Off to Washington

It appears the place to be these days is Washington.

No, not because of the election, but because of the foolish, financial fiasco businesses in America have fostered on themselves and are attempting to push off on the American people.

I find myself wondering if it would be worth taking off from my job and jetting to Washington on a bankrupt airline. All for the opportunity to look for the window where one shows up with his hand out and gets buckets of tax dollars because, well, because business is greedy and Congress is stupid.

Sub prime mortgages have sank millions of families and hundreds of banks. I must confess I am not crying for the banks. To me banks are the boils on the buttocks of society. They have lobbied Congress to get extortion interest rates and fees to bleed the billfolds of the middle class.

Now their bottom line is hemorrhaging and I like that. When I canceled my Citi card last year, I told them I wanted to do my part to sink their ship since they had worked so hard to sink mine. I enjoy seeing Citi flounder, and no, I don't feel sorry for those overpaid glass hearted gluttons. I relish every billion dollars they write off.

And now, Congress has done such a good job of bailing out the banks that Detroit is driving to the capital to get their fair share. If they drive their own creations, they better take lots of gas and a spare car in the truck. Which is why they are in the spot they are in.

I have never owned a non American plated car and I have owned 12 autos during my adult life. I have owned GM, Chrysler, and Ford--mostly Fords. I own two Fords now. The most miles I have been able to churn out of an American plated auto is 185,000. The rest were best left along side the road before they reached 100,000 miles.

See, I think the Big 3 are where they are because for the last 50 years at least their products have been poorly made, poorly designed, and poorly maintained through dealers who were largely driven by greed not service. So, they are tottering on the brink of bankruptcy. I would feel more sorry for them if I knew they had not left millions of owners in broken down pieces of junk while they turned a deaf ear to their customers' appeals for help. I am not sure there is enough bytes of cyberspace to contain all the horror stories of American automobile owners stiffed by dealers, ignored by Big 3 "Customer Disservice," and slippery warranties worth about as much as the paper on which they were written. Very few motorists today who have bought a new or used automobile have not had one or more cars that should have never been built or kept. Out of the 12 I have owned, at least 6--50% were junk, good old fashioned, every day, ordinary, run of the mill junk. And now these Detroit underachievers, pockets padded with the hard earned money of hard working Americans want us to bail them out because they can't build a car Americans want to drive.

And Congress, more afraid of losing lobby money than losing voter support will buckle under the pressure and find some lame reason to give away billions more tax dollars. And for what? To keep underachieving Big 3 autos clogging the highways of the world.

It may be that American automobile owners may be so disgusted over this most recent stunt of the Detroit 3, they will rebel and flock to real cars made by real automobile makers who know how to make a four wheel transportation device that doesn't drain one's bank account, pollute the world, and fall apart about 1 year before it is paid for.

Let's not be afraid to envision a nation where greed and mediocrity in finance, in airline travel, in automobile manufacturing are finally laid to rest all together in a swampy marsh. I would suggest that all those unsold cars would make good personal burial devices. For once, they wouldn't pollute, and for once it wouldn't matter if the wheels fell off.

The occupants weren't going anywhere anyway!

The man with the parrot

I have loved getting acclimated to East Texas.

Since IKE, there has been the constant smell of pine in the air. The temperatures have been increasingly cool and my senses tell me that I am in the mountains. I love the outdoors here. They are indescribable.

So imagine my surprise when I was headed to town and looked to my right to notice a man walking away from me toward his house with a bag in one hand and a parrot on his shoulder. I looked for the limp, but there was none. Just an old bearded man with a very large green and red parrot on his right shoulder.

Where I work, occasionally, one of the offenders tell us there are birds in their cell, but more than likely if they are serious they are batty. But there he was or she was. I have never been good at telling the sex of a bird--well for that matter most everything else as well even to the upright species known as man/woman.

I thought about my mountain experiences where very interesting people flock to the hills away from the conventions and expectations of the rest of society.

So, to the senses of the mountains: the pines gently swaying in the wind; the wind ripe with the smell of pine smoke; the cool evenings that speak of mountain air and mountain temperatures; I can add the eccentric few who keep us ever watchful for the different and the odd.

