Republican's Scheme to Bribe Americans

Question: With faltering congressional and presidential approval ratings, a White House cabinet stocked full of Ex-Oil Executives, record profits for Oil Companies, a spike in gas prices, and the 2006 Midterm elections looming... what's a Republican to do?

Answer: Give Americans a $100 "Gas Rebate".

So where is the $100 rebate coming from? Are we taking the money from the Oil Companies' windfall profits?

Nope, it'll come from our TAX Money (or from our deficit, which means they're borrowing the rebate now and our TAX money will be used to pay it back later, with interest.)

I can't help but think of bread and circuses here, folks. People are upset with our Republican "leadership", so instead of addressing the problem (which they can't because they're in bed with the oil companies), they just throw around some Benjamins as a sort of "hush money" or bribe.

But there's a catch (isn't there always)... the proposal also contains a provision to open up ANWR for oil drilling, cause senior Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska (yes, the same Ted Stevens building the alaskan Bridge to Nowhere, and the the same one who brought the Oil Executives to testify then refused to have them sworn in to testify) has a boner for ANWR oil.

So, this is the "solution" the Republican Senate proposes to alleviate our energy crisis: We know you need gas and we've let the price at the pump get out of control, so let us drill in ANWR, and we'll give you $100 of your own tax money as a "rebate". And we'll tie this proposal as an amendment to an emergency spending measure that funds the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina rebuilding, that way if the Democrats vote against it, they don't support our troops and they're "dragging their feet" to help out the Katrina victims.

Tell them we don't need their bribe, and let's send this group of incompetent miscreants packing in November.

From the UT Daily Message System

A friend of mine pointed out this message on our University of Toledo Daily Message Center

3). Praise and Worship Night

Praise & Worship Night

April 25th

7:00 p.m.

Come out for a free concert

-Refreshments will be served

-Please bring canned goods for donations to Katrina victims

-Come Praise the Lord for how good he is!!!!!

...I love the juxtaposition of the last two lines in a sort of cynical way. I know what they mean, but their wording could be better...

You know it's bad when....

...Fox News' Opinion Dynamics Poll puts Bush's approval rating at 33%.

With the poll pegging Bush's disapproval rating at 57%, that's a whopping 44% difference between the two, and very reminiscent of Nixon.

...of course, the spin is for the GOP will be to dump their lame duck president and distance themselves from his political troubles just in time for the 2006 elections and the 2008 Presidential Race.

Eat the Damn Apple!

My tolerance for Churchianity continues to wane. My church, I fear, has become an institution more concerned with its own continued existence rather than follow the mission that bore its creation. Centuries of order, rules, and standards set to most effieciently do God's work have been perverted into a cumbersome system that has lost its way. Rules are to be obeyed, even when unjust, over the extraordinary circumstances that the call of the Holy Spirit calls just. The words of Jesus the Son are lost in the cacophony of theological psychobabble of the "church leaders". What is simple is made complex. What was straightforward in the Gospels is bent and twisted to accomodate the wills of men over the ages. Just War. Love with conditions. Exclusivity in God's Kingdom. Fractured denomiations out of communion when all of them bless the bread and wine in God's name. How is it we humans can make such work out of something practically given to us?

God has given us an apple to spiritually nourish us, and instead of eating it we investigate it for worms, guess it's size, its species, even run DNA tests so we can determine what tree the apple came from. And while we meet and confer in commitee and "take it all in", that apple rots before our very eyes.

Why can't we just eat the damn apple?!

After attending a Vestry meeting today we talked about meeting with our bishop. This is something I dread because I can't think of anything he can do or say that will make me feel much differently about him. Some think I hate him, yet I don't. I just see him as another person. His position as bishop doesn't mean anything to the Baptist in me. Just another fancy title. I fear the problem is that he sees his title as important. That somehow in the grand cosmic scale of things this makes what he says and believes more important in an antiquated patriarchal way. Not that there aren't great spiritual leaders in the world. He just isn't one of them. Anymore, this bishops seems more to represent the CEO of subsidiary nonprofit than the role of a Shepherd for God. Maybe it's because that in this day and age his position is spread so thin that it takes a bishop 2-3 years to visit each church in their diocese, that their jobs are less and less to be shepherds than it is to shuffle paperwork, make "clerical" decisions for the doicese and the other type of day-to-day operations you'd expect more from a business than a church.
I haven't had the chance yet to sit with him face to face, so I don't know if I'm angry with him or with the system in which he is so ingrained.

Some on the vestry told me I should learn to live with it, that this is the way things are. I can't help but believe that we should never be satisfied with how they are and should demand change in the direction towards God. While we squabble on who can and cannot bless the bread and wine, who can and cannot become bishops, or the injustice and twisted theology of Churchianity, I, as R+ once put, fell my inner prophet.

