Da Pres

The Presidents Song


Washington came first and he was perfect.
John Adams kept us out of war with France.
Jefferson made Louisiana Purchase.
In 1812 James Madison kicked the British in the pants.

James Monroe told Europe they could suck it.
John Quincy Adams looked just like his dad.
Andrew Jackson got rid of all the Indians.
Van Buren served one term, but he wasn't bad.

William Henry Harrison died early.
John Tyler annexed Texas from Mexico.
James K. Polk fought Mexico to keep it.
Taylor was a Mexican War hero.

Fillmore gave a boat to Commodore Perry.
Pierce appealed the Missouri Compromise.
Buchanan saw the Civil War's beginnings.
Lincoln saved the Union, then he died.

Andrew Johnson just survived impeachment.
General Grant enjoyed a drink or two.
Rutherford B. Hayes ended reconstruction.
Garfield was assassinated in 1882.

Arthur suspended Chinese immigration.
Cleveland made the railroad people squirm.
Harrison signed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
Grover Cleveland served another term.

McKinley kicked the Spanish out of Cuba.
Roosevelt was handy with a gun.
Taft was big and fat and had a mustache.
Wilson kicked some ass in World War I.

Harding said "Let's Laissez Fair with business."
Coolidge made the roaring 20s roar.
Hoover screwed the pooch in the great depression.
Roosevelt beat the Nazis in the war.

Truman dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.
Eisenhower kept the Commies well in hand.
Kennedy was killed by a magic bullet.
Johnson murdered kids in Vietnam.

Nixon was a sweating, filthy liar.
Ford gave Nixon pardon for his crimes.
Carter lusted in his heart for peanuts.
Reagan won the Cold War, and lost his mind.

George Bush Sr. poked at Saddam Hussein.
Clinton gave an intern a cigar.
W's legacy's a work in progress.
That is all the President's so far.

In the year 2005 we're out of money.
Somewhere, surely, freedom's on the march.
I don't like to make political statements.

Breathe In

There was a time when you went outside to get “a breath of fresh air.” Yet, the city of Richmond has earned a reputation that makes that act an impossibility.

In a recent story broadcast by Charles Fishburne we got a taste of an Environment Virginia study that called the air quality of the city into question. Ms. Corrie (of Environment Virginia) stated that Richmond is the 17^th smoggiest metro area in the entire country. For a city of Richmond’s size that seems like a pretty terrible record to have. Anyone that lives here can tell you there are days it’s not safe to breathe outside.

On the other side of this issue we have VA Rep. Eric Cantor who is leading congress to study how the EPA is affecting prices, jobs and reliability of electric power. In other words how loosening those regulations would allegedly produce more jobs, drive prices down, and make electric power more reliable.

So I guess our choices are breathing or jobs?

Here are two things. First, why does the city of Richmond have to care how the EPA regulations fall? If there is a problem with the air quality in this city, then the city should be already taking steps to improve the smog situation and work at a solution. Not wait for the EPA regulations to force or allow them to do something. I’m fairly sure the Federal Government wouldn’t try to stop us from cleaning up the city.

Second, am I the only one that gets tired of the same old rag in congress where everything is a choice between the environment and jobs? It’s like a ghost story they tell us to insure that the right people continue making the most money possible. As long as congress keeps threatening job loss the voters seem like they are always going to back them up. But is it really possible to be this consistently cut and dry? Is there no way possible to breath clean air, fish in clear streams, and swim in clear beaches without being jobless and have no electricity? There have got to be better solutions out there.

In the wake of the economy’s record these past few years the threat of jobs and price hikes might have become a dog without teeth. How many of us have learned to live with much less? How many are surviving on one income when we believed it wasn’t possible? People already don’t have jobs, and are dealing with higher prices of gas and food. So how much more could that possibly change? Do we really have to still live in fear of the “Boogey Man” that our congressional leaders keep trotting out?