An Open Letter to our New President

Dear President-Elect Obama,
I celebrate with the country the tremendous milestone your election represents for our nation. There are peoples around the world that have had hope rekindled because in America we have elected our first President from the African-American peoples.

I want to pass on to you some simple requests that will make a historic election a historic time in America.

Given so many in America are disillusioned with leadership and with Washington leadership, perhaps you can lead us from that to a renewal of respect. How?

Be the man of faith. Your faith is obviously real and personal and it often seems that you lean to the position of it being a private matter. It is, but men of genuine faith live differently for different reasons than men and women of unbridled ambition and greed. Live out your faith!

Be the father/husband your family needs. While you hold a vital place in the affairs of the world, to children and wives, absence is absence. One of the great arena's of leadership you can provide for American families is to make room for the family and let us see some of that. Too little value is placed on parenting our children in the midst of hectic, demanding days. I don't remember when it dawned on me that if I died doing my job, I could and would be quickly replaced. No so for my place in my family. There will be more presidents, there will not be another dad like you for your family.

Be the African-American man of our time. In the prison where I work, far too many of the offenders are African-American. Too many cannot read. Too many are without any reasonable hope of a meaningful future. I believe you can make a difference for Black America. You can stand as the abiding reminder that in an imperfect society with imperfect justice for all, that people of color can still aspire and achieve and lead the nation. I believe this is a day when a vital part of our shared life needs to be inspired to not throw away their lives on the more available temptations leading to destruction.

Finally, Just be our Commander in Chief with dignity and grace. These are days when partisanship gridlock is hurting the nation in every way a nation can be hurt. The powerless are pushed down by the monied and influential lobbies/lobbiests pushing their own agendas. Government must first protect those who are most vulnerable. Far too many children of every color go to bed terrified each night, often without enough food; without enough medical care; and without enough healthy adults in their lives to make sure they are safe and secure. There is no lobby for these folks. Rather, the gun lobby, the pharmaceutical lobby, the oil lobby, the farm lobby, etc, all have their spokemen. We need to think about the least of these in our midst.

We have also graduated to providing Wall Street welfare to the engineers of this financial debacle. We have moved from Welfare Cadillacs to Welfare Rolls-Royces and Mercedes. All the while, the government does not have the money or the will to help the elderly or the underprivileged child.

I know that I have no idea what kind of burden awaits you as our President. However, our nation is a praying nation. And the one thing every believer owes you our leader is our prayers and our support.

I pray you will soar on wings of Eagles. I pray that as you do, the hope and vision of many might be kindled and the sagging faith of many might be renewed. May the days of Obama be the beginning of new hopes and dreams for millions around the world.

If you attempt these as you govern, these will be days of renewed grace for the United States.

And the Loser Is . . .

The United States of America.

The man who triumphs at the polls today will be a tribute to money and the people who have it and gave it.

The elected offices of our land have slid into a massive purchase of privilege and power. While both candidates have railed against special interests and the influence they wield in Washington, these are the very folks who have bankrolled the presidential race, the senate races, and the congressional races. I get the feeling that the height of insincerity is the candidate who blisters the lobby groups while (wink, wink) knowing he has his hand in their deep pockets.

This election has helped me to learn that I am not middle class but lower class because I don't make $75,000 a year. Wow, talk about a downer. I have been living in poverty all my life and more sobering, so have my children--sorry guys, I thought we were living better.

This election reminded me that most candidates think I am stupid, stupid, stupid. Because I am so stupid, I won't notice they misrepresent the other person's position, lightly gloss over their own, and all the while appealing to their honesty and integrity. How stupid is that?

This election reminded me that insiders who accept no responsibility confess to one or more of the following:
If while serving in the Senate, they were not responsible for anything that has gone on, they are ineffective.
If while serving in the Senate, they were responsible for what has gone on, they are incompetent. If while serving in the Senate, they were out of the beltway loop, they were unnecessary.

And those were our choices.

While I have never quite understood the Parliamentary system, I do like the notion that elections are not perpetual cycles that plague the people like a chronic cough. We are well past the time when it should take four years to elect a president. Three months max! That is all that is needed, and really all we should stand. In order to accomplish that, politicians would have to forget the mud slinging and put forth the issues.

But, that is not today.

Today, the election belongs to the moneyed, and apparently, by definition, I am not one of that crowd.

