend posted this article by the BBC and to be honest, it ticked me off. "Birth defects 'have risen since US Falluja operation'" reads the title. In it, the BBC (or residents of Falluja - it's hard to tell who's who in the story) seem to insinuate intentionality on the part of the United States for the rise in birth defects in the area since the initial invasion back in 2004.

While the US could easily be responsible for the surge in birth defects in Falluja because of the weapons we used, we most certainly did not intentionally try to cause them. I posted on Twitter that it was the insinuated intentionality of the article that bothered me and, further, that it was making good use of the fallacy of negative proof. To imply that because something cannot be proven false it is automatically true is a terribly poor argument.

So much is left simply left untold. Who was keeping track of the birth defects in Falluja before we showed up? Where are those records now? Whose idea was it to bulldoze all the rubble into the river where people get their drinking water? Far too many variables to even be implying blame, let alone allude to correlation.

I'm willing to admit that I may be reading into this a little much. Also, I tend to get a little defensive of our military since so many people believe our military is primarily made up of Halo-and-porn addicted 22 year olds who would rather not be defending their nation. Sure war is gross and messy, but our troops are not a bunch of morons. And they certainly were not trying to make life more miserable for the children of Falluja or anyone else.

Who Is Winning At Converting?

2010-03-03T18:33:00.000-08:00

I had a discussion with my friend Nick a few days ago about which people on the right we felt were convincing in getting the message out. Our mutual friend is steadily moving towards the right and so the topic has come up a few times. Who was the best at making converts and the most expeditious? There were a few names thrown around, so I'll rehash our conclusions in no particular order...

Ann Coulter doesn't make the right any friends. She may be right, but if you offend those you are trying to convert to the point lividity, you've lost any effectiveness you may have had. Coulter cracks me up, and given the medley of hate mongers on the Left, I truly wouldn't have a problem with what she says. My only real problem is that she could easily stand in the way of someone switching sides.

Michelle Malkin, while I have no doubt she is a great gal, seems to be in on the name-calling bit as well. I didn't realize this until tonight when she was on Hannity. Olbermann's (albeit awful) comments about her didn't seem all that bad given this new revelation.

Nick recently turned me on to Mr. Dennis Prager - his personal favorite in the convincing category. Mr. Prager is completely brilliant in his own right, if only for his ability to force clarity on issues. His command of logic is pretty impenetrable from what I've seen (heard?). He doesn't name call or (worse) make fallacious arguments. The amount of respect he has for people simply on the basis of their humanity is also noteworthy, although it really does pale in comparison for me to his deft grasp on the issues.

My choice would be Thomas Sowell. He is ever articulately on the offensive towards the Left without ever naming them or losing his cool. What's even better? They hardly know who he is. I think the popularity of ninjas lately is sort of absurd but Sowell is, hands down, the Right's ninja. (The frustrating part is the Right hardly knows who he is either. If they did, he'd never be able to write another book given his interview schedule.)

It wouldn't surprise me if Glenn Beck is the most well-read person on cable news right now. His, uhhh, television-side manner isn't exactly my favorite, but his CPAC speech recently was excellent. Also, I also see a lot of my personality in him which is probably what bugs me. I wish he were more effective (or maybe I just wish he were cooler) in the way he communicates his message. It would also help the cause a great deal if he stayed away from pseudo-conspiracy theories to sell his research. Not sure he'd convince anyone who wasn't completely open-minded already...

Who do you think is most effective in conveying the Right's message to masses?

How Do We Get Rid Of Racism?

2010-03-02T12:05:00.001-08:00

To be fair, I'm always extremely skeptical when I hear that a black person is speaking out about race issues. It frequently seems to me that the whole of the black community believes quite a few tall tales about their history.

But Morgan Freeman makes an excellent point. One that my mother has been stating for years. I never really got it growing up. It's just not starting to make sense.

"How do we get rid of racism?"

"Stop talking about it."

(Better quality video can be found here if you're interested.)

More Thoughts on Race (Because I Have a Lot)

2010-02-22T16:43:00.000-08:00

Just recently, I started being followed on Twitter by African American Conservatives (@AACONS). As I'd been trying to figure out who the (specifically) black Conservatives were, this was probably more exciting for me than it should have been. I'm not going to apologize, though. I was jazzed. Especially after Olbermann's brilliant "everyone in the Tea Party is white" segment. (I was proud of Conservatives who quickly pointed out that everyone on MSNBC is also white. Speaking of, if Fox News wants to give me a show, I'd totally take it.)

This last Friday I went to a high school basketball game out in the little town of Elma, Washington. The team they were playing was a suburb of Olympia - Lacey. The out-of-towners had a lot of black girls on the team. Needless to say, Elma had zero. Not a big deal, it was totally what I expected from a rural town in southwest Washington. But I tend to notice non-whites in small towns because they just aren't often found there.

I tweeted about my observations and my mother tweeted me back saying that she never noticed people's skin color and questioned why I would. To be fair, I didn't have a good answer. I was about 16 when I realized that I wasn't white - and that some people might look at me differently because of it - and although it hasn't been a prevalent part of my life, it's something I do still occasionally notice. Particularly in small towns.

Never have I been a victim of poor treatment due to my race, at least not to my knowledge. My parents acted like race wasn't on their radar and perhaps it wasn't. It would have been on mine - living as a biracial couple raising a lot of mixed kids in the whitest major city in the US in the 80s and 90s. However, my parents have much more character and grace than I do. Maybe they really didn't pay attention.

That said, I like being mixed. I like that it gives me perspective. I appreciate that because I am a minority (halfsies) among minorities (black), my voice is already unique in the cacophony.

All of this is to say that I do think about the world slightly differently because I'm brown. And not just any brown. Gray brown: half black, half white, all Conservative. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Who's The Racist Now?

2010-01-28T11:38:00.000-08:00

So last night Chris Matthews forgot for a mere 60 minutes, that Obama is black.

And we all know that Harry Reid thinks Obama is a "light skinned", propa edjucated "Negro".

Wasn't it Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid who crying were "foul", err... "racist" for the past year while pointing at the RIGHT side of the aisle? And over things like opposition to healthcare reform?

Who's the racist now? Why is no one talking about this? Once again, Republicans have the opportunity to prove their point and instead they sit there. Silent.

Hello, RNC! Michael Steele! Why don't you get your heads out of your respective elephants and start calling the Democrats racist?! Because whether they are or aren't, they are the ones who apparently think it's ok to call the POTUS a Negro and have his race at the forefront of their minds.

As Jesus said, out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. I think it's pretty obvious what is in some Dem hearts at this point...

Oh, The Hilarity

2010-01-26T14:16:00.000-08:00

The response to the James O'Keefe "scandal" cracks me up.

It's quite simple really.

When a Conservative breaks the law, other Conservatives turn on them. Liberals see this and then ask why in the world Conservative would turn on one of their own.

Well, I don't know. Probably because they broke the effing law?

It's all so telling, isn't it? Liberals and liberal organizations who break the law aren't turned on by their supporters. (Oh, hey there, ACORN. What? No, I wasn't talking about you! Stop eavesdropping... Oh. This is James O'Keefe? Yeah, sorry. Can't bail you out. Call yo momma.)

We certainly can all agree that black people who break the law are not turned on by other blacks. (Maybe social stigma would be good for lowering violence? Just a thought.)

But Conservatives generally have a very healthy respect for the law - even those they adamantly disagree with. I don't know that I could honestly say that I think Liberals have a respect for the law. Which is also funny because the Left is always so set on writing more of them...

Thoughts on Abortion

2010-01-22T10:32:00.000-08:00

After I linked to this article on my Facebook one of my liberal friends decided to play devil's advocate and posed this question: is it wrong to kill innocent people in wars overseas if it's wrong to kill innocent babies in the womb?

He essentially sees them as the same, believing you cannot simultaneously believe in just war and be opposed to abortion. At face value this seems hypocritical, certainly. The end result is death for both the aborted child and some innocent bystanders in war.

The massive difference between abortion and a just war is intent. And this is where we must focus. War is messy, certainly some innocent people will accidentally be killed. However, for the US army, the intention is to NEVER kill innocents, even if it would increase the likelihood of your mission's success.

The intention with abortion is wholly different - to kill out of sheer convenience - after you have, in the vast majority of cases, consented to possibly get pregnant in the first place.

Again, war is messy. But so is driving. Innocent people are killed by cars every day in this country. Is that a moral argument against the driving of motor vehicles? Hardly. 40,000 innocent people day in this country every year due to cars wrecks - that could likely fall under the UN's definition of genocide.

Thus, the issue becomes one of intent and not outcome. Not all deaths are created equal. As my friend says in his article - abortion does not keep people from becoming parents. It only makes some parents killers. Hence a different intent than American soldiers in war.

Don't Mess With History

2010-01-20T09:38:00.000-08:00

I get livid when Democrats try to own the Civil Rights legislation like it was their deal. It was not theirs. Republicans need to put their panties on and start owning the Civil Rights movement - and not just on their website. (Which, I might add, is brilliant and beautiful, in case you lack the courage or time to click on the link.)

They need to start owning it in interviews. They need to start owning it on the floor of the Senate. They need to remind the black community that their party was put together because there were American citizen who were disgusted that "All men were created equal" only extended to those of European ancestry. It was worth a war. It was worth their lives.

When an arrogant loudmouth like Olbermann gets on his show and starts insinuating the Democratic Party's involvement when it comes to Civil Rights was to help it, I am hardly capable of sitting idly by. A big part of the reason that it makes me upset is because if he's done any research into this issue he knows: Democrats accounted for 80% of the opposition to the Civil Rights legislation in the 60s. Look up the voting record - it hasn't changed.

In the 50s and 60s, I will remind you all yet again, the Democratic Party was the party of segregation, lynch mobs and the Klan. Let's not get confused when it comes to who was trying desperately to stop all these things. It's atrocious that the Black community now sees welfare as "help" and vote party line with the Ds 90% of the time. Both Dr. King and Malcolm X would be ashamed (albeit for different reasons).

Survival Guide for the Uninsured

2010-01-20T07:44:00.000-08:00

I know how to get along without insurance. Looking back, I think my family had insurance about half the time while I was growing up. It was obnoxious. But we knew how to deal with it.

Here's the deal...

If you're generally healthy and without insurance you can skip some of the regular appointments you would make if you otherwise had insurance. Going two or three years without a regular check up if you aren't sexually active (where you'd get most diseases anyway) shouldn't be a problem.

"What if you need an operation?!" the social healthcare proponents always demand.

Here's the thing - figure out who does what for free.

Catholic hospitals have benevolence funds. If you explain you need an operation and have no money or insurance, they will help you. If they can't cover all of it, they'll put you on a reasonable repayment plan. Needing an operation does not mean that you will have to file for bankruptcy or even be completely broke for years. That's just plain wrong.

Planned Parenthood also provides some free services and contraceptives (which, let's just be honest, you can't get for free at a Catholic hospital if you can get them at all.)

As far as dental goes, there are a few things you can do. If you just need a cleaning, call up local dentists in the area, explain your situation and ask them how much they charge. You can find someone who won't charge an arm and a leg.

Major dental work costs a lot of money, even with insurance. When I had my wisdom teeth removed, I had great insurance and it still cost me $1000 out of pocket. Dental schools are a way to avoid the astronomical costs and get work done more reasonably.

Optometrists, glasses and contacts are fairly easy to find inexpensively. They advertise specials in the newspaper almost every week. If you wear contacts, Walmart is the least expensive route I've seen. Sometimes $15-20 dollars a box.

And everyone knows now that you can get off-brand prescriptions for a few dollars at month at Walmart, Fred Meyer and other bigger retail outlets.

Like I said, you can survive a few years without insurance and without going broke - even if you need to have surgery at some point. You just have to know what to do.

Have any questions? Feel free to ask. Trust me, I'm an expert. ;)

Back to Politics: Illegal Immigration

2010-01-19T07:31:00.000-08:00

I am not sure how many times I've heard someone say, "We just need to pack up these illegals and ship 'em back to where they came from!", as though these people were Christmas ornaments with the little, gold "Made in China" stickers and a return address on them.

My argument has been and continues to be this: we do not have the money, manpower or motivation to ship 12-14 million people back across the border. We never have, we never will.

We have to absorb them, as much as it may suck. I'm quite sure some of you reading this are up in arms over that statement and I'll explain it and win you back in a minute. It is also imperative that we have to secure the border or the problem will never be solved.

As far as securing the border, we need to talk to everyone about ideas for this. I don't care who - China, Israel, Blackwater International - doesn't matter to me. We need the best ideas, best technology, best solutions on the planet. Then contract the construction of a fence and the monitoring of said fence out to a private company. They have better ideas than the government for these types of problems anyway.

For those in this country illegally, they receive massive fines. Something like $5,000 a head. So if you're a single mom with three kids who were born in the States, you pay $20,000. Obviously, there can be a payment plan set up for this.