You know what my family and I have been doing? Going outside more. City parks are free, and a great place to entertain ourselves, meet friends and have picnics as inexpensive alternatives to going out to eat. In all honesty, being able to breath saves us money!

I challenge the people of this city to do two things. Seventh District Representative Eric Cantor needs to be told that we feel the EPA regulations are there for a reason, and to stop using the environment as a scapegoat that only serves to tell us Capitol Hill is fresh out of ideas. Secondly, the citizens of Richmond need to make our city accountable to us, and not to the EPA. There are hundreds of things the city could do to make the air quality breathable again. Just a few ideas: more intentional greenspaces to freshen the air in key areas, directing the flow of large truck traffic around residential areas, zoning the city to decrease the need for citizens to drive as much making work, play and shopping closely available.

This city was once envied because of its innovation in creating an electric trolley system. That spirit of ingenuity and forward thinking cannot be allowed to wane! Creating a new fleet of mass transit vehicles or even something as simple as walking and biking paths in already established neighborhoods could be a statement made not only to the citizens of this city but to the state and again the country.

Richmond is a great city, with the potential to be even greater. It has some incredible parks, which sadly are going to become vacant if we and our children get asthma from the air we live in. This is our city, and regardless of what the EPA does or doesn’t do, we need to act in a way that makes this city a place of health for ourselves and for every generation that comes after us.

Moron Means Selfish

Here's the thing about stupid people and natural disasters.

When people lives in hurricane infested Kansas, it used to be they built a storm cellar underground. Now they live in mobile homes. When those get utterly destroyed and people die, we can't talk about it. Cause people died. And we have to throw a sadness party.

When people choose to live on the coasts and participate in a broken system of poor housing construction and low preparedness, we are supposed to pray and then blame God if people die. Heaven forbid we ask the question, why are there people living there in the first place, or at the very least, are there not any other building conditions we could enforce to help people live better?
No, no, people want to have a house on the beach that looks just like a house in downtown Savanah, and apparently it is their right as an american to do so.

Great. It's our right as an american to be a moron. To act like and idiot. You know what it's not our right to do? Expect everyone else's help and kindness as payment for our selfish and idiotic actions.

I can't understand why it is so taboo to talk about. No one is willing to think creatively about any of it. It seems like we think we can have normal sewer systems, normal roads, and normal homes in these areas that are struck year after year after year and not one person is willing to step forward and say, "We can't do this anymore." I am not talking about some desalinization method for sewage water, or building on stilts, I am talking about something completely revolutionary. A change in which people wont be able to just plunk down a house on a piece of property and get the insurance company to fix it when it is inevitably destroyed. Something that wont have counties shelling out millions every year to fix eroded beaches.

It might be that we can't live on some beaches. It might be that we can't go to some beaches. It might be that coastal regions become off limits save for natural preserves and daily tourism. No overnight structures. Maybe camping. We have so little respect for the way the coastal system works, and year after year Hurricanes come and try to teach us a hard lesson that we pay out in tax dollars and human life. When do we get tired of it?


The system is broken. As it is now we have cities and infrastructure locked into these coastal areas with no easy way to extricate them. And maybe that's not the right answer. But we should at least be able to discuss that living there, and building there, and being there is not the wisest life choice in light of the events that are there. People in California accept that earthquakes are going to be in the future and plan accordingly. They build accordingly. How is it that we sill have trailer parks mere miles from the NC coast? Hotels that are built with sub-standard materials, and building codes that allow all kinds of person homes to go up. If people aren't smart enough to do something proactive (which is arguably their right) then we at least shouldn't feel like we are required to pity them and bail them out when the inevitable doom comes to their doors. At the very least can we not build mobile homes in places like Atlantic Beach, NC?

Doing Your Chores

I read something in an AFP article that I found startling.

The Us give 3 billion dollars to the Israeli government every year. That's not counting the 250 million that President Obama just approved.