And The Winner is....

The United States of America.
Yes, in a day when governments are changed by revolution and civil war, our experience today is a tribute the sturdiness of our system of representative government.

I love this ritual every 2-4 years where there is always the possibility the government in power could become the former government in power. Yet, it all happens without one shot being fired.

Around the world, peoples of the world look with envy at our way of changing governments or renewing ourselves through government. They live in countries where citizens never go to bed with confidence they are protected by their leaders. Some live in governments where leaders are expected to enrich themselves while they impoverish the people. Some live in countries where factions have paralyzed the government and any hope of a functional durable government.

For all its flaws and short comings, for most Americans, we never think of these days as anything else but a chance to express our opinion and take a hand in shaping our destiny. That is the wonder of our nation.

Surprise! Surprise!

I was minding my own business watching a little television in these waning days before the elections and then it happened.

I got splattered with the mud of campaign rhetoric.

After the elections, Congress and Legislatures convene to do the work of governing and they often marvel at the low opinion they carry in the eyes of the general public. The problem seems to be their memories are too short.

Just a few short months before, the airways and papers and campaign trails were full of folks talking about how one's opponent was a liar, a traitor, and a thief--not necessarily in that order.

It would appear to me these folks don't think much about the consequences of such campaign tactics. I do.

Someone is going to win the election. Generally speaking, it is someone who is running for the office. Generally speaking, it is someone who campaigns for the office. Generally speaking, it is someone that is muddy from "slung mud" and from "slinging mud." Rule of thumb is that one cannot throw mud without getting some of that mud on oneself. So here we are.

At least two campaign; both of which are portrayed as (see above). One wins and yet what is the general public to believe? Well, in my practice I have a phrase I use about destructive behavior. I call it "fouling one's own back yard."

That seems to be the current trend in the world of politics. If politicians want a better relationship between the voters and themselves, quit calling each other liars and thieves. No wonder we don't trust politicians. They have painted their opponents in the worst possible light, so what are we left to conclude? After the smoke clears, are they no longer what they were portrayed to be? Were they ever? Were differences of opinion called something else? Were these in fact simply different philosophical ideas, different approaches, different ways of understanding problems?

If Congressmen and women want the public to trust them more, perhaps they need to recast their rhetoric and get away from invectives and "mudding."

It might restore some confidence in the political system. Strange as it seems, that might be a good thing.

Hanna Banana

When you see a walking 6 foot banana at prayer meeting, well you know it is Halloween at church.

In the last few years, many churches have had a love-hate relationship with Halloween. Some think even acknowledging the holiday is somehow a betrayal of the Kingadom. Frankly, I have never understood such silliness. Every age places (we hope) the church in an antagonist culture with all kinds of influences. One needs to decide which issues are worth engaging and which are just meaningless cultural observances.

When I was growing up, Halloween was that way. Some teachers thought it important we know the roots of Halloween but most of us just knew it as a time when we got a costume, and went out and got lots and lots of candy from strangers. What could possibly be wrong with that?

I know times changed. The culture became more dark and broken. One of those areas was in the area of the dark side of mythology and gross misunderstandings of the power of evil. Another was in the danger of going door to door and accepting things from strangers.

So, some church folks began to think of Halloween as a celebration of the demonic and of evil. Others felt our society was fundamentally unsafe. I guess I never bought that view.

From that vantage point came the idea of alternative celebrations at local churches completely stripped of all the "stuff" that was seen as undermining the Christian message. Some of my friends and staff wanted to do that, and I would say, "As long as you don't forget the candy. Candy is inherently neutral in the culture wars. And as long as it's free, and as long as kids can get more than they need to eat in one sitting. They really need to get enough candy to make them sick if they eat it in one setting."

Of course, everyone would look at me--again--and wonder.

The fact is, kids need to have the Halloween experience. They need to see their world as a rather safe place in which to be. They need to see their neighbors as safe people to turn to, and if they are not, who is not and why are they not. They need to see the world as "kid friendly" and generous to children. And, unless there are serious health concerns, children need occasionally to be showered with candy. Candy is a wonderful comfort food which affirms the potential goodness of life.

So, bring on the giant banana--as long as it is followed by a bite sized Snicker's bar.