We won't call it a fine, either. It's an application fee to become a citizen, plus recouping some of our lost tax dollars.

The application process takes a year, after which, you must take the standard tests for becoming a US citizen - in English. If any of the heads of household fail the test, we use part of your fine to put you and your family on a airplane and fly you to Mexico City or Cuba or wherever you came from.

Your state-issued driver's license or ID will be required to note that you came to this country illegally for at least 10 years. There should be a social stigma against cheating just like there is if you plagiarize.

Lastly, if you came to this country illegally and are now a legal citizen, you may never vote. Ever. For any reason. A former illegal immigrant's attempt to vote will be seen as a federal felony and met with a minimum jail time.

What are your thoughts on illegal immigration and what should be done to stop it? What did I miss?

Sometimes, People are Icebergs

2010-01-14T10:32:00.000-08:00

The last 24 hours have been interesting enough that I felt the need to document them. I literally feel like the Titanic right now in terms of my capacity for compassion.

Someone – or rather, a whole lot of ignorant someones – crashed into me. There is a jagged puncture in my hull and all my compassion is slowly being pressed out. In its place is frigid water, chunks of ice, salt…

I.

Do not.

Care.

Thankfully, unlike the Titanic, I will not find myself at the bottom of a crushing sea, miles below the waves, due to this collision. A few years back I had an expert help me learn to section parts of my life off. This damage is hardly life threatening. But I do need to get to port. When or where that will happen, I’m not sure. I am a poor captain because I fail to plan ahead much. If I had a schedule beforehand it would be quite thrown off by now. Hilariously, I’m not positive that I had even a rough draft or a map.

While this incident was unforeseen, due to fog and honestly, not paying much attention to where in the world I was, I still have to take responsibility. To own my ship, my damage, and to see to it that the repair is done properly.

My anxiety level has been way up. It’s just not starting to stabilize. The Word is a great stabilizer. It forces us to get our eyes off ourselves and on to something bigger than us. While I am disappointed in the profound and utter ignorance of my generation, I was comforted by the words of Isaiah that Matthew records Jesus quoting. I read them mere hours before the accident occurred.

Seeing they do not see and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.

I fall into this category too – the category of being an ignorant fool. Running my mouth with little-to-no information.

Lord, forgive me.

And help me make it safely to port.

What is Economics?

2009-12-07T08:43:00.000-08:00

To know what economics is, we must first know what an economy is. Perhaps most of us think of an economy as a system for the production and distribution of the goods and services we use in everyday life. This is true as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. The Garden of Eden was a system for the production and distribution of goods and services, but it was not an economy, because everything was available in unlimited abundance. Without scarcity, there is no need economize - and therefore no economics. A distinguished British economist named Lionel Robbins gave the classic definition of economics:

Economics is the study of the use of scarce resources which have alternative uses.

Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics, pg 2

I lied!

2009-11-17T16:16:00.000-08:00

I wasn't back yesterday. I'm having technical difficulties with my laptop. Hoping to have it back in working order (100%) this weekend. And then I'll proceed to spit flames that all of you can stomp out... or pour lighter fluid on. Your choice.

Tor

Way Too Long...

2009-11-15T21:16:00.000-08:00

... without a blog entry is driving me insane. However, I finally have my laptop back to working order and so I can write from home. (And resume editing my first novel, writing my second, and tweeting non-stop.)

First order of business is that I changed my Twitter handle to @torriejae - short for Victoria Jeannette. Just in case you are on Twitter.

So I finished Rodney Stark's The Victory of Reason, recently. Brilliant read, brilliant mind. I'm pretty sure he sited about 70 sources a chapter. And I'm glad I didn't give up on the book because his conclusion is one I couldn't have articulated with any less information.

The basic premise is that after hundreds of years (thanks, Voltaire) of promoting this nonsense that the Middle Ages were in fact the "Dark Ages" and that people were so backwards and steeped in mysticism and barbarism that even they knew they were uncivilized, the Middle Ages were a time of great technological and scientific advancement. Stark even goes so far as to call the idea of there every having been a "Dark Ages" a complete myth. He also explains that the Catholic church did not in fact hold nearly as much power as Protestants and secularist historians like to claim it did.

This is all very true. The Middle Ages brought forth a host of development in Europe on almost every front. I wrote that the Middle Ages and the Catholic church were responsible for true science, universities and capitalism. I'm quite sure you can imagine the uproar that caused.

Highly recommend this book. You can get it on Amazon.

Hope you all are well and I hope to be back tomorrow!

Ugh! I miss you guys!

2009-10-30T12:37:00.000-07:00

Hey, friends! Sorry I have been gone so long - I am still all over Twitter though! (@LaMontenegro)

Currently reading Bastiat's The Law. I've been pondering this section for a few days...

But there is also another tendency that is common among people. When they can, they wish to live and prosper at the expense of others. This is no rash accusation. Nor does it come from a gloomy and uncharitable spirit. The annals of history bear witness to the truth of it: the incessant wars, mass migrations, religious persecutions, universal slavery, and insuppressible instinct that impels him to satisfy his desires with the least possible pain.

A Twitter friend, @TylerBraun, recently tweeted something along the lines of "if a blogger starts out with 'lately I've been thinking about', they probably need to keep thinking about it.

So no dissection here. Just words. What I would call truth.

I will have some thoughts in a few days, I'm sure.

Brief Update (Twitter!)

2009-10-15T10:19:00.000-07:00

Hey, all.

While I'm in the process of relocating, just thought I would let you know that I am on Twitter a lot. (I have the Boxcar iPhone app so I get all my @replies immediately - therefore my friends have this idea that I am on Twitter all day long everyday.)

Anyway, feel free to follow, say hi, rant or whatever else if you use Twitter. If you don't, I highly recommend it! :)

Love,
Tor aka @LaMontenegro

Needed To Get This Out

2009-10-08T16:36:00.000-07:00

I’m slightly overwhelmed today, as I have to write a biography for myself so that Evergreen can publish it in their newsletter. I have written a novel and am working on my second – I can blow through 5000-6000 words in a day easily. But writing about myself for something official is giving me writer’s block!

But this just had to be addressed.

The whole Polanski incident makes me want to vomit – preferably projectile and in Polanski’s face. Anyway…

Please don’t get me started about Whoopi “not rape-rape” Goldberg. I am not a violent person, but that asinine alibi she gave on The View… I’m just angry.

And now there is this – France’s culture minister, Frederic Mitterrand, wants to keep his job after defending Polanski. It seems some people did some snooping – and by snooping I mean reading what seems to be a published book – and apparently he is a sex tourist. (Umm, is that depraved or is that depraved? And gross. I feel like nobody on this planet knows what an STD is or cares if they contract one… or twelve. Again – gross!)

Who knows what age these boys were that Mr. Mitterrand was having sex with – I’m not sure at this point if that could be determined. But he called them “young” from everything I’ve seen and the age of consent in Thailand is technically 15. But once again, with this potentially being a child prostitution case, who knows. At 62, he easily could have described sex with twenty-or-thirty-somethings as “young boys”.

What gets me is at the end of this article, Mr. Luc Chatel says he is shocked that anyone would go “dig into the private past of public officials for political ends”. To quote Frank J at IMAO, “welcome to the Internet, Mr. Chatel”.

What I love about all this (and by love I mean hate) is that European smut is so much more pervasive than in America. There was a lovely little photo I rustled up of Miss Katy Perry walking out of Russell Brand’s house last Saturday morning. It wasn’t just her sneaking past out of a gate in a fence and into a car. She was walking down the stairs and he was standing in the door. And this is published in the Daily Mail! Not exactly the BBC, but still! Yet, Mr. Chatel is offended that something published in a book could possibly be used against a person in office. Never mind that something very easily involving child prostitution, human trafficking, modern day slavery.

Whoopi should have thought through her statements a bit. If Mr. Polanski had been black let’s just say the pending punishment may have been considered a bit more… urgent. (And Whoopi probably would have defended him even further.) As it stands, I wish somebody would get the urgency of this matter through their thick skulls. This behavior is absolutely wrong. It is morally evil. There is no exception for that.

My conclusion here is that perverts defend perverts. The vile defend the depraved. Sex with a thirteen year old in California is always rape. No exceptions. Even if she wanted sex it would be rape. I would wager Luc Chatel has a not-so-squeaky-clean past himself.

One of my friends who is also an author made the point that she wants the case to be dropped because Mr. Polanski’s victim wants the case dropped. I argued that in the United States, we don’t consider that justice. What if his victim wanted him executed? Then we execute? As it stands, I’m with Mychal Massie – just castrate the man. Flip a coin to determine whether he gets put under for the procedure. Seems like a fair punishment for the child rape-rapist.

Please Stop Screaming...

2009-10-07T09:40:00.000-07:00

There will be a little less attention to the blog for a few weeks. I was offered a fellowship at Evergreen Freedom Foundation so I will be moving from my hometown of Portland to Olympia, Washington to work with them. I am very excited about this opportunity to make connections with college students in the state of Washington and help them to understand and articulate Conservative beliefs.

All that said, October will be a slow month for the blog. Hope you understand.

Best,
Victoria

I don’t think that hyperbole helps the conservative cause. I don’t think that exaggeration and sarcasm are winning any points for our team. (Let’s be sure, I’m not talking about Republicans here. I’m talking about Conservatives.)

Why is no one trying to stage formal debates? What happened to points and counterpoints? Why are liberals so easily able to chalk up Conservative theories to nothing more than a chance for emotionally charged screaming fests nightly on Fox? This is embarrassing.

It’s hard to forgive these types of behavior as a liberal. Not to say that liberals don’t scream, shout, call names, exaggerate and lie also – they do. But when I started wanting simple information – not Armageddon predictions or Doomsday theories, there was a lot to forgive. I was tempted numerous occasions to give up because of people’s constant exaggeration. Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity may as well have been speaking Farsi. I didn’t understand a word that came out of their mouths.

Let’s simply lay out the facts, nothing more and nothing less – as frequently as possible. Forbes gets this right on a fairly consistent basis. Other conservative outlets could stand to learn a lesson.

Israel & Palestine

2009-10-01T10:33:00.000-07:00

It bothers me a bit when people don’t cut Israel any slack. I suppose I understand it – there are rather awful charges being leveled against the country in regards to their policies concerning the Palestinians. But given the circumstances, I think they are doing pretty ok. Not perfect. But who could be perfect in that scenario?

Wednesdays I have been meeting with friends at McMenamin’s – a local establishment here in Portland – for beer and food and conversation. It’s been a lot of fun. Last night one of my dear friends asked me what I thought about Israel’s Palestinian policy. I rattled off a number of facts: the exponential increase in Palestinian growth, representation in government and equal rights.

Palestinians want to live in Israel. That says quite a bit, considering.

People accuse Israel of being anti-Palestinian. I would argue Israel is merely pro-self-preservation. As an Israeli, I would be hesitant to sell my land to a Palestinian. Not because I don’t like Palestinians but because Palestinians may not sell land to Israelis under pain of death. It would greatly behoove Israel to not let Palestinians develop prime real estate due to the aforementioned penalty. However, because Israel is the bigger person, Israelis are allowed to sell land to Palestinians.

The countries surrounding Israel treat Palestinians even more poorly than that!

Jordan recently passed legislation saying that Palestinians were not allowed to purchases houses any longer within Jordanian borders. And beyond that, if they own land or houses Palestinians are not allowed to pass it on to their children as inheritance! Not a lot of motivation to live in Jordan.

The Palestinians are not a people group. Palestine has never in the history of the world been ruled by Palestinians. It’s tantamount to be Oregonian or Angelino. It’s where you are from, not your heritage. Also, there wasn’t even a Palestinian nationalist movement until after World War I and didn’t gain momentum until after the Six Day War.

Human rights in Arab countries are wholly atrocious compared to Israel. There’s no contest. Hello, women aren’t even allowed to vote in many Arab countries. You want to do a little research? Compare how Arabs treat Israelis in their countries to how Israel treats Arabs. Arab countries hardly treat their own citizens with much decency if those citizens are female. You won’t find a single human rights report that reads differently than that.

Recently, I was pretty mortified when I found out that a friend was saying that Israel was trying to exterminate Palestinians. First of all, Israel is doing a terrible job with their extermination because the population of Gaza specifically is growing. Please don’t say it’s Israelis who are growing the population of Gaza. That basically means that you believe Israel can’t tell the difference between Israelis and Arabs within its own borders. No one that incompetent could have managed such a disputed piece of land so well with such overwhelming odds. Clearly Israel knows which of its citizens are Jewish and which are Arab.

If Israel is treating Arabs so poorly, why are they lining up at the gates to move there? I think there has been a disconnect between rhetoric and reality, here. Regardless of what the news media or Palestinians are saying, Arabs still are trying to move to Israel.

