Survey Number 2: Presidential Candidates

Question: Which of the following issues is the most important when considering a presidential candidate?

Total number of answers: 8

Views on Abortion - 0 (0%)
Views on Fiscal Policy - 2 (25%)
Views on National Security - 1 (12%)
Views on Social Issues - 3 (37%)
Other - 2 (25%)

A new question coming soon!

First Survey Results

My first web poll has ended, and I'm pleased that I had so many people take the time to vote. The results:

Question: Which of these religious writers has had the greatest impact on you?
Total number of answers: 12
Breakdown: C. S. Lewis - 3 votes (25%)
G. K. Chesterton - 0 votes (0%)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer - 0 votes (0%)
Karl Barth - 0 votes (0%)
Other - 9 votes (75%)

New survey to be posted soon!

Beauty Pageant Moments

Recently, we all saw the incident with the young lady (from South Carolina, I believe) who during the interview portion of a beauty pageant gave a rambling answer about Iraq and maps that had nothing to do with the original question. As bad as that is, I just ran across something from a pageant that has to be from the early- to mid-1980s that should make the young lady from SC feel a bit better. Wonder how well it goes over when THIS video gets dragged out at the family reunions?



Oh, heck -- I can't put that up and not give you the opportunity to watch the video of the event from earlier this year.....

A Big Day on the Horizon

One of my heroes is coming to Washington on November 13, and when I received the mailer last week I knew that there was no way we were going to miss it. Yes, I had to rearrange our travel schedule back into D.C. that day (A. and I will be in the Big Apple for a few days prior), and we'll have to go straight from the train station to the National Cathedral, but it's a small price to pay (and as far as Amtrak was concerned, there was no price to pay for changing our arrangements).

There aren't many chances that people get to meet and listen to Desmond Tutu; for me, this particular Tuesday evening in November is one of those times. A powerful voice speaking on a powerful topic ("The Spirituality of Reconciliation"), and -- God willing -- A. and will be there with hundreds of other admirers of a man I believe to be one of the greatest of the last century, if not all of history.

If you're in the D.C. area and would like to learn more, you can go here.

A New Addition to the Blog's "Interactivity"

As a way of making my blog even more interactive (aside from the comments which so many of you kindly leave in response to my posts), I've now added a weekly poll question in the sidebar. The first one has now been added, and it's my intent to leave the questions up for a week at a time before posting the results on this side of things. Hope you'll all take time to participate each week (keeping in mind that the list of answers I'm providing is by no means exhaustive).

A Little Bit of Faith and a Little Bit of Politics...

...but not together. There are two things I wanted to touch on briefly here.

The first concerns the ongoing legal difficulties with the Catholic Archdiocese of Southern California, which has agreed to pay the victims of sexual abuse by priests a total of $660 million. In yesterday's Washington Post, there was an article on page A-3 talking about one of the steps the archdiocese is taking in order to help pay those massive costs: evicting nuns and selling their property. In the piece, entitled "Nuns' Evictions Pose Perception Problem for Catholic Church," staff writer Karl Vick writes:

"Here in Santa Barbara, the sins of the fathers are being visited on the Sisters of Bethany. The three nuns living in a modest building on Nopal Street received an eviction notice last month ordering them to be out by Dec. 31. Earlier 'would be acceptable as well,' the letter said.

"Among those being forced to move is Sister Angela Escalera, 69, who, diabetic and able to get around only with a walker, had hoped to live out her days in the Santa Barbara convent. 'This is how the archdiocese is going about getting the money to pay off the victims,' said her younger sister, Rosemary Escalera Gutierrez, 64, a former nun in the order."

Vick went on to say that Gutierrez was having to speak on behalf of her sister because the church had "slapped a gag order on the nuns."

I haven't been able to find a copy of the complete letter, but needless to say this gives me cause for concern (even though I'm not Catholic). I'm sure there are folks in the archdiocese who are saddened that they are having to "rob Peter to pay Paul," but I would like to think that church officials would have done a better job of trying to better explain this decision. And where are the sisters supposed to go? I didn't see a single mention in the article of trying to assist the three nuns in finding new housing; are they trying to demonstrate that the sisters are expendable -- thanks for your service, now move along? I think that question was partially answered by another former member of the order: "These nuns are precious to us, but there are priests living in fabulous-looking little houses by themselves. You don't see them getting kicked out."