Now, granted we perceive that Israel is a calming state in the otherwise -- which is debatable. I am no time traveler, I can't tell you what the middle east would look like now, but we do know the millions of Palestinians who were displaced as refugees, and the anger that the Israelis have continually sparked in the region. Yet aside from all that I realized that it told me jsut how distant from our country's spending.

So I looked it up.

Every year we spend a huge portion of our budget on defense ($663 billion). And we spend $25 billion on foreign aid to other countries. $3 billion of that goes just to Israel. That's 8% and change. Of course, we also pay Jordan an undisclosed amount (since 2007) just to leave Israel alone and not harbor its enemies. So really we should add that back in. In 2007 it was $561 million. So Israel is really up to $3.6 billion. I was rounding down before. The next highest recipient is Egypt with $1.75 billion. Together they make up 1/3 of all US "aide" to other countries. The largest cut of the money we give these countries is through the FMF fund which is strictly for military purposes. So, wait, didn't Egypt and Israel fight a war a while back? Yes they did. It's weird that we are giving them both money for weapons. Somehow, that seems counter productive to peace right?

A lot of this money we are throwing at people has to do with our fear of the spread of communism. Which seems like a huge threat now. One communist economy went into total collapse and the other is where everything we own is made (who continually poison themselves so we can have slick i-phone glass). That noted we can say we don't care about communists anymore. So why are we still dolling out this kind of money to these countries to buy weapons in a place where we are trying to get people to be peaceful.

I know what the answer is for those who are in the big stick camp. The only way to make people sit down and shut up is to have a bigger stick than they do. Except that tactic has never worked in the history of mankind. The guy with the stick eventually gets taken out by a bunch of other guys who get together and say, "You know that guy with the stick? We can take him."

I wanted to point out something else as well. We spend $19 billion on education every year. In terms of Percentage of our GDP we rank with Russia. Awesome. And guess who else? Egypt.

So wait, we spend tons of money on defense. Give more money to Egypt for their military weapons, and that frees them up to spend the same amount we do per student? That sounds like some kind of crazy. This kind of comparison might be unfair, but in any budget you can see a countries goals and ideals spelled out in its spending.

Ok so out ahead is Social Security. That's fair since technically that's OUR money the government has been setting aside for us all these years. How nice of them. Next is Defense. I might argue that. I mean, if in the category of "Foriegn Aid" we are handing out money for other countries to buy weapons... I mean. I dunno. Am I crazy? Is it really a good idea to be handing out guns to people?
 I get it, we are trying to make them as tronger nation and they are our allie, etc etc. But that is not working out so well. Castro wrote letters to FDR. Saddam Husein was an ally. We named Adolf Hilter as man of the year. Honestly, we aren't good at picking out our friends.
For real. We shouldn't be giving anyone guns with record. They just end up shooting at us. It would be bad enough if the aid we were giving was for food and education, but it's not! The biggest portion of it is designated for military. Sigh. It seems like the defense budget might not need to be so big if we weren't so busy fighting all the people to whom we've been handing out weapons.
Medicare and Medicaid eat up another 20%, more even than the defense budget. The next largest group at 4.6% is the INTEREST on the nation debt. Now, if you own a home you might think, wow, that sounds like a deal. Hook me up with that rate. But, remember, that's not the rate, that's the percent of the GDP that we pay to the interest payment every year. We spend more on that than we do on education, transportation and veterans. Recall also that as of 2010 almost 40% of the debt is help by foreign governments. Another reason it might not be a great idea to be giving these people weapons. When they come to collect they will be well armed. I'm not saying they would win, but it will certainly be worse. In 2011 the debt is $14 trillion dollars. Our 2009 GDP was $14.2 trillion. This looks bad. The debt is 90% of our current GDP, working backwards that makes our current GDP around $16 trillion. The only other time in History that it was higher was after WWII when it hit 120%. So, its not all bad news.

Everything else that the Government does is lumped into the last few percentiles. Agriculture, FDA, Energy Reg, Commerce, Treasury, the National Science Foundation, Health and Human services, Corps of engineers, Justice, and even Homeland security.