Israel has strict rules in place, yes. If you are Palestinian and you leave for more than three years (or four?) you can’t return to the country. Given the propensity Arabs have for suicide bombings, I think that rule is justified. Not fair, but the world isn’t fair.

No, Israel hasn’t been perfect. But seeing as Israel is being run by humans, perfection isn’t possible.

For the record, I’m not anti-Palestinian. If at some point Palestine opens to international adoption, I will be elated. (I really want to adopt a little girl from Palestine.) I just don’t believe Israel is anti-Palestine. They are simply involved in their own self-preservation, just like every other country in the world.

Would love your thoughts on the conflict. There isn’t enough space to write everything I wanted to say about this topic.

I Knew It!

2009-09-29T12:00:00.000-07:00

Expect cavity searches to be starting at your local airport…

I called this a few months ago. (Too bad I wasn’t blogging back then!) I am always thinking about cracks in the security system when I am at the airport. (If I see somebody retrieve a briefcase from behind the counter at Starbucks and then board my flight, I’m going into “Let’s Roll” mode.)

After the Shoe Bomber, everyone had to remove their shoes at airport security. Then there was the Liquid Bomber and suddenly breast milk was being confiscated by the TSA.

One of my favorite films is Maria Full of Grace. It’s about a South American girl working at a rose processing company when she agrees to be a drug mule and fly to New York City. It’s a very moving film and looks pretty darn true-to-life.

The film made me realize that the easiest way to get contraband into this country or onto an airplane was to carry it in your body. After a discussion about border crossing and cavity searches with my dear friend Tristan, who is Canadian, I realized that was the trick. At some point, I postulated while waiting to get back into the United States from Canada a terrorist would carry explosives in his or her anal cavity and that would be it. The TSA would make every one of us strip naked before boarding an airplane.

And thus it has come to pass.

So next to you fly, be sure to shave. For the sake of those poor TSA agents who will be obligated to examine your ugly naked self.

Oh, MSNBC

2009-09-24T17:49:00.000-07:00

I read (ok, I skimmed) an article by Jennifer Loven on MSNBC today about how BHO’s presidency is “at a pivotal moment”.

In their lauding of the President’s long list of non-accomplishments thus far – which they cop to – it was mentioned that US had taken a turn in policy.

Here are the bullet points, provided by the pop news media site:

· America is out of the bullying business. It knows the world's beefs with the U.S., and the Obama administration is working to address them, a nice I-hear-you touch. And going forward, the U.S. will emphasize cooperation over a go-it-alone attitude, letting the credit for any progress flow where it may. In other words, we may still be the world's superpower — no denying that — but we're going to act like we're just one of the guys.
· Americans are impatient, and you should be, too. The problems are urgent and everyone must do his part — no shirkers allowed.
· No whining, either. Don't waste time blaming others, like, say, the United States, or making excuses. And if you want more rights than you feel you have, beware — they come with responsibilities.
· Last, but far from least in Obamaland, don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. Be willing to give away more than you want, or nothing will get done. Obama told Palestinians just that this week, meaning they shouldn't draw lines in the sand over Jewish settlement expansion on land they want for a state. He also says it all the time to Democrats in Congress over the health care bill.
Umm… right.

Let’s just discuss these, shall we?

1) I don’t like America being the obese bully with bright orange hair and a Motley Crue tee shirt any more than the next person. However, under what circumstances are we actually bullying people?

The answer to this question comes down to the ever-popular (and ever-stupid) question of the existence of right and wrong. I remember as a liberal yelling with my friends about “why do we get to tell Iran whether they can or cannot have nuclear power?” on more than one occasion.

It made sense at the time. Who says America gets to make that call?

Another question that gets to be asked here is, since good and evil do exist, is America good? If you don’t believe in good and evil than America cannot be good. But if you look over the course of history, what country has done more good than America?

Liberals (myself included in a past life) will say “yes, but America has done so much evil, too.”

Unfortunately, for the liberals, this is a matter of the human condition. We are born as evil humans into a fallen world. If you’ve ever read and believed a history book, you cannot argue with the previous sentence. History is a retelling of humanity’s massive failures with a few minor exceptions – America being the biggest of these exceptions, with subsequent exceptions to her goodness.

(Did I lose you? Humans are, as a whole, evil. America is, as a whole, good. We’re talking percentages, here. Not perfection.)

So America is good. If you can find a country that’s done more good in the history of planet, I will write you a check for $100 and stick in the mail to you tomorrow.

Telling North Korea, Iran or anyone else that they are not allowed to have weapons is actually something we get to say. America equals the adult at the table. North Korea, Iran, Sudan, Venezuela and others are the children. And just like you don’t hand a toddler a sparkler or a stick of dynamite and let them wander off with it, it is awful foreign policy to let unstable nations have nuclear technologies.

Shirkers from dangerous, speedy legislation are always welcome on this blog.

At the end of the day, some kids call their parents big, mean bullies and some liberals call America a big, international bully. Someone’s got to be the father in this relationship, though, so by virtue of having proven ourselves throughout history to be generally “good”, we get that job. It’s responsibility. Don’t whine about it.

2) Americans are impatient? That’s profound. Thanks, Socrates.

Healthcare, however, is not urgent. I believe the President has systematically failed to mention that his healthcare bill will not go into effect for 4 years. And personally, I have yet to see a cancer patient wither and die on the sidewalk in front of a hospital because nurses refused to admit him or her. (Hospitals in the UK are legally allowed to refuse admittance if they are “full”.)

No shirkers allowed?

Come again?

Do you mean “no voters who disagree with us allowed”? Because that is exactly why this nation is a Republic: the tyranny of the majority.

Also, shirkers from dangerous, speedy legislation are always welcome on this blog.

3) No whining.

Four words, liberals: practice what you preach. I’m not sure if you’d call the noise you made for eight years while Bush was in office “whining” or not, but since both sides get to define their own accusations, I’ll go ahead and say you whined.
Whining is allowed. Constitutionally.

4) Do not make perfect the enemy of good?

For your sakes and mine, I will not repeat what I wrote for number one even though it applies this principle of non-perfection to different concepts.

*If you need a refresher, please return to item one on this page. Thank you.

I get what Jennifer Loven was trying to say. I used to think this way. But let’s avoid double standards, shall we? They don’t do either side any good. Both sides fail in a lot of areas. But like Miss Loven said – we aren’t looking for perfection.

Why I Like Capitalism

2009-09-24T09:41:00.000-07:00

With capitalism, we are able to give money to our friends, our enemies and everyone in between, create wealth for ourselves and support our lazy neighbors. I’d say capitalism is working just fine. – what I say to my friends in defense of capitalism.

Production is the driving force of capitalism. Wealth can be produced, moved around, destroyed. Forgetting production in terms of money, let’s look at production in terms of the needy poor for a moment: food, water, shelter, clothing and I’m throwing healthcare on the list as well.

Lots of people are rooting for new-and-improved socialism. Most of those people seem believe that all the wealth in the world is like water in a pool: some people have lots of water while other people only have a few drops or none at all. Moving on from there out from there, if everyone did the right thing, they would pour all their water back into the pool and we could all share it. And subsequently, all live at the poverty line.

How the aforementioned socialism differs from say, standing in line for four hours for a moldy bag of potatoes, I’m not sure, this socialist/Marxist theory has the best PR team in the world, so it’s pretty darn popular. But the problem with socialism is reduced production. People work hard so they can have stuff. Forcing all of society to live at a certain (lowered) economic level does not motivate hard work. [See welfare.] *I will write at a later date about the fairytale know as the eradication of greed.

We do have a moral imperative to care for the poor. And if not to care for the poor than at the very least to ensure that people are not starving to death. “To whom much is given, much is required.” And we all know that there are people in the world who lack even the basics that we named above. So how does socialism, which results in lowered production, solve any problems for “the least of these”?

Holler if you want to stand in line all day for moldy potatoes! (No one? Really?)

That’s just the thing. If we reduce production in our country, who is going to send money to World Vision and Salvation Army and Mercy Corp? I have three kids that I sponsor through World Vision and I probably wouldn't be able to do that if we lived in a socialist country where I was taxed 50%. But without inordinate taxes, I am actually able to provide three other human beings with food, water, healthcare and schooling!

The fact of the matter is wealthy countries give the most. Poverty in the USA and poverty in Zimbabwe are vastly different, aren’t they?

Why is that?

It’s not because all the wealth is being held by the Americans – it’s because we have a system in place to efficiently produce. Zimbabwe could quite easily become an efficient producer. (Provided their evil “president” Mugabi leaves office, anyway.)

If I could ask all the bleeding heart liberals a few questions, they would be these: If you are persuaded that the whole world is “five people fighting over four cookies”, why are you driving a Prius, buying your clothes from Gap and making a weekly shopping trip to Whole Foods? Doesn’t that mean that eight little girls in Mali will die of malaria and malnutrition this month? How dare you, knowingly, kill eight innocent little girls by your inordinate consumption? Why don’t you stop consuming of your own volition instead of waiting for the government to come along and force you to stop?

Just curious.

Socialized Healthcare For The Lose

2009-09-23T15:43:00.000-07:00

We all know the old adage: there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Yet our government seems to think that if they just repeat “free healthcare” enough, people will sign up for it.

Do we need to be more efficient healthcare? Yup. For sure.

Is the government the way to create efficiency? You tell me.

How long does it take you at the DMV when all you need is to renew your driver’s license? How much was the United States Postal Service in the red last fiscal year? How much does the government spend on overhead versus programs? Adjusted for inflation, we spend twice as much on public schools as we did in the 1970s with a higher drop out rate and no improvement in overall education results.

I have yet to meet anyone who sincerely thinks that the government is the paragon of efficiency. People these days tend to think that if something needs to be done, the government should do it. If the government is a poor parent for the 50% of kids in this country whose dastardly fathers walk out on them and their moms, it will make a much worse doctor than those we already have.

Let's be honest: the United States Postal Service is in the red, FedEx turns a profit, kids at private schools and those homeschooled consistently have higher scores than public school children. What Kool-Aid did we drink to believe that the government would actually be better for the healthcare than private industry?

When my parents were in their early twenties they lived in Norway – a socialist nation. My father needed a root canal, I believe it was, so he made an appointment and showed up at the dentist.

About halfway through the procedure, the dentist office closed. It was 4 pm and time to go home. They told my father to go home and come back in the morning.

Without giving my dad a painkiller to tide him over to the next day, they shooed him out the door so they could ski home and knit.

So home my dad went – with a half-drilled-out nerve in one of his molars. My mom said my dad couldn’t sit still that entire night he was in so much pain.

Never mind the fact that the list of words I have lined up to call those “doctors” who didn’t give a care about my father’s well-being – that’s not exactly how I want healthcare to run here in the states.

When I had my all four of my wisdom teeth removed two years ago, it was a breeze. I didn’t feel a thing. My doctor didn’t kick me out even though her practice technically closed at 6 pm and she got a late start. In fact, I chalk it up to my doctor’s brilliance that when I couldn’t keep my painkillers down, I was pain-free after surgery taking only Tylenol!

My doctor is actually motivated to be the best oral surgeon she can be because of the free market healthcare. She has competition. Unlike the heartless jerks who operated on my dad all those years ago.

So Mr. President, while you’re taking the time to enlighten all of us on the truth of the healthcare bill and how we aren’t going to turn into Norway in the 1970s, why don’t you point to the chapter and verse? The Bible is also about 1,017 pages and people misconstrue that all day every day.

We can read even if we continually elect officials who choose not to

The Problem with the GOP

2009-09-19T10:21:00.000-07:00

I’m a little irked at the Republicans.

Actually, it’s more than a little.

People (aka pop news media) are continually making comments about “will the GOP rally again?” “Who is going to be the leader of the party?” “Are they going to change their message?”

Do any of these questions count for anything? I am starting to think they do not. The problem with the GOP is not leadership. It’s whether they have the ability to rise from the ashes. It’s not even the message.

The problem with the GOP is action.

They say one thing and do another. They aren’t actually conservatives. And I’m not talking about their hot button issues of abortion and gay marriage. If we tossed those two things out of the equation, Conservatives still fail to be conservative. They are bleeding us dry with taxes while they give themselves multiple raises a year. They actually consider voting for cockamamie legislation like Cap & Trade, the current version of the healthcare bill, multi-billion dollar bailouts without a fight!

This might not be so bothersome if I hadn’t become a Conservative in the last six months and then found myself in the “extreme right wing” of the playing field. If I were to write up everything I thought about politics and what they should look like, no one would pay any attention to me – I’d be labeled an extremist. (They can’t rightly call me a racist towards half-black president, can they?)

And it wouldn’t just be the Democrats who would be calling me names. Meghan McCain would probably think I was just as much of a freak as Rachel Maddow. Call me what you will, I’m somewhat biased towards the Constitution. I thought that was what made this country great? That we aren’t just a fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants Democracy. That we’re a Republic for a reason: to avoid the tyranny of the majority.