You can read the complete article here.

-------------------------

On the political side, today I attended a conference hosted by Americans for Prosperity, an organization that fights for greater transparency in the appropriations process, the elimination of earmarks and wasteful spending, smaller government -- in essence, conservative values that the Republican Party seems to be abandoning. All of the candidates running for president from both parties were invited; none of the Democrats accepted, while Giuliani, Romney, Paul, Brownback, Thompson, Huckabee, and McCain were all scheduled to speak at various points during the two-day event.

A coworker and I attended the morning session today and heard Giuliani, Huckabee, and several others speak. A few quick thoughts:

• I liked Giuliani's talk, which ran right around half-an-hour and was focused purely on economic themes. However, it didn't have that assertiveness that a lot of people associate with him in the context of his 9/11 days (which he actually left out of his remarks). He's still a contender for my vote, but I'll need to see a little more passion.
  
  
• Huckabee gave what I thought was the best set of comments (although he was only allowed 7 minutes, as opposed to the larger blocks of time set aside for Giuliani, Thompson, McCain, and Romney), and he spoke without once referring to any written remarks. Having met him twice over the years and having had a chance to chat with him, I think he would make an outstanding nominee -- but he's got huge hurdles in the way of recognition and fundraising that he'll need to overcome.
  
  
• I didn't catch much of Ron Paul's speech, but he and Brownback (like Huckabee) were only given about five minutes to address the crowd. Paul's strict "overbudget-busting" philosophy and remarks fired up what was already a pro-Ron crowd, but I thought the most amusing part was what I have referred to after the fact as his "Oscar moment." In the Oscars, when an award recipient goes over their allotted time, the orchestra starts up and plays them off the stage whether they're finished or not. About five minutes in, the taped music being used throughout the morning started up, and I have expected to see a lovely woman in a long gown come out on stage to escort him off. Paul, however, just talked that much louder -- much to the delight of the crowd -- and eventually was able to finish without musical accompaniment.

Unfortunately, Thompson's schedule was completely changed, and I had to leave over an hour before he ended up taking the stage -- and wasn't able to hear his remarks. It was a fun morning, and certainly gives me a lot more to think about in the coming months (all the time maintaining a certain realistic attitude that -- while I'd like to see us retake the House and Senate and keep the White House -- it's going to be a big swing in the other direction next year).

James Carville, however, in an interview with Politico (a fairly-new D.C. political newspaper), basically said that a lot can happen, and gave a pretty frank assessment of how things can change. Among his statements were these two quotes which I have to admit I enjoyed reading, even if only for a moment:

“We are a little bit of a shellshocked political party. We somehow or another always figure out a way to blow it,” Democratic strategist James Carville said. “Democrats have to talk their way out of winning.” -- and -- “Republicans have just gotten very good at this,” Carville said of presidential politics. “Somehow or another, in the last three elections, they’ve tended to close a little better than we have. No. 3 is that they have a more disciplined and effective echo chamber.”

Time will tell -- although with the nominee for both parties being chosen by mid-February (if things play out like many think they well), things will be here before we know it.

Happy Birthday to the King of the Jazz Age

I was scrolling through my e-mails this morning and ran across my daily literary message, The Writer's Almanac, produced by the same folks who put together "A Prairie Home Companion." It's a really interest daily posting of famous dates in literary history, typically the birthdates of world famous writers.

Today is the 111th birthday of F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of my top five favorite authors of all time. If you've never read any of his work, I highly recommend you do; I was first introduced to Fitzgerald when I read The Great Gatsby during my senior year in high school, and I haven't turned back. I've been particularly drawn to his short stories, including The Pat Hobby Stories, and I've tried to tackle several of his novels over the years. Ultimately, I'd like to finish all of them -- but his books are definitely not things that you should rush through. They should be savored and enjoyed slowly, like a good bourbon -- and the more times you go back and revisit them, the more you're going to find and the more you're going to carry away with you.