That led me to turn to Isaiah, one of the big prophets. I wanted to read what he was saying. I started at the beginning, and this passage just seems to resonate with me right now.

Isaiah 1 (from The Message//Remix)

11"Why this frenzy of sacrifices?"

GOD's asking.

"Don't you think I've had my fill of burnt sacrifices,

rams and plump grain-fed calves?

Don't you think I've had my fill

of blood from bulls, lambs, and goats?

12When you come before me,

who ever gave you the idea of acting like this,

Running here and there, doing this and that--

all this sheer commotion in the place provided for worship?

13"Quit your worship charades.

I can't stand your trivial religious games:

Monthly conferences, weekly Sabbaths, special meetings--

meetings, meetings, meetings--I can't stand one more!

14Meetings for this, meetings for that. I hate them!

You've worn me out!

I'm sick of your religion, religion, religion,

while you go right on sinning.

15When you put on your next prayer-performance,

I'll be looking the other way.

No matter how long or loud or often you pray,

I'll not be listening.

And do you know why? Because you've been tearing

people to pieces, and your hands are bloody.

Are we just going through the motions of playing 'church'? Saying the right words at the right times like that somehow makes a difference? Perpetuating an institution for the sake of perpetuating the institution? More concerned about the houses men built than for God's house until we can't tell which is which? While I can see the institution's shortcomings, what about my own? At least those I can control. Still, I want my church to become something better. Likewise, I hope that I will become better myself, because I'd be a liar if I said I'm not the same.

I think I need to take another bite of that apple.

Atonement theology schmeology

Recently during our choir rehearsals we have been mentioning the amount of atonement theology found in our musical selections, especially this time of year. Atonement theology, basically, is the notion that Christ died on the cross to pay a ransom for the sin of mankind, and only through this sacrifice could we find our salvation. While some hold this belief, there are many who do not. And I am one of those that reject atonement theology.

Simply put, I cannot imagine a world where God demands blood to atone for the very shortcomings he created us to have.

Palm Sunday I was absent from our Sunday service to visit family. Yet my reason for absence was twofold. At the end of the Palm Sunday service comes the veneration of the cross. A cross is brought into the nave and it is venerated. That's fine and all for those who see that cross as a symbol of salvation, but for me all I see is a representation of the device used to murder.

As we end Maunday Thursday and head into "Good" Friday, I found myself wondering why I feel the significance of it? The agony in the garden, the crucification, etc. if I don't ascribe to atonement theology? As I stood through the reading of Christ in Gethsemane in a darkened nave underneath this huge, crude wooden cross, I chewed on what ineffible thing it was that gave this story importance.

Throughout my life I have dreamed of something better. You could say it's the optimist in me, but I'm sure I'm not the only one with that trait. Ideal job, ideal home, ideal partner, ideal church, ideal club, ideal blah blah blah. But they are just ideas, not reality. We humans aspire to make our dreams real. To form that little utopia. Sometimes we even stumble upon something that seems close enough to ideal. A club, a partner, a church. Yet what we see happen over and over again is our attempt to make our dreams real ran afoul. As Yeats wrote, "things fall apart". Nothing we make is permanent. Eventually this 'good thing' we've found will end. We will ourselves change and lose interest in what we once treasured, our vision of utopia will be hijacked and ran aground by others with different visions, our treasures are ransacked by greed and envy, and eventually all we have of our great big plans are dust.

Jesus had a great vision of the Kingdom of God. A new society, a new way to relate to one another, a new set of values based in spirit rather than material. And what happened when he worked to make it a reality?

They washed their hands of him. They betrayed him. They denied him. They stole from him. They conspired against him.

And then they killed him.

As a Gen X'er, I find this to be in tune with the notion that our generation doesn't trust anything. It's not quite true, we trust very few things, butwe just have given up on institutions and we are a bit fatalistic that nothing good ever lasts. How many X'ers come from broken homes, or a one driven nearly into poverty by Reaganomics, or attended a deteriorating public school? How many of us have emerged from our youthful innocence to face a world where our parents' generation is borrowing away our future, housing prices so high we may never own a home, and to be the first American generation not to do better than our parents?

Of course, the problem here is that He wouldn't stay dead. That kinda makes your message hard to kill...

I wish I was more articulate than a 2am rambling, but I've found a rather eloquent paragraph from Sarah Hinlicky's article Talking to Generation X over at First Things. I wish I had found the link earlier (have I mentioned how much I love google?)

Mostly, though, turn us towards God hanging on the cross. That is what the world does to the holy. Where the cities of God and Man intersect, there is a crucifixion. The best–laid plans are swept aside; the blueprints for the perfect society are divided among the spoilers. We recognize this world: ripped from the start by our parents' divorces, spoiled by our own bad choices, threatened by war and poverty, pain and meaninglessness. Ours is a world where inconvenient lives are aborted and inconvenient loves are abandoned. We know all too well that we, too, would betray the only one who could save us.