Speculate if you must. If the GOP doesn’t start acting like the defenders of the Constitution and small government that they claim to be, we’re just going to find ourselves in an even bigger mess in 2016. God help us then.

Bleeding-Heart Conservativism

2009-09-17T12:31:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of people who believe that all Conservatives are hard-asses when it comes to social justice. And in a way that idea makes sense. People who are very much “government out of my business” types are not going to want a ton of social programs to held the down and out, even if they themselves are more than willing to contribute.

I learned social justice from the best – liberals. However, social justice is one of my values so I didn’t shed my heart with my liberalism. Over the last few years I’ve watched my parents become bleeding heart Conservatives also. I have no doubt my brother and sisters will be as well.

When I have conversations with liberals about social justice my parents are actually my shining examples of how they are dead wrong in their assumptions. Sure my parents are not fans of Social Security. But they give money every month to one of the Catholic hospital in Portland – St. Vincent’s – for people who can’t afford their medical bills and don’t have insurance. (See? How rad are my parents?!)

I hear a lot of talk but don’t see a lot action on the liberal side. That’s fine if you want the government to do all the dirty work for you, but please don’t expect it to be done well. “90% of all people with Medicare love it.” That’s great but doesn’t most tax money actually go to employee pay and not to programs? Holy efficiency!

Just because someone doesn’t want the government interfering with private sector doesn’t mean they want people to starve to death on the streets and it’s shameful to think so.

World Vision is an organization that I’ve supported for many years and hope to continue doing so for the rest of my life. They spend 5% of what they bring in on overhead and 87% on programs. Has the federal government even come close to those numbers? If we’re hemorrhaging tax dollars, why do we even have programs set up to help people? Conversely, if the government could be more efficient than World Vision, shoot, son – let ‘em help the people out! You can’t get much better than a mere 5% for overhead.

I wouldn’t say that most Conservatives are generous because I don’t have numbers. I do know that the United States by all accounts is the most liberal country on the planet in the area of generosity.

When some bleeding-heart liberal like Shane Claiborne says we could solve our disputes without enemies by “sharing”, my response is "we already share... a lot". It’s true – we give money to everyone from Pakistan to Uganda to Palestine. (Thank you, capitalism!) Giving more money to more of our enemies will not absolve us of our grievances in their eyes. That’s not a solution; in fact, it's usually called bribery.

That said – all of you, conservatives and liberals alike – find a private sector organization and start giving to a cause you’re passionate about. Stop talking and put your money where your mouth is already! It's worth every penny.

Michael Moore & Anti-capitalism? Bring it!

2009-09-14T22:04:00.000-07:00

I'm jazzed about this new Michael Moore film, Capitalism: A Love Story.

The first reason is this: Michael Moore defines capitalism, from all the interviews I've read, as systematic greed. I'm stoked because I can't wait to ask those who support this film to define capitalism, while I whip out my phone and pull up dictionary.com to prove them wrong. Ok, maybe I'll be nicer than that.

I read a review that of course I cannot find at the moment that quoted Moore as saying something similar to "Capitalism is evil. You cannot regulate evil. You have to replace it with something. That something is democracy."

While I'm sure that there are illustrations galore in said film that show people abusing a capitalistic system, Moore's solution is the neo-proverbial "don't hate the player, hate the game." While it might sound great on an inner city basketball court, it doesn't work in real life. If eliminating the "game" due to cheaters were actually carried out there would be no industry at all. If we started implementing this practice tomorrow, we would have no national sports teams in 24 hours flat.

It humors me that Moore puts on the "poor ol' folk like us" hat, as if he doesn't have untold millions of dollars in some off-shore bank account.

I also had a good laugh with my mother over the "good - evil" scale that Moore replaces with "democracy - capitalism". Sadly for Mr. Moore (and hilariously for the rest of us) capitalism and democracy would not be found on opposite ends of the same scale.

If I could tell Michael Moore one thing about his film it would be this: Calling the definition of capitalism "greed" is like calling the definition of sex "love". You can have capitalism without greed and you can have sex without love. You're attempt at selling democracy and greed as mutually exclusive is a joke and a half. But then, that's probably what you were going for, huh?

Civil War & Slavery

2009-09-14T09:29:00.000-07:00

For some strange reason, people are today are running around claiming that the reason for the Civil War was not slavery. I'm not sure where they are getting their information, because pretty much everything I have read from people alive and taking action at the time says that slavery was the reason for the war.

Of course there are those who chalk it up to economics, but slaves were the economy of the South so that's not what I would call a clear distinction. This Civil War revisionism has begun to greatly bother me and I needed to write about it.

Let's go back to history books shall we? It seems foolish to ignore what the people involved at the time said and did, regardless of how today's scholars pontificate and wax indignant.

The easiest place to start is party platforms. The GOP platforms almost without fail their state their disdain for slavery, calling it a "crime against humanity" in 1860 - the same year South Carolina was choosing to secede over the issue of slavery. The 1864 Republican party platform unequivocally states the Civil War was the cause and continued to be the reason for the Civil War.

Here you may read for yourself an excerpt South Carolina's secession paper. They don't attempt to hide anything, so brace yourselves.

[A]n increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding [i.e., northern] states to the institution of slavery has led to a disregard of their obligations. . . . [T]hey have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery. . . . They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes [through the Underground Railroad]. . . . A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the states north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States [Abraham Lincoln] whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common government because he has declared that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction. . . . The slaveholding states will no longer have the power of self-government or self-protection [over the issue of slavery]...

On January 26, 1861 Louisiana followed suit, stating:

Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern Confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery...

Southern Democrats began leaving Congress a few weeks before Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861. None of them had any qualms stating why they were leaving: it was over the issue of slavery.

As Senator Robert Toombs (GA-D) stated so eloquently,

What do these Rebels demand? First, that the people of the United States shall have an equal right to emigrate and settle in the present or an future acquired territories with whatever property they may possess (including slaves). . . . The second proposition is that property in slaves shall be entitled to the same protection from the government of the United States, in all of its departments, everywhere, which the Constitution confers the power upon it to extend to any other property. . . . We demand in the next place . . . that a fugitive slave shall be surrendered under the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 without being entitled either to a writ of habeas corpus or trial by jury or other similar obstructions of legislation. . . . Slaves – black “people,” you say – are entitled to trial by jury. . . . You seek to outlaw $4,000,000,000 of property [slaves] of our people in the territories of the United States. Is not that a cause of war? . . . My distinguished friend from Mississippi [Mr. Jefferson Davis], another moderate gentleman like myself, proposed simply to get a recognition that we had the right to our own – that man could have property in man – and it met with the unanimous refusal even of the most moderate, Union-saving, compromising portion of the Republican party. . . . Mr. Lincoln thus accepts every cardinal principle of the Abolitionists; yet he ignorantly puts his authority for abolition upon the Declaration of Independence, which was never made any part of the public law of the United States. . . . Very well; you not only want to break down our constitutional rights – you not only want to upturn our social system – your people not only steal our slaves and make them freemen to vote against us – but you seek to bring an inferior race into a condition of equality, socially and politically, with our own people.

Democrat U. S. Senator Judah P. Benjamin of Louisiana, Democrat U. S. House Representative William Yancey, Democrat U. S. Senator John Slidell of Louisiana, Democrat U. S. Senator Clement Clay of Alabama all made equally unequivocal claims - secession was over the "blessing of African slavery".

The Confederate Constitution in two Articles (I & IV) use four separate sections to clarify where they stand on the issue of slavery. Slaves were strictly property and no one would be allowed to question whether slaves were property, among other things, were declared in the Confederate Constitution.

Subsequently, Confederate VP Alexander Stephens delivered a speech called African Slavery: The Corner-Stone of the Southern Confederacy. I don't think there is any question as to what that was about.

In closing, Civil War revisionists claim that the reason for the Civil War was chiefly economic. However, only 5 of the 11 states' Secession Documents mentioned economics - and all five grievances stated were contingent upon the issue of slavery. Opposition to slavery was the primary reason the Republican Party was founded. Saying that Republicans decided to go to war with their own brethren over the economy is embarrassing; and unless everyone on both sides was lying about their intentions, it is also false.

Note: none of the above information was gleaned from Wikipedia.

Wait... Seriously?

2009-09-11T15:43:00.000-07:00

CABLE NEWS RACE
THURSDAY NIGHT, SEPT 10, 2009

FOXNEWS O'REILLY 3,609,000
FOXNEWS BECK 3,340,000
FOXNEWS HANNITY 2,986,000
FOXNEWS GRETA 2,522,000
FOXNEWS BAIER 2,362,000
FOXNEWS SHEP 2,040,000
MSNBC OLBERMANN 1,573,000
MSNBC MADDOW 1,164,000
CNN KING 965,000
MSNBC HARDBALL 882,000
MSNBC SCHULTZ 734,000
CNN COOPER 691,000

Huh. You wouldn't assume that by reading MSNBC or CNN, would you?

Incoherent Ramblings on Jesus the Democrat

2009-09-10T17:00:00.000-07:00

*I'll put this together into an articulate op-ed-type piece when I have more time.

Art Alexakis comes into the store sometimes to have his car serviced. I haven’t seen him here but I’ve seen him around Portland, just like everyone who lives in Portland and recognizes his bleach blond hair from the Everclear days.

The last time he was in I pulled him up on Wikipedia, just for kicks. I know, slightly stalker-ish, pulling up my clients on Wikipedia. Shut up.

I ended up wandering from Wikipedia to source sited on Everclear’s Myspace page because a song called Jesus Was A Democrat was mentioned.

Art had written a little message that explained his conversion to Christianity and how he was convinced Jesus was a Democrat. It was a really sweet message – heartfelt and sincere. I completely understood where he was coming from and appreciated the perspective he offered.

The funny thing about the song was that I agreed with about every other line and vehemently disagreed with the others. Humans – their opinions always do this to me.

I decided to think through the whole Jesus is a Democrat thing as a recently converted liberal.

First of all – Jesus didn’t discuss the politics of the Roman Empire (the governing body he “answered” to) very frequently at all. When the Pharisees asked him whether it was right to pay taxes to Rome, it was more of an obvious trick than what we assume.

The Romans chose the High Priest after they began the occupation of Israel – naturally they didn’t choose Levites, as the Torah required, but picked people who were politically aligned with Rome.

Being politically aligned with Rome was tantamount to treason against Yahweh for most Jews. The Romans charged outrageous taxes (75-80% from most accounts). If you gave to Caesar what was Caesar’s and gave to God what was God’s, you were looking at living off of 10-15% of your income. If you hadn’t aligned yourself with Rome you were most likely destitute.

The Roman government was not concerned with social justice or helping the poor – they taxed people so that a few aristocrats could live wildly lavish lifestyles and the Caesar could build ridiculous monuments to himself.

I realize that some of you are drawing parallel between my description of Rome’s social and political elite and Republicans. But before you do that, let’s make one thing abundantly clear: the Jews were in no way, shape or form egalitarians. If one were to take a gander at the book of Proverbs in the Tanakh, this would become abundantly clear.

Equality of results did not enter their minds. The Torah commands charity out of the goodness of your heart, not a political accounting room. In fact, Paul, a self-proclaimed “Hebrew of the Hebrews” wrote in his letter to the Thessalonians “if you don’t work, you don’t eat.” Or essentially, “get off your lazy ass and get a job” and continues by telling those in the church to Jews did not petition the government to help their destitute neighbors – Rome then, as most governments now, didn’t give a care about the destitute. The Jews took care of their neighbors themselves.

What the Jews wanted was a king – not a democracy or a republic. If Jesus had a political mindset, my guess is, he would have been a Zealot and fought (yes, picked up a sword – he told his disciples to carry!) for a theocratic monarchy.

But the fact remains that Jesus was concerned about the Kingdom of Heaven, not manmade political systems. He didn’t believe a change in government would solve the problem – he told people to be the solution and not to wait for the “right people” to take office or be in charge.

The "Jesus was a Democrat" folks always contend that Jesus was a pacifist. I’m learning towards no on that. After all, what pacifist tells his followers to pack heat? Either Jesus was a hypocrite or he wasn’t a pacifist. He did say that those who live by the sword will die by the sword but looking at those words 2000 years later, I’m not positive that was a condemnation.

Apparently Jesus wasn’t opposed to the death sentence, either.

In order to understand Jesus, you must think like a Jew. If Jesus had had a problem with war or the death penalty – he had plenty of opportunity to verbally condemn it. Yet he didn’t. He continually affirmed the Tanakh. So it is extremely unwise to write off the Old Testament that Jesus loved.

My Dad, the Government

2009-09-09T17:46:00.000-07:00

Thomas Sowell made a point recently that as the government has grown, the people of our nation have become smaller. The younger generation, when faced with an issue that needs correction, immediately says “the government needs to do x, y & z” to amend the situation.