Equally as interesting as the tragedy found in many of Fitzgerald's stories, however, is the tragedy of his life. Even now, it's heartbreaking to read about how his life turned out, and how he spent his final years not as the celebrated novelist of the Jazz Age, but rather as a struggling screenwriter in Hollywood. And even after his death in 1940, the tragedy didn't end; when he was brought back to Rockville, Maryland, for burial, the Catholic Church refused to allow him to be buried in his family's plot in their churchyard because of the fact he had fallen away from the church over the course of his life. Instead, he was buried in the old Rockville Union Cemetery, and it wasn't until long after his death that the church changed its mind and allowed for Scott and Zelda to be reinterred in the St. Mary's churchyard (shown here and below).

I wasn't even aware that Fitzgerald had a connection to the area until a few years ago, and now from time I like to make the drive up to Rockville with a copy of one of his books and sit in the churchyard for a while. The photo at the top was taken on one of my first visits, and it's still one of my favorite sites to visit in this area. Had the Washington Post not run their little day-trip column back in 2003 that included the Fitzgerald family plot, I wonder just how many people would have known that hidden in their midst was a small marker to one of the largest personalities in American literary history?

So happy birthday, Scott. Break out the champagne, turn on the old Victrola, grab one of his novels, and throw yourself headlong into a time that -- even 80 years later -- still brings to mind thoughts of Long Island parties, New York dance halls, and people who celebrated the moment and left tomorrow for another time.

An Evening with Alan Greenspan

* At the outset, let me give proper credit for this photograph -- it was taken by a staff photographer for the Daily Colonial, the school newspaper for George Washington University in Washington. I hadn't realized in advance that cameras were allowed (I would have had mine with me, were that the case), and the two pictures I took with my camera phone were absolutely horrid.

So here it was, 7:00 on a Wednesday evening, and I was doing something I never would have expected myself to do: attending a talk given by an economist, moderated by another economist. Of course, Alan Greenspan is no normal economist; he is the face of the fiscal successes and pitfalls this country has experienced for nearly half my life. I don't think that under normal circumstances I would have even considered attending this event, but the sheer volume of commentary elicited by the release of Greenspan's new book, The Age of Turbulence, gave me a lot of incentive to get a ticket a few days ago and crowd into the Lisner Auditorium at GWU (along with what appeared to be quite a few hundred other people who ranged from Administration and government officials to economics students and the just generally curious).

For someone who didn't pay much attention during his one college course in macroeconomics (doing enough to get a B in the class), the Greenspan event was half interesting to me -- the half where he discussed his life, career, and the presidents and other high-profile officials with whom he has interacted during his life. The moderator, Daniel Yergin (Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power, was much more interested (for obvious reasons) in Greenspan's thoughts on various aspects of American economic policies of the past 20 years and on the current fiscal situation, but he focused so much on this that he neglected to ask (with one exception) any of the questions submitted by the audience. In fact, to be such a "numbers guy," Yergin isn't good at telling time -- he said at the outset that he was going to discuss some background with Greenspan for 25 minutes (he ran for an hour) and then move to audience questions (which he didn't reach until he thought there were 15 minutes left in the discussion -- and then ran on for another 45 without asking them). Of course, when Yergin is commanding $40,000 in fees per appearance (according to his entry on Wikipedia), you can do whatever you want. As an aside, when you combine Greenspan's fee to Yergin's, you can see how much the sponsors put out to bring this event together.

Greenspan is definitely an economist's economist -- someone who said he spent his spare time as a 17-year saxophonist in a big band reading economics books, and who has his morning coffee while reading economic forecasts and global production reports -- and he definitely got more into the conversation when discussing interest rate changes and production numbers. I found his discussion of the presidents with whom he has worked over the years interesting, as well as his background and the brief amount of time he spent discussing his friendship with Ayn Rand. He also held to his longstanding view that he will not comment on current Federal Reserve policy -- and each time Yergin asked him a question about Bernanke and recent moves, Greenspan would smile and say, "No."

I was intrigued to hear what he had to say about the comment he made that the current war in Iraq was "a war about oil." That topic did come up, and the statement makes more sense when put in the context he gave. I tried to reconstruct his answer here (which I've shared on a friend's blog and on a message board to which I belong): He fully agreed that removing Hussein from power was the right thing to do, and that it was in fact all about oil. However, it's not about our control of the oil; for many years, Greenspan saw everything that Hussein was doing as a way of consolidating power and so that, ultimately, he would be in a position to make a grab for control of the entire Middle Eastern oil supply. Had that taken place, Greenspan said that oil could have easily gone to $150 or $160 per barrel, which would have had devastating consequences on the global economy. Removing Hussein was the only way to alleviate that economic concern, and so his thought that "it was all about oil" was from a global perspective. As far as the aftermath of the invasion and removal of Hussein, however, he's got big problems with the way the Administration has managed things.