Read the whole article. It's really good, and almost makes the same points I'm making, if not more articulately.

Doing the Happy Dance

Today, after 3 years of research and 2 years of writing (okay, 6 months of writing and 18 months of edits), my research paper has finally been submitted to a journal for publication.

That's not to say that they still won't reject it, but I'm still doing the happy dance because it is done.

One thing I know about myself is that my 'shadow side' likes to start a project, get about 90% of the way done, and then abandon it, never to finish. That's a part of myself I don't like, so today's submission for me is a celebration, a triumph, so to speak, over that part of me that tends to leave things undone.

Yay!!!!

...now to do the dishes. [sigh]

I'm a what?

Great. Now, can anyone tell me what a Mandarin is (other than an orange, a language or a collar)?

I'm a Mandarin!

You're an intellectual, and you've worked hard to get where you are now. You're a strong believer in education, and you think many of the world's problems could be solved if people were more informed and more rational. You have no tolerance for sloppy or lazy thinking. It frustrates you when people who are ignorant or dishonest rise to positions of power. You believe that people can make a difference in the world, and you're determined to try.

Talent: 46%
Lifer: 31%
Mandarin: 62%

Take the Talent, Lifer, or Mandarin quiz.

Would you use this service?

Today I just listened to one of our grad students give his thesis defense on the viability of a TARTA (toledo area regional transit authority) shuttle bus to the airport. Unsurprisingly, his findings, based on modeling, statistics, and ridership of the pilot program showed it to be a failure. His findings concluded that the Toledo Express Airport does not provide enough passenger flights to make the route viable.

Everyone here in Toledo flies out of Detroit Metro (DTW). It's an hour away and offers direct flights all over the world. The airport is also one of the world's biggest. Little Toledo Express can't match it in service, and most flights taken out of Toledo Express just put you on a small plane heading to Detroit for a transfer that takes a few hours (a wasteful option since you can drive yourself there in one hour).

So what's the down side to flying out of Detroit for the average Toledoan? Parking.

Unless you can have a friend drop you off at the terminal, you're going to have to park your car there for the duration of the trip, which can get rather expensive. Plus, there's the 100 mile round trip to consider. For a car with 20mpg highway and $2.75/gallon, that's $13.75 in the fuel alone.

More Toledoans fly out of Detroit than Toledo because it makes more sense. The fares zre cheaper and it takes less time out of our day. So, as our department chair asked the grad student, why doesn't TARTA offer a service to Detriot?

The answer, of course, is politics. the Toledo Port Authority would balk at one of their entities servicing a rival airport in lieu of their precious Toledo Express. So, TARTA will, for political reasons, never provide the service.

So, the next question he presented to the grad student was, instead of the Airport shuttle bus going to Toledo Express Airport winding around through the Central Business District to the commercial districts and eventually to the airport, why not have a huge free parking lot where Toledoans could park their car, get on the bus, and have non-stop service to Toledo Express?

The answer why TARTA doesn't consider this is, once aagain, politics. TARTA has promised the business and commercial community that it would not provide free long-term parking for its riders, especially since this would hurt the CBD parking businesses. Thus, the idea of cutting down transit time with a direct line rather than curbside stops is also out of the question.

So, if we can't depend on TARTA, a publically-funded transit entity to provide services where demand lies, what about the private sector?

Yep, that's right. A lefty-liberal progressive like me said private sector.

Think about it:

A private business senses a need for a direct transit shuttle to the Detroit Metro Airport. The potential riders would be locals heading out on a trip. Odds are, if they can afford to take the trip, then they can afford personal transportation. Now, how can we make using our shuttle service a more enticing option for these people compared to them driving there themselves? Answer: money and time.
If the fuel cost alone is $13.75 per vehicle and the time is one hour of driving, and at least $7 to park the car and have a friend drive it home, then a $10 ticket one-way to the airport taking about 1 hour 15 minutes doesn't seem that bad...

...especially when the service offers free, long term parking.

Toledo is right in the center of the rust belt. We used to be a much bigger city. Now where there were once buildings and houses there are vacant lots and parking lots. If there is one thing Toledo doesn't lack, it is available unused land.

Imagine if you would:

On the edge of the city lies a derelict shopping center (Toledo has four locations to choose from here). Let's go with Southwyck Shopping Center in this example. A private entity could easily buy up one of them and utilize the parking spaces for long term parking. They would run a shuttle service, let's call it the blue-line, from Southwyck to Detriot Metro Airport for $10. The shuttle leaves every 2 hours. The parking lot is monitored by security, fenced in, and safe. Also, the Southwyck Shopping Center is reconfigured to not only offer shopping, but also car rentals, food, and a shortbus to the nearby hotels on Reynolds.

Would you use this service? Could it make money?