It makes sense that they think this way. For many of these individuals growing up without fathers, the government – via public schools – was their second parent. But, unlike good fathers, this one helped create co-dependents instead of contributing members of society.

The government is systematically converting citizens into disabled children, seemingly declaring, “The American citizen does not have the wherewithal to manage his own affairs.” Our Founding Fathers would be completely aghast at this. Yet the average NPR-supporting 20-something would likely agree that government is needed to help handle day-to-day goings-on.

This father never pointed out the correlation between a dependent people and the silent hemorrhaging of liberty. My generation is quick to demand protection of their rights. However, freedom to irreparably damage yourself while fiercely denouncing the idea that your actions have an effect on anyone else is hardly what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they penned “liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. The preservation of liberty requires wisdom and foresight – not the defining traits of those my age.

The more time I spend with my peers the more pronounced this sentiment becomes: young people can make it all the way through college without ever questioning whether freedom is greater than security or if socialism is better than liberty. I find many young people I talk to cannot adequately define the concepts; much less logically support their opinions.

It is imperative that this trend is changed. Thanks to technology, this task, though overwhelming, is doable. Young people today are, thanks to the internet, skilled researchers. We can instantly find information from our iPhones and laptops – regardless of our location. All that needs to be provided are the tools. Reference points. Historical context.

Yes, it seems daunting to try and carve out a home for truth in the vast wasteland of wrong information and sensationalism. But if the resources are available, this generation can find them. And when they do, weaning them off government dependence will be a breeze.

Waterboarding? Meh.

2009-09-08T10:50:00.000-07:00

Someone asked me this week if I thought waterboarding was torture.

Honestly, I had to think about it. My thought process was rather nuanced but conclusion was pretty much the opposite.

The first thing I asked the questioner was to define torture. The definition given was so broad it would apply from everything to slapping your child’s hand to beating a perfect stranger within an inch of his life, so I didn’t have much to go by with that.

I came to a number of conclusions. The first and most obvious was that I would never want to be waterboarded. But then I realized I wouldn’t want to go to jail if I murdered someone, either. So how the person experiencing waterboarding feels shouldn’t have any bearing on the matter. No one wants to suffer the consequences of their actions, that doesn’t mean we should stop handing out consequences.

The second conclusion was that, on the grand scale of torture, waterboarding would be my preferred method. If given the choice between the types of torture terrorist enjoy inflicting on their enemies – rape, maiming, burning, branding, electrocution, fingernails pulled out with pliers – I would take waterboarding in a heartbeat! By comparison, it’s more mental anguish than physical suffering.

Third, I realized some people have stronger mental and physical tolerances than others. The use of waterboarding may be effective in one case and not do jack in the next. There is no way to determine this outcome beforehand.

In the end, I don’t actually know if waterboarding is torture. And frankly, I don’t care. Make a fuss about “being on the same level as the terrorists” if you so desire. They don’t get Geneva Convention protections because they lack the decency to abide by it. Legally, we could do far worse to them than waterboarding on that basis alone. I’m not recommending it – just pointing out that it’s not illegal.

The next time someone asks me, “Is waterboarding torture, yes or no?” my response very well may be, “Who cares?”

Not Black Enough

2009-09-05T15:53:00.000-07:00

Back in the mid 1990s, the black community rallied around a man by the name of OJ Simpson. I was ten when his ex-wife and her friend were found murdered. But I distinctly remember the ruckus not dying down for years it seemed to me. Yet even at ten years old, I noted that when news reporters would interview people on the street all the white people thought he was guilty and all the black people knew he was innocent. Strangely, none of them seemed even slightly concerned with who did murder Nicole and Ron. They were simply sure it couldn’t have been OJ.

My father, who is black, would spend time on the phone with his relatives back east telling them that OJ was the murderer. They didn’t believe him. “He couldn’t have, he couldn’t have!” they insisted. He would get off the phone and relay the conversations to my mom who would either shake her head or laugh. OJ had approval ratings in the black community upwards of 90% according to some polls.

Fast-forward a decade. An articulate, youngish, (half) black former Constitutional Law professor arrives on the scene, making a crazy attempt at the White House. And what’s the first thing the black community asks?

Is he black enough?

(Insert pause while I scream, swear and beat my head against a wall….
Ok better.)

What?

Not black enough?

According to whose standard? Where’s the Blackness Aptitude Test (aka BAT) and who wrote it?

What sort of mental depravity does it take to make such a statement? If race doesn’t mean anything and we’re all equal that’s like saying “you aren’t green-eyed enough” or “you aren’t Aries enough”. Since when does the color or your skin matter any more than the date of your birth? It shouldn’t. Yet, if you articulate yourself in a manner becoming of a future head of state, or even according to the rules of the English language and proper etiquette you’re no longer truly black.

If, as a black person, you don’t put black people above all others, you are considered a sellout. Selling out to what? Humanity? The greater good? What is being sold out? Backwards, insular, defensive thinking? Bitter, selfish, elitist attitudes?
Do black people realize how racist they are when they make these mentally lacking statements? White kids don’t tell other white kids to “act white” if they happen to be into Anime or Bollywood, do they? But a Negro getting good grades in school? Only white kids do that. (Because only white kids are smart? Wow. That’s stupid.) I’m not sure it benefits the black community when they tell their scholastically achieving brothers and sisters “why don’t you just get Ds and smoke pot, Negro?” Now there’s a surefire action plan for staying in the projects, if I ever heard one.

But back to our story.

Eventually, Barry got the black community to rally around him. Not sure what he did to authenticate his blackness, but somehow he managed to pass BAT and receive 96% of the black vote. The white guy only got 50% of the white vote.

The liberals I have talked to lately break that statistic down like this: the 50% of the white people who voted for the white guy did so because they don’t like black people. No one ever points out that the 96% of blacks who voted for Obama did so because he passed BAT. The 50% of whites who didn’t vote for BHO are racist, not conservative like they were went they voted against Clinton, Gore and Kerry. This breakdown would be funny if Democrats didn’t swear it was true.

Yes, there are racist Republicans. Some of my friends and I joke that we voted for McCain (we didn’t) because he was the only “viable white candidate”. But it sounds a lot more like racism that 96% of black people voted for the black candidate, doesn’t it? I think so. This “for us by us” attitude (as opposed to promotion for everyone) is backwards as all get out. It’s the exact same mentality of Nathan Bedford Forest, Jimmie Davis, Marvin Griffin, Allan Shivers and more. The only difference is the color being promoted. Yet, no one calls these people out on it.

Anyway, if you happen to hear of someone offering the Blackness Aptitude Test would you let me know? I’d like to take it.

Honestly, I don’t think I’d pass. Because, contrary to what the black community and the BAT will tell you, blackness is not contingent upon the way that you behave.

Dear Guantanamo

2009-09-04T09:15:00.000-07:00

I used to not be a fan of Guantanamo. In fact, I listened intently as lawyers who volunteered their time to defend those detained in Cuba explained the grievances against their clients. I could quickly re-articulate every reason for closing Guantanamo. When my best friend told me “I bet most of the people there are bad men” I completely scoffed – how the hell would she know?

Granted, it would not surprise me if out of the many dozens of detainees held, a few were simply caught up in the ruckus and hullabaloo that follows an American GI calling in an air raid. Life is full of “wrong place, wrong time” scenarios and they increase exponentially during times of war. The dastardly actions of these plain-clothes combatants, sadly, make this scenario even more likely. Perhaps if terrorists wore uniforms, these situations wouldn’t occur with such frequency. But collateral damage has never really been a concern for these people.

But Thomas Sowell pointed out something that I had never thought about and is consistently ignored by pop news media: if you ignore the Geneva Convention, the protections of the Convention do no apply to you.

Here is something else he said:

There was a time when everybody understood this. German soldiers who put on American military uniforms in order to infiltrate American lines during the Battle of the Bulge were simply lined up against a wall and shot – and nobody wrung their hands over it. Nor did the U.S. Army try to conceal what they had done. The executions were filmed, and the film has been shown on the History Channel.

Someone pointed out to me that if we "torture" people, we're behaving just like the terrorist. I was fairly offended by this statement. Our troops don't hand 9-year-old children AK-47s. We wear uniforms so the enemy combatants know who to shoot! We will never be on the same level as the terrorist, even if we practiced waterboarding on a regular basis.

Our version of "torture" isn't exactly like theirs, either. I don't personally know if waterboarding is torture but on the list of things that may fall under that category, it's the best option on the list. It's better than what the terrorist do - brand, rape, maim, pull fingernails out, electrocute, etc., correct? Yeah, pretty much.

If you don’t play fair, you don’t get “tried fair”. The punishment should fit the crime – as should the trial… err, indefinite holding period.

Blame the Edukators

2009-09-02T09:08:00.000-07:00

We have a tendency to blame our educators for just about everything, I’ve noticed.

If kids aren’t learning, it’s not the parents’ fault or the child’s own volition – it’s the teachers who take the fall. If kids are getting STDs, it’s because they didn’t receive the proper education on safe sex. If they are abusing drugs, it’s because they don’t know how to use drugs safely…

Wait. Never mind.

Thomas Sowell made a comment recently that really got me thinking: Education is not something that can be given to anybody. It is something students either acquire or fail to acquire.

Hello, personal responsibility!

Education cannot be forced upon someone unwilling to receive it. If the parents (this usually only works if there are two) are involved, they can motivate the child to receive either an education or the long end of a big stick. But a child left to his or her own devices will not often choose the high road in education or any area for that matter.

Salvation isn’t in education. All those who are running around saying, “we just need people to get people better information and then they will make better choices” are living in a utopian fantasy that has no root in reality. There’s more “better information” in our country than at any point in the history of the world – we should all have minimal debt, huge savings accounts, zero crime and a negligible divorce rate. Yet, none of those things are remotely close to being true! What gives?

Personal responsibility. People sincerely believe that education is somehow the solution to the problem when in fact personal responsibility is the solution to the problem. Only the wise know the good they ought to do and do it consistently.

Jesus said more times than I can count “understand, understand, understand!” Knowing the right choice and understand the right choice are not the same thing. Wisdom is the difference between knowledge and understanding.

Jesus says in Matthew, quoting Isaiah, "seeing they do not see and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand."

Wisdom is the principle thing – therefore get wisdom.

Apparently I'm Racist Against the President

2009-09-01T10:13:00.000-07:00

I hope we never have a half black president again.

No, seriously. I do.

I’m tired of everything being about race all the time. There were Joker pictures of President Bush, but the people who made the Barack “Socialism” posters are racist. (They have nothing to do with, say, socialism.) People double-checked McCain’s birth certificate, but questioning Obama’s is racist. People disagreed with Bush’s policies, but disagreeing with anything Obama wants is racist.

Was the Rwandan genocide a product of racism? History tells us those people were the same race.

Never mind that more than half of this country’s voters voted for him. Never mind Obama was winning lifelong Republicans left and right. I’m not sure if it’s worse or better that it’s mostly non-blacks promulgating this asinine idea of disagreeing being tantamount to racism.

If you can’t disagree with the President’s policies without being labeled racist, dissent is going to become a hate crime. (Well, for everyone but halfsies.) Am I a racist because I disagree with most of what Obama says and does? I’m a halfsie just like he is. If disagreeing with anything the man does means I’m racist, then it looks like I’m a racist.

We throw this word around so much it’s lost its meaning. What does racism mean anyway? Was the Rwandan genocide a product of racism? Those people were the same race. Maybe the conflict in Serbia is real racism. But most Americans couldn’t tell a Serb from an Albanian from a Croatian.

Frankly, it’s embarrassing that these people believe Obama holds no weight except for the color of his skin. His policies don’t mean jack – it’s his black daddy you have a problem with. If you want to see a cavalcade of mental depravity all one must do is turn on the news. Pop media feeds these imbeciles a steady diet of emotional sensationalism. The real racism is saying the Obama’s policies don’t matter, what matters is the color of his skin.

Some Random Thoughts From The Car...

2009-08-31T20:40:00.000-07:00

We live in a society where people are promulgating this belief that the Founding Fathers of this country were deists. They believed in God but that was as far as it went - you can't deny that they believed in God. While the term deist is thrown about, really it seems that what we are being told in essence is that these people were agnostics.

Problem with that theory: how many deists or agnostics do you know that say things like "we were endowed by our Creator"? And under what circumstances would said people write or say such things? While they were writing up documents to found a nation? Hardly! The agnostics that I know are not that much difference from the atheists I know - they hardly mention God or the idea of God, much less when signing or writing official documents!

Why would you even bother, in nation building, to mention the idea of God?

yet we believe this lie that is being pushed by secularists that "oh, the Founding Fathers believed in the idea of a god but that was really as far as it went." Bullocks! These people clearly believed in a Creator who could and would intervene in the affairs of men. Otherwise, why mention Him so frequently?