All in all, it was an interesting and entertaining evening; after leaving, I even stood with a small crowd of people outside the auditorium and watched as he signed a few books and posed for photos with some overly-enthusiastic (and nattily dressed) students who looked like they were fresh out of high school and acted like Greenspan was their god. I'm glad I went, and look forward to reading his book (a signed copy of which came with the purchase of my ticket).

If anyone is interested in seeing this appearance, C-Span 2 will be running it over the next few days, and C-Span will be posting the video on their website as well. You can check it out here.

Football Season (Real and Imagined) is Underway!

Football season is finally here, and my Cowboys got things started off right with a 45-35 win over the Giants. Granted, the defense gave up more points than I would have liked, but a win is a win -- and the offense was clicking!

Also, week one of fantasy season is on the books (almost; I have a few players playing in the 49ers-Cardinals game right now), and the record may be 1-1 between my two leagues by the end of it. I'm still waiting to see how Dave and We Are the Night do before I can declare victory (or defeat).

Finally, kudos to Julie and her team, Footsies -- her first ever fantasy game, and she pulled off the victory. That, and her Bengals held off the Ravens -- a pretty good weekend for the rookie coach.

I Feel Like I'm Being Watched

This sounds like an odd title, but after reading this you'll understand what I mean. For quite some time, I have been the one in our family to handle the bookkeeping -- paying the monthly bills, writing the checks, and reconciling the accounts. I'm so careful about it that I will sometimes check our accounts two or three times a week just to make sure things are in line.

So, imagine my surprise when I opened one account this week and saw a weird charge for less than $5. It didn't ring a bell, but at first I didn't panic; lots of times, if we stop at a service station to pick up a snack during a drive, it shows up on the account with an unusual title. However, having just been the victim of credit card fraud earlier this week (different account) and earlier this year (another account), I got really nervous and immediately jumped on the phone with my bank.

After about an hour on the phone with them last night, along with the company to whom payment had been made, it turned out that yes, in fact, I had been frauded. And when I opened the account this morning, there were several more charges posted or pending that weren't mine. Another 45 minutes on the phone with my bank, and a full fraud investigation has been opened, my old account has been locked and a new one has been opened, and I'm breathing a lot easier (at least for now).

I can't think of any times in my life where I've felt more vulnerable than when I feel like someone is watching me and (in a manner of speaking) rifling through my wallet, and I end up getting bitten at the end of things. I think it's absolutely pathetic that there's some (pardon my language) son-of-a-bitch out there who gets his (or her; can't be sexist about this) jollies by scamming and stealing and loading up on crap for their house or apartment while I (or anyone else who falls victim to this) am sitting at home or work desperately trying to stop the hemmorhaging and get things corrected. If it were up to me, folks that commit credit card fraud should be locked up for life -- none of this lightweight garbage in the way of sentences that's handed out.

A side effect of this is that I'm less inclined to want to help anyone, with the thought in the back of my mind always being, "What are you trying to do?" When this has happened in the past, and then I'm approached about making a donation or get a solicitation letter in the mail, I walk in the opposite direction or throw the letter unopened into the garbage. Yes, I realize I could send a check for these sorts of things, but going through this really makes me gun-shy.

And the check writing thing brings another angle into this. So many companies have gone out of their way over the years to make it possible to pay bills on-line. I've taken advantage of that, both for the ease of it all and because the turnaround time for processing the payment is much more immediate. Now, though, who the hell wants to do that anymore? Checks may be the only safe route anymore (if that can be believed), and I'm thinking I may just start hand-carrying my payments to everyone. I know that's not feasible, but it's worth dreaming -- can you imagine how some of these folks in other states would look at me if I walked in and said, "Good morning; I drove overnight from the East Coast to drop off my payment. See you next month!"

Let this be a warning to you: you're never really safe, even with all of the gizmos and security features that people develop every day. Somewhere, there's someon fast than they are at developing ways to beat them -- and when they're not doing that, then they're watching me and rifling through my wallet.