Shame on us for believing anything otherwise.

We have a lot to learn about not being duped by ridiculous things that are being forced upon us by those who would purge history of every mention of God if they thought they could get away with it. If you don't believe that this purge is happening, you aren't paying attention, nor do you have a firm grasp on history.

Robin Hanson has this brilliant quote where he says something along the lines of we believe democracy's flattering lie that every person's opinion is as valid as all others when in fact the majority of what most people think will work is awful.

Democrats & So-Called Civil Rights

2009-08-29T13:40:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I’m in a back & forth with a couple of people on Twitter. They purport that the Democratic Party is the party of equality and freedom. Sometimes they even go as far as to imply that most Republicans are “rednecks” and “backwards”.
I take issue with this. Not because I’m a Republican – I’m watching that party fall apart at the seams – but because I’m conservative. I’m more conservative than the current Republican is today, actually. But I'll get to that later.

I was encouraged late last night to “check my history” on this issue of freedom and race so I went back and checked my history. So let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

The Republican Party’s first platform in 1856 included nine planks – six of which had to do with equality & the condemnation of slavery as a crime against humanity!

The Democratic Party was, from it’s founding, adamantly pro-slavery. Sometimes that language was blatant, sometimes it was implied, other times it was forthright: “All efforts by abolitionists . . . to interfere with questions of slavery . . . are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences and . . . have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people and endanger the stability and permanency of the union.” [Plank in the Democrats’ party platform in 1840, 1844 & 1848.]

The Republican Party’s first platform in 1856 included nine planks – six of which had to do with equality and the condemnation of slavery as a crime against humanity! The differences here are stark and plain. The Democrats in subsequent platforms accused the Republicans of promulgating “negro supremacy” – a dastardly claim to say the least.

It is said lately that the Civil War had less to do with the slavery issue and more to do with economics. Those making such claims fail to mention that slavery was the economy of the south. Slaves ran industry there and the Emancipation Proclamation was a nearly a deathblow to southern economy. If you need more assurance than that, the Republican Platform of 1864 unequivocally states that the reason for the Civil War was slavery.

Nathan Bedford Forrest, the founder of the KKK, was a Democrat. Every member of Congress who was a Klan member was a Democrat. In fact, over the issue of the Civil War, Democrats in Congress surrendered their seats to join the South – and had no problem verbally admitting to it.

Said differences in platform and action between parties did not change much for the next 100 years. On a few occasions, the Democrats’ party platforms explicitly lied, claiming to be “for equality” while Democrats in Congress voted down civil right legislation time and time again.

Once we get to the 1960s, people say, everything switched. Republicans turned into backwards rednecks and Democrats finally saw the light and became the champions of civil rights. There are multiple problems with this assertion but I will articulate two of them.

1) The first problem is logistics: Ideological party flip-flops do not happen in a single decade without something like a military coup or planned infiltration that forces a party to subscribe to opposing ideals.

We are in the midst of watching the Republican Party move away from its conservative roots – most clearly demonstrated by Ronald Reagan and become an anti-homosexual rights & pro-abortion Democrat Lites. This has taken decades and the Republicans still hold on to their big-ticket issues with much ferocity.

2) The voting record: the Democrats did not make some shift jump to supporting the Civil Rights Movement or civil rights legislation as evidenced by the voting record. President Kennedy stalled for two years on simply putting his signature on a bill to integrate public housing! While Lyndon Johnson picked up the civil rights issue – he faced significant opposition from those in his own party! Keep in mind, all you who believe that this supposed switch took place in the 1960s, Johnson’s presidency was from 1963-1969.

Democratic Senators Robert Bird and Richard Russell lead harsh opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights bill, going as far as a filibuster. The bill, as verified by the voting record, had huge support from the Republican Party. In fact, had it not been for the Republicans’ support, the 1964 Civil Rights bill could not have passed.

So if you have been lead to believe that Democrats became the cheerleaders for Civil Rights, it’s time to rethink. Check the facts. The Democrats (to their disgrace) have ranged on the scale from utter scorn for civil rights to dragging their feet. They were never the shining light on the hill and joining blacks in their struggle against oppression. I hate to even need to make this point but it must be said: Democrats WERE the struggle that blacks faced.

Sadly, they still are.

Welfare is simply glorified slavery. The agents that ran into black communities in the 1970s, telling women that they had a right to free money, food stamps, housing and healthcare provided they had a child and there was no man in the home systematically decimated the black family – which, until that point, was overcoming the MASSIVE odds against it. Why did the government insist upon forcing it’s ‘help’ on blacks who were actually gaining ground on every area on their own? How is that beneficial? There are no whips but there is oppression.

Do you see the problem here? Things were getting better for the black community until the government chose into "intervene" in their individual lives and families. Suddenly it wasn’t about making sure the group was treated well – it was creating individual dependence on an outside source! Damn the government for their subversive interference!

And which party was it that thought it best to meddle in the black family that was bettering itself by the year?

The Democrats.

Envious...

2009-08-21T10:49:00.000-07:00

I find myself jealous of people who are in pain.

That is bizarre – looking at the above statement all typed out. But it is true. Pain and distress are such infrequent occurrences in my life, that when someone else is actually in pain I feel… envious.

Really, it’s envy of the struggle. I like to fight. At first it was with other people, which didn’t take very much effort. Being a huge pain or a total ass aren’t difficult tasks. But I at some point turned that desire around (after being chided numerous times by Proverbs about who people who like to pick fights are fools) and started fighting myself. Fighting my bad habits and my awful attitude and my insecurity.

And it is working. It’s enjoyable.

As much as I am an outward processor, sometimes (always) it’s really good for me to be in pain – physical or emotional – and not make a scene. Just to sit there and suffer. I get down on occasion but rarely hurt.

I wish sometimes that I could trade places with one of my friends for a day - someone who was in pain. (Is that love? Wanting to hurt in someone’s place? If it’s not, I don’t know what is.) To hurt in their place and let them experience my… relief? Calm? I don’t even know how to explain my life. As much as I would love to be on stormy seas, it seems my existence is relegated to a placid, clear lake. It’s shallow in places, infinitely deep in others and almost never overcast, much less stormy.

Right now the most pain I am in is waiting and to be honest, that’s not hard for me. I am ridiculously content almost all the time. I am actually beginning to enjoy patience.

But I wish I had something to struggle against. I’ve been wondering why my life has been this immense calm for so long. Or perhaps I suffer but I don’t ever view it at such, so it doesn’t bother me?

Just my random thought for the day.

PS - other random thought: I love Indian & Pakistani accents so much.

So Don't

2009-08-11T09:28:00.000-07:00

Preface:
Please understand, I do not typically compare myself to anyone but myself. When I say that I feel proficient at something it is merely because I am better at in than I used to be.
When I am referencing my friend’s statement and then writing a blog about it, I am only using what I read into his words. I have no idea of his present emotional state, nor am I comparing myself to it. I’m simply using a statement to shed some light on who I used to be.
Thanks.

“What a waste of time, energy & emotion.”

I had completed my daily task of getting into a minor spat with someone on Twitter early on Thursday morning. The person went away frustrated, leaving this as their final farewell.

It was rude to my Twitter buddy but I chuckled to myself.

I mean, why invest energy and emotion into a tiff, especially on the internet? What a waste of perfectly good (undisturbed) energy and emotion.

It remains to be seen (at least by me) why anyone would bother. Why don’t you keep your sensational tendencies out, leave your emotions in a safe place and come out to “fight”? It makes more sense than just your mental capacities being involved. Please, for the love of yourself, leave your emotions out of it!

Emotions are highly overrated. In fact in our culture, people live by them entirely. This to me is pathetic.

You have control over your emotions. No one can dredge them up but you. No one can hurt them unless you allow it. Sure stuff can sting. But if it takes more than 60 seconds to get over, you need to reconsider where you place your emotional armor.
The nice thing about emotional armor is that you can build it over time. You don’t have to let your emotions just run around willy-nilly wherever they want (and get trampled on in the process).

Please, for the love of yourself, leave your emotions out of it!

A few weeks ago someone said to me “I like your brother way better than you.” I quickly answered, “I hope so!” He was one of my brother’s best friends. I’d never spent any time with him one on one and don’t know that I ever will. If he didn’t like my brother better than me that would have been… weird.

The funny thing about this incident, the reason I remembered the off-handed statement at all was because I notice how well I’d handled it.

Confession: I was hyper-emotional for the majority of my life.

A few years ago I would have been pretty distressed. I would have thought this person was actually rude and would have been annoyed whenever I saw him.

Confession: I was hyper-emotional for the majority of my life. I had my emotional feelers spread out a mile in every direction. So you can imagine how frequently they got stepped on!

I would say the cruelest things to people but when they would come back at me with an offhanded comment, I would fall to pieces. Literally. I would start crying and ask my mom to tell whomever it was to leave me alone.

My mom reminded me about ten years ago that I consistently made scathing remarks about people’s character and intelligence almost constantly and that if I couldn’t take it than I shouldn’t dish it out.

Thank God for mothers. I was about as aware at that point in my life as a rock at the bottom of a cave. I could have competed with the Matterhorn for density.

But I came around eventually. (Thank goodness.) Now I am the boss and my emotions listen to me. I’m actually to the point where I can and do shut down my emotions when they get to a certain level.

When I have real conversations I get pretty passionate. And I tend to be loud when I’m with my best friends and my family. (When I’m not with them, I’m really quiet. I’m sure you don’t believe me yet, but it is true.) When I’m really excited about stuff I swear. A lot, actually. Even in front of my mother who plugs her eyes and says in her most irritating voice “I don’t like to hear those words”.

Something I have noticed is that I have to keep all my emotional levels really low.
I would guess they have to stay below 20% and if they get close to 30% alarms start going off me to cool down, walk away and reboot, so to speak.

This can all be done in a matter of 60 seconds and doesn’t actually require that I physically walk away. I’m actually getting really good at this control thing… for me.

I wasn’t sure what to make of it when I realized that I grieve for things before they are gone so that I have less grief to wade through when it actually is. Maybe the best description is that my emotions are a flood, but I managed through hard work and some hard lessons to build a dam. And when I know that the dam needs to be released at some point in the near future, I open it a crack and let some of the emotional overage spill out. That way there is less of a back up when I might actually be tempted to upset.

Condolences to my friend who wasted energy and emotion in an epic Twitter battle. I actually had a lot of fun. My heart started to beat faster for about 10 seconds but I think I have a nob to turn that down, too.

So I did.

On Being Born

2009-08-07T09:15:00.000-07:00

I spend a lot of time pondering the concept and process of birth. Not in a super abstract way, either. I like blood and guts. Not much in nature is more bloody and “gutty” than birth.

If only we could remember our time spent in the womb and being flushed out the tubes (as my friend Tyler says) at the end. Or having the roof of our house sliced cleanly in two and fished out. What if we could remember?

In a few hours, although we would have no concept of time, thrust from utter contentment (if our mothers wanted us) into extreme pain and confusion and fear. Having no way to process all this new information. Simply knowing that we were in the dark and that it hurt. No way of knowing when or if it would end. No way of knowing if we’d survive. Or how long we would want to.

We were aware.

What sort of empathetic beings would we be if we could recall all that emotion? I can’t help but think the world might be a better place when we realized we’ve all experienced a similar devastating, horrific beginning.

Doctors have figured out that somehow light gets in the womb. I’m not entirely sure how, but I would guess it has something to do with cell construction and the pervasive nature of light. No darkness has ever been able to stand in the way of light, regardless of how strong. It strikes me as funny though.

They do all these funny tests on babies in the womb. Of course, after the invention of the ultrasound, how fun would it be to see what stimuli reached a tiny human while still in the womb?

Doctors everywhere had a ball – or at least I would have. Watching the ultrasound to see what the baby did if to large pans were banged together, putting the mother in a dark room and then flipping on the lights. Playing music and sticking flashlights on mom’s burgeoning tummy. All to see what the little human would do.
And sure enough, our little heartbeats quickened and we jumped when the pans were slammed together. We blinked! Yes, in the womb! We blink when the light comes on. We shimmied around (or held perfectly still) when music was played. Jumped and tossed and turned when the flashlight moved around the walls.

We were aware.

But it seems like somehow, when we got flushed out the birth canal, all of our memories got flushed as well. Our brains worked perfectly well (possibly better than they do now) but we still cannot recall for the life of us, those tortuous hours or days. I’m claustrophobic just thinking about it.

Some would argue that not being able to consciously recall being born is the grace of God. I highly disagree. I wish I could remember. I’m a very empathic person by nature. If all that pain and suffering that I experienced through the midnight hours and early morning on June 15th and 16th at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Portland were still part of my collective memory, I would be a better person. Or at least I have convinced myself I would be.

Think this through with me, though. You have no sense of time or direction. You have no context through which to judge the sudden shift. There is only one thing you are really aware of: the pain.

So we find ourselves in a dark sea of confusion and hurt. There’s no way of knowing how long it will last or why it happened. You can’t tell up from down.

Isn’t that so much like life? Other than the loneliness that must come along with the process of being squeezed out of a tube and into a bright, new, cold, harsh, awful, joyful world, being born is a lot like life. Thankfully, in life, we get to help carry each other through the new, cold, harsh, shocking, awful, joyful world.

But our 80 years are simply the birth canal: dark, confusing, gross and painful. Some people get ripped out before it’s their time. Others don’t make it at all. A lot of people are tempted to bail, and some of them actually do it. But most of us get to hang out. And be pushed, squeezed, smashed and then for what?

We don’t know what’s coming. As Brooke Fraser says, we’ve heard whispers of it. But we don’t have all the stats. We don’t know how comfortable or painful it will be. Or how easy it will be to adjust. And we hold on to hope like it is the only thing we have.

I am grateful that I don’t have to go through all of this alone. Grateful that when I’m tired or stupid, other people come along and carry me through it. That they yell when I’m about to dive face-first into chaos or foolishness.

Life hurts and it’s not fair. But I am learning how important it is to remember that this is the process of being born and once we’re out this time, we’ll realize it was all worth it.

New Love is... Gross

2009-08-06T10:40:00.000-07:00

I am irked as I sit here and read about this guy, George Sodini, who got so fed up with being alone that he killed a bunch of girls in a gym.

Frustrated mostly because of lies that so many industries in the country constantly spew: life is only worth living if you’re with someone. If you’re “single” you are also “looking”… aren’t you? It’s simply the default.

This doesn’t compute in my head.

I love being single.

It’s sorta selfish, honestly. Ok, blatantly selfish.

One less person to worry about.

Dang. Give me old love any day of the week.

Maybe it’s because I’m a worrier that I like being single. Hilariously, I don’t worry about myself. Not ever. But I tend to always be concerned about whomever I’m with.

Our society glorifies new love. That’s sorta gross to me. New love is… awkward.

You’re figuring out how to not cross some invisible line of personhood or trample someone’s feelings without having any sort of a map or guide to said new love. New love says things that cause you to walk on eggshells all day and does it doesn’t text you back quickly enough.

Old love is rad. It’s comfortable but still challenging. There’s no worrying about how your spouse is going to respond if they are exhausted and stressed about work.

You already know. There’s no reason to be concerned over the in-laws’ awful Christmas party, because you are thoroughly prepared to be embarrassed. There’s already a system in place for how often you have sex, who does the dishes, how often the laundry gets washed. It doesn’t need to be explained why the toilet seat needs to stay down (or why it’s no big deal to drop it).

Dang. Give me old love any day of the week. (Ha. That sounds weird!)

I’m not looking forward to starting a relationship. In fact, I’m downright dreading it. I don’t get awkward – I’m actually the queen of laughing things off – but still… gross!

Sunsets don’t forget to call you the next day.

Plus, new love takes all that work. Looking is hard work.

I am done looking. Finished. I don’t want to deal with it anymore. And plus, I shouldn’t have to. If a guy doesn’t have the balls to ask me on a date, he certainly won’t be able to stand up for me if I’m being disrespected.

Society tells us that new love is exciting. And actually, it is the most exciting thing in our lives (that’s sad) for a lot of people. I’d rather have glimpses of a spectacular sunset while driving my car across the Broadway Bridge than making out. Sunsets don’t forget to call you the next day.

Being single is fantastic. I’m happy with it anyway.

Don’t get me wrong – I love marriage. Please, by all means, get married and stay married to that person until one of you is dead! If I get married, I will love my marriage and take good care of it. And I’ll make mistakes and be stupid and neglectful and selfish.

I’ve become such a big fan of marriage lately that I sort of regret not being married in a way. Not a real regret but an understanding that more and more evidence is being brought forth (shame that we live in an age where we need such evidence) that marriage is good for society, it’s good for the individual’s mental and physical health, it’s optimal for children.

That said, I don’t sincerely believe I will get married. There are plenty of 40 and 50-somethings that say, “oh, hush” when I mention that but it is true. I may be in another relationship or two but I do not truly believe I will get married.

There are a couple of reasons for that. The first and most obvious to me is that I am so content. I’m sure most Christians would chalk that up to the Lord “making me content”, but I’m going to call foul on that. I made myself content, not the Lord. The Lord does not force contentment onto people. (What a backwards concept.) It was my choice and I’m sticking with it.

I’m jazzed that my friends are getting married. And I’m also jazzed that I am single.

The second reason is that there really aren’t a lot of men in the church. This isn’t a bitch. It’s just a fact. It’s a fact that I’m concerned about because I know I’m not the only Christian girl who is 25 or older and not married. I know that my life will be absolute fantastic, married or not. But lots of women believe that marriage is sort of the end-all of their existence. It’s the reason they suck oxygen. And I know a lot of them are going to end up settling.

This isn’t me being bitter. Quite the opposite, in fact. I’m jazzed that my friends are getting married. And I’m also jazzed that I am single. If that changes, fine. If it doesn’t, awesome.

Honestly, my only real motivation for wanting to get married was that I really want to adopt. But I’ve come to terms with not being able to adopt either. (Not that I couldn’t, but I probably wouldn’t. Marriage is optimal for kids, remember?)

It’s very reassuring to know that in the midst of a world that feels like it’s going to fall apart if it isn’t “with” someone, I am perfectly ok with it just being me.

The Split

2009-08-05T11:44:00.000-07:00

“God seems bipolar.”

One of my friends and I were sitting in the car a year or two ago, discussing the nature of God and our personal crises of faith.

I laughed and agreed with him. From where I was sitting, it appeared that it was true. The God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament didn’t seem to be reconcilable.

“It’s like ‘Kill!’ ‘Love!’ ‘Kill!’ ‘Love!’” he went on.

And that was how it seemed to be. Jesus, with his subversive message of love, telling us to ‘turn the other cheek’ is considered a good defense for pacifism. Conversely, Yahweh and the Old Testament are seemingly fraught with alibis for holy war. We look at each other and ask, “So what is it?”

In our current culture, no one has a problem with Christians telling people that Christ’s message was love (while continually failing to define love).

While this is true, it’s about as accurate as calling humanity’s overriding characteristic ‘maternal’. Yes, absolutely God loved us so much he went through great personal sacrifice in order to create a simple process by which we may return to him if we so choose.

I’ve been trying to get excited about the justice of God.

Yet, in all of his Love (which I would argue is indeed the overriding character trait of Yahweh) he is also just. He never calls himself Justice; he calls himself Love. But shame on us for trying to ignore the half of Yahweh that doesn’t jive with popular thinking.

I’m not saying that it is easy. Our society doesn’t take too kindly to any sort of response as to why Yahweh, say, commanded the complete destruction of Ai. Certainly not “because he’s God and he gets to make that call.” (Still, everyone forgets that anyone who wanted to align themselves with Yahweh wouldn't suffer any harm.)

Josh White, the pastor at Door of Hope here in southeast, a few weeks ago, spoke of how we split Christ into “Savior” and “Lord” and then say he is our Savior while refusing to submit to his will. Can Christ be simply our Savior but not our Lord? Can Yahweh be Love but not Justice? I don’t think it works like that.

We emasculate God in the name of easy defense of our faith (or embarrassment by it). But God isn’t really split. He is both. Trying to extract justice from Yahweh is about as worthwhile as trying to extract the Holy Spirit from the Trinity. It cannot be done.

The culture’s understanding of God is that he says over and over and over again that he is Love but if we don’t do exactly what he says he sends us to hell where we burn and suffer forever and ever. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to people. But it makes sense that people think it.

If Christians run around proclaiming, “God is love! God is love! God is love!” and then sheepishly say, when pressed “but if you don’t follow him, he’ll send you to hell”, what is an unbeliever supposed to make of that?

God’s justice was stressed (and implemented) by the Church for hundreds of years. It makes sense that the pendulum would swing in the opposite direction. But just like we do God’s grace a disservice by burning accused witches at the stake, we do God’s holiness a disservice by refusing to acknowledge any part of his character but love.

Let’s be honest – God is love! But he is also just! And yes, he can be both simultaneously.

I’ve been trying to get excited about the justice of God. It’s easy to get excited about love, especially in our culture. But think about it. Every day people ask “why would God send me to hell? I’m a good person.”

“Well, how good is good?” is the logical response.

“I don’t hurt anyone,” is what people typically come back with. But follow that through.

If we got to determine by our own personal standard whether or not we were good, Hilter, Stalin, Mussolini, Vlad Tepes and others would get to say that they were basically good people. That cannot be the standard by which we are judged – simply believing we are good people.

But the Christian faith is just. It says we don’t get to simply self-examine and declare ourselves “good enough”. Regardless of the mess we’ve made or how righteous we’ve been, our salvation still requires Christ.

Something to ponder: can love really be unjust? It is just for a parent to grab their child if she is about to run into a busy street? It’s restrictive, yes, but what would we think if that parent said, “I love my daughter, I let her do whatever she wants”? We’d say the person wasn’t fit to raise children.

But for some reason we see God's justice as, at best annoying, at worst oppressive and cruel. Why don’t we change our perspective on justice instead of simply clinging to one half of him while trying to ignore the parts we don’t like?

My Imagination Is My Escapism

2009-08-04T11:52:00.000-07:00

I have grown to despise most escapism. If there is anything I truly admire in life, it is people who grit their teeth, clench their fists and hold on, despite the pain.

Maybe I respect this because it is not me. I don’t feel like I complain excessively (anyone want to challenge me on that?) and I can catch it almost immediately when I do. My friends go so far as to comment on how fast I catch my complaints. It makes me sorta proud, I’m not going to lie.

People who suffer in silence inspire me. Conversely, there is precious little more enjoyable than a well-articulated tragedy, if accompanied but a gritty resolve and good perspective. I’m not sure how those two aspects of my personality attached themselves to me but they did.

The Lord gives & the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

Job is a perfect example of the former – refusing, even when taunted, to reject Yahweh. “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” My friend Enric is the latter – sitting on a little stage at Insomnia Coffee, causing me to tear up and he recounted how both of his parents were killed in the Rwandan genocide over a decade ago. He lived on the streets of Kigali four six years and still gets emotional when he talks about his mother, who sang to him growing up.

I love to hurt with people. One of the reasons I love to listen to William Fitzsimmons is because he allows me experience his grief when he sings. It’s a beautiful communion: my iPod and me with Billy Fitz and his agony on the other end.
It leaves a bad taste in my mouth when people refuse to acknowledge hurt and suffering. It’s even worse when listening to someone chalk up someone’s bad luck to some spiritual or mental error.

Anguish, it seems to me, is the epitome of the human experience. I sort of doubt that destitute refugees on the back side of the Sahara tend to utter the words “that’s depressing, let’s talk about something else.”

But those in my American generation are some of the greatest escapists the world has ever seen. We can literally go from our own rooms (or homes) to our own cars with our own music and our own climate control to our own offices… and so the day goes. Yet we have the world to whine about.

There are definitely times when I want to whine. When I’m tired or cranky or in pain. And I do. But when I realize that I’m heading down that path and decide that I’m going to tough it out, I always feel better. It’s a mental game, for sure. But it’s better than continuing to whine.

I think I tend to take after mother in this regard. She hates hearing about people’s health problems. So if she were ever having health problems, it wouldn’t ever come up as a topic of conversation with her. I’m the same way – I could be having a terrible day but most people wouldn’t know it.

I secretly seethe (for about .897 seconds) when people tell me they love video games or watching films. That to me is utter escapism and I have absolutely no respect for it. I like to read books, but that doesn’t really count as escapism for me. I can’t focus on a book, regardless of how entertaining, when I’m suffering. It just doesn’t happen.

To be sure, it’s not intentional, but I think my imagination is my ultimate escapism. I don’t use it when I’m really hurting (I don’t think to) but I do use it on occasion. Imagining that I can do some of the things the superheroes in the book I’m writing can do is… fun. And not real.

My writing is actually escapism for me in a lot of ways. Yet it doesn’t dredge up any feelings of guilt because I am being productive.
Maybe my books will end up being escapism for some people. If so, does that make me an enabler? I suppose it does.

So should I stop writing? I’m not sure. This need to get away from reality is so bizarre to me. Our reality is all so trivial compared to most people who have ever lived.

Back in January I had a really tough situation and it all imploded on me in the middle of the week. I was so hurt, but because I’m pretty strict with my emotions, I couldn’t even cry about it.

As soon as the dreaded phone call was over I looked at the clock and thought I will be upset about this for 24 hours. And then I will forget about it. And while I spent the remainder of that night with one of my best friends, watching Star Wars (Empire Strikes Back!) and eating chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, after 24 hours the grieving was done.

Sure, I cried the next morning. For about 15 minutes. But when I got home, I cleaned my house and made dinner. The time for being hurt was over.

Perhaps a more accurate assessment is that I dislike uncontrolled escapism. And maybe, I should take it a bit easier on escapism. After all, it has a pretty tough job.

Your Love is Obvious

2009-08-01T10:57:00.000-07:00

Last night, after a concert with his band, Jon Foreman grabbed his guitar and about 80 of us followed him to the MAX (Portland's lightrail commuter train) stop on 9th Avenue downtown for an acoustic set.

As is normal for guys who spend a lot of time traveling for their music, Jon was a riot. Yet somehow, simultaneously completely humble. It was really fun to be a part of it, even though looking around, my dear friend Ryan Biesemeyer and I were about the oldest people there… and we’re 25.

Jon graciously played about eight or ten songs. I snapped pictures and posted them to twitter.com so that my friends could know what was up.
Towards the end (maybe it was the last song) Jon played one of his songs – Your Love is Strong.

It has become one of my favorite songs, since the first time I heard it. It was last summer sometime – at a Christian Supply store. (I was buying my church band’s album – shut up.) Jon’s voice is so perfectly distinctive, I made a mental note of the lyrics and googled them or something.

It sucked. I wanted to throw my hands in the air and belt out the words at the top of my lungs.

I rode the MAX to work every day starting in November. Your Love is Strong was on of my favorite songs to listen to early in the morning – especially when the train was crossing the Steele Bridge and the sun was creeping up behind Mt. Hood. It always put a huge grin on my face as I prayed the lyrics for my city and myself.
Invade my life invade this broken town.

Unfortunately, I have this tendency to draw a lot of attention to myself. Last night was no different.

I got all cute for drinks at Bartini with Ryan and his girlfriend Lana, but we kept an eye out for Jon’s announcement of where he was going to play. So I’m all dolled up and it’s not like I’m very normal looking for Portland anyway.

But when the end of Your Love is Strong came around, I wanted to throw my hands up in the air and sing. I restrained myself as much as I could, settling for singing along. I didn’t want to distract from the words or from Jon.

It sucked. I wanted to throw my hands in the air and belt out the words at the top of my lungs.

There’s something about knowing everyone is watching you when you are not the star that seems… wrong.

I don’t need more attention. (I don’t doubt Jon would argue the same about himself.) I don’t really want more attention.

One of my favorite things about being in Los Angeles is that no one stares at me. I can walk out of the house or hotel in anything and no one pays any attention at all. This is a nice reprieve from being in my hometown.

I don’t dress any differently for church than I would if I were just going to hang out with my friends, much to the chagrin (and occasional consternation) of my parents.

My brother, sisters and I were raised going to church in our Sunday best. It was annoying. If I could only wear one outfit for the rest of my life, it would be jeans and a dove gray v-neck tee.

As opposed to the super intimate concert in front of The Real Mother Goose, when I’m at church, what I’m wearing doesn’t matter. I’m in love. And my love is obvious.
I don’t really care that I move more than a high schooler at church summer camp. I don’t care that when my church sings When I Think About the Lord, it takes until the third time through the chorus for me to control my tears. I have precious little regard for anyone around me – though I’m usually surrounded by my sisters.

Remember that old David Crowder song, Undignified? That’s me.

And I’ll become even more undignified than this
Some would say it’s foolishness

I probably draw a lot of attention to myself when I worship, regardless. In a church or on the sidewalk downtown or on the train on my way to work. Not intentionally making a scene. I’m just less inhibited.

And honestly, I’m ok with that.

My love is obvious.

On Growing Up - Part 3

2009-07-31T09:04:00.000-07:00

I realized that my new - if completely and utterly depraved - experiences had made me into someone I most certainly was not in my past. And I wasn't sure how to deal with that fact other than to embrace it and move forward. I could not go back. And being someone who is constantly thinking about the future, this was a relief. I didn't really want to go back. I wanted to be new, not a restored antique.

Since I was about 18 or 19, I knew I had lost track of who I was. Maybe this is a normal phenomenon. Maybe not. It doesn't really matter.

All I knew was that I wanted to know who I was again. That was my prayer. From the summer I turned 19. Psalm 23:3 - You restore my soul.

It was my prayer the whole time I was inflicting hell on myself and then casting the blame on everyone around me. It was my prayer on the days that were awesome and the days that I would be upset for seemingly no reason. You restore my soul.

Slowly, I started redrafting my own values, based in Scripture. I learned to that it was wisest to stay as far away from the line as possible. I learned what actions I needed to take in order to live my life according to my values.

Finally, I started to make some headway. It was just a normal Tuesday at work when I realized that my prayer, after five years, had been answered. You restore my soul.
What a relief!

It was at that point that I began to really grow Up. I began to see things with new perspective. The most important thing, I think, was how I started to view my family differently I heard, and still hear, so many people say "I will never do this or that to my children," in regards to the way that their parents have treated them. I have said that more times that I care to count. But it dawned on me one day that I will not keep promises to my children that I cannot keep towards my parents. In all of our youthful "understanding", everyone runs around saying "I never respond in kind if my children treat me poorly", while retaliating on their parents for supposed poor treatment.

My big growing up moment to date has been to treat my parents with all the grace and love and forgiveness I claim I will bestow on my children. Parents are humans - hurt and broken and oftentimes insecure - who make mistakes and love deeply. It is another story for another time, but I like the idea of growing old. In fact, I can't wait to be grandmother-age. I found my first gray on my 24th birthday. I was a little disappointed - my mom found her first gray at 14. I'm still working on making right a host of wrongs carried out by an insular, emotionally-insecure girl who got Fs in making good decisions. Will I be able to set everything straight? Nope. No way.

As arrogant as it may sound, I'm ok with that.

Going back and changing the past is not my job. Making sure that all the decisions I make from here on out are wise decisions is my goal at this point. And that makes me think that I maybe, finally, have grown up.

On Growing Up - Part 2

2009-07-30T17:20:00.000-07:00

I fell apart in Boyfriend's car. Ex-Finacee had done something to trigger the meltdown, but I can't recall what. (This was long before I understood the concept of controlling ones emotions. I knew about it. But knowing and understanding are two completely different animals. But I digress.) I kicked and screamed and cried for close to two hours. I remember saying "I want to melt into a puddle and just stop existing" or something similar. It was a dark day for me.

The good new was that this event turned into my kick-start to getting better. To getting help. I started seeing a counselor. I enrolled in school. I moved out of my boyfriend's house. I met with my pastor. I started going to church. I tried to become the Victoria I was before my decision-making paradigm got lost.
That, obviously, was a less than successful venture; becoming the girl I used to be. I tried to be excited about church. I tried to be a Republican. I tried to be a Christian. All these attempts failed.

Don't get me wrong; it was worthwhile for what it was. I lived by myself. I learned to embrace silence. To not be afraid of my own thoughts. To not be afraid of being alone. To cry myself to sleep when I was hurt and broken while still holding on to the hope that mercy would be new in the morning. These were all invaluable lessons.

Problem: I was never a very good Christian. I was never a very good daughter. I made stupid choices just like the rest of the world, only with less frequency. I wanted to be in a relationship. I wanted to have friends again. (Don't get my wrong. My little handful of friends who didn't go into auto-condemn mode are the most beautiful, altruistic, caring people I know on this planet. I love them.)

But I made new friends. Lots of them, actually. I kept track through October and averaged seven new people a month that I could call up to hang out with during 2008. It was awesome.

I tried - in vain - to get myself in another relationship. Thankfully, that endeavor ended with me trying to implement a few good rules: no kissing boys unless I am dating them. No spending the night with guys. (Which, yes, I have broken. Fail. Anyway.) And my quest was mostly put to an end thanks to Donna Lasit, my pastor, who said "no way" (among other things like "work on yourself and your relationship with the Lord".)

Some thing didn't change, though. I continued to be a fool of a Christian, essentially fighting to figure out how Grace was going to work itself back into my new life. I realized through invaluable conversation with new and renewed friends that I couldn't go back to being the semi-innocent girl I had been before I turned into a selfish, self-serving, hedonistic, full-blown heathen.

It just wasn't going to happen.

On Growing Up - Part 1

2009-07-29T17:14:00.000-07:00

I suppose growing up is almost completely relative. But honestly, I've never met the idea with dread.

Three years ago, when I was 22, I got involved with a coworker. By coworker, I mean a then 36-year-old, married-with-two-kids coworker. An affair/fornication seemed like a very grown up thing to do in my 22- year-old head. (To be 100% honest, I didn't think about it. You can't think rationally and make those types of decisions.)

There was an overlap where my fiancée at the time was also involved. I felt bad enough about the overlap that I ended the fiasco with the fiancée, albeit two days too late. I count that as the only wise decision I made from the age of 21 to 23.

When my parents found out about coworker from clearly-not-bitter-ex-fiancée, they went ballistic - as parents should. They laid down the law on my sorry self. I was none to pleased with this development, so I made an even better decision: moving in with my brand-new boyfriend.

Now, naturally, I felt as though my family sided with my ex. This shook me up and left me in as much emotional distress as both being engaged to someone who was completely not right for me and being involved with someone who had made a sacred covenant with another human being combined. I felt rejected. What's the obvious answer to an emotional unstable person who feels rejected? Reject back! Perfect!

It was a fantastic plan that I carried out with such gusto that I only saw my family, who lived about 20 miles from me about a half dozen times a year. My parents rejected my new boyfriend and told me that they wouldn't meet him until I'd been with him for a year. Since my boyfriend was actually on my team (or was it Team Keep Sleeping With Victoria? I'm not sure) my response was genius: "Fine, I'll stay with him for a year, just to make you eat your words. I did it, too. I stayed with Boyfriend (who did really love me, even if he didn't know how to treat me very well) for over a year.

But after a year rolled around, I found myself in yet another situation where being emotionally unstable is just awesome: another guy liked me. So I started hanging out with Other Guy... frequently.
Boyfriend wasn't interested in going to events or hanging out with my friends and me most of the time, but Other Guy needed to get out. It worked.

For the second time in about 12 months, I was cheating. It was highly emotional - hardly physical. But it was still being unfaithful.

Natural reaction? Have a meltdown!

I was still dealing with the consequences of ever having been with Ex- Fiancée, still having to deal with my parents, still feeling rejected and unsupported by my family and a few of my friends. I had almost completely bailed on church (what is the point of going to church when the pastor is telling you to not be living with your significant other?), I had bailed on my family, I had bailed on most of my friends. I was a professional ditcher, part-timing as a disappointment. It finally all hit me like a ton of bricks: I. Need. Help.

Death with Dignity - 10 Years Later

2008-03-21T08:55:00.000-07:00

So my family is firmly against the Death with Dignity act that Oregon passed 10 years ago. I clearly was against it growing up as well. The Reader's Digest did a long story about Dr. Jack Kevorkian which included pictures of his artwork. Granted, it really made you wonder what was going on inside that man's head.

However as I've grown older and done more research I find I'm completely for the practice and extremely dislike that its critics refer to it as Assisted Suicide. Here's why:

The AMA (American Medical Association) clearly defines the humane way of letting a patient die. Currently that standard is to starve the patient to death. I personally have not ever witnessed someone starving to death but I do believe my friends in the medical field when they say it is not an enjoyable experience. A terminally ill patient's organs simply begin to turn into jelly inside of them. What's more, being in a hospital you are mere feet away from water and food but you do not have access it.

I believe after watching the Terri Schiavo case in Florida that most conservatives want it both ways. If their had been a Death with Dignity law passed in that state, her passing would have been much, much easier. The reason that case turned out the way it did was because of uninformed people's opinions on the matter without doing the research. If most people in this country knew of the AMA's standard, I dare say more states would begin to adopt Oregon's law as their own.

I will not deny that at first glance, this is an apparently a move away from our standards in this country. And most people are shocked and mortified at the thought of a doctor taking their patient's life.

There is also the aspect of truly suicidal patients and their unique predicament is not currently addressed by Oregon law to my knowledge. That issue absolutely needs to be addressed by the legislature, and quickly.

To systematically approve death by starvation as the "most humane" way to let someone die is utterly asinine. If you believe that, perhaps you should try it and then get back to me on how it went. I'll be waiting for you. In Oregon of course. If I wind up terminally ill and living elsewhere I'd move back in a heartbeat!

At times I'm convinced that I am a fatalist who is simply in denial about it. Death isn't scary to me. As long as I'm not burned at the stake or sealed in a barrel and thrown in the ocean, I think I'm ok. My preference would be to in a plane that is shot down somewhere over Africa because some government thinks I should let its citizens starve to death. And again, we're back to starvation...

Checking in...

2007-07-01T14:16:00.001-07:00

Here I am.

Checking out.

vjw.