Basically everything that you think of "government" doing for a society is a marginal part of what our country actually does. Is it any wonder federal school systems are a mess? That bridges and damns fail? That our energy innovation is stale? That our space program stagnated years ago? That commerce regulation are outdated? That food is fraught with E. Coli? The only thing our government does is have guns, pay for people to be sick and out of work, and... oh. That's it. That's the top percentiles. Everything else (aside from our debt payment) is less than 4%. What the heck!?

The system, my friends, is broken. Yet, somehow in the midst of this, we still send billions over seas to provide weapons to foreign powers who we might just end up fighting someday.

The problem now is the Medicare/Medicaid/Unemployment/Welfare chunk of the pie. That's huge. Huge. And I don't see a way out of it through programs or more spending. The only way people get off the government ticket is through the two things that made the nation a pretty great country in the first place. Freedom and community. When people have the courage and the freedom to care for each other and themselves. They do. When it becomes necessary. The program rewards laziness right now. Especially welfare. I don't dismiss the need for the program, but there have got to be incentives that drive people into each other's arms. Not inside with the television. In fact, that could be rule one. If you are on welfare, you can't have a TV. What would people do!?

In the end, it seems like we as a country are in the habit of paying people for doing nothing. Weather it is here at home, or abroad, we delight in just handing over billions of dollars while no one does anything to compensate us for it. How long can we keep this up? We certainly live in interesting times. 

Dealing with Dragons

Mullin Forum Notes, Greensboro NC
Dr. Brain K. Blount, Union Presbyterian Seminary

One of the biggest themes in the talk was that of making a stand. Dr. Blount takes a non-literal view of Revelation and does a great job in using that message to apply to our struggles today with "dragons."

Part of his point was that John of Patmos wanted the readers to know that accommodating the Dragon, or the evil that was behind the throne of Rome, was to sacrifice everything about their faith and loose it all. That the only choice was to fight the dragon or become like it. That there could be no "blending" in Christian faith.

Another topic he touched on was that in the churches of Revelation there was a blending of Politics and Religion. One could not succeed in either without adhering to the other. Or at least not by Roman standards. In fact the cities that he condemns in the book are the same churches that are flourishing, because to John, to flourish in the world of Rome you must be making compromises in your faith life.  John constantly called out to them to decide, Mammon or God? You cannot serve both--to echo previous NT words from Jesus.

Some people have a problem with seeing Revelation as a non-literal book, but to me it follows other apocalyptic literature we have in the Bible in Daniel and Ezekiel and even parts of Isaiah. One thing Dr. Blount said was to remember that the visions are serving the prophecy. Not the other way around. Which I thought was a neat way to look at it. Although, I will say that there is nothing baring it from perhaps being both. It could be a message for the churches of Asia minor, and still be a prophetic piece for our world. Of course like all scripture it is still a living word for us today in each part of our lives.

How many times do we have the opportunity to sacrifice our beliefs and blend in with society for power and privilege and the security of the world. But we are constantly called out not to. To stand firm and face the dragon instead, relying on God's power and salvation and protection and provision.

The discussion of "witness" language was also interesting. Dr. Blount put forward that translators have added the number of witness in Rev. 6:9-11 but have changed then the spirit of the verse. The idea intended is one of a call to active resistance. Not patient endurance through hardship. RESIST! I like it...

In the end of it all you can see why John was exiled in the first place. The guy was not just saying, "Oh doom an woe, here comes the end people!" He was actively preaching a message of resistance and basically telling people to go pick a fight for Jesus. Radical stuff. You can see why the message had to be disguised, and why it is still so powerful and relevant thousands of years later.

Review This:: The Other Guys

The Other Guys
Rated PG-13
Directed By Adam McKay

2.5 Stars

This seems like one of those movies that was so close to working but then just... didn't. (Read "The Spy Next Door") I feel like that is how a lot of McKay's films are, who had suck blazing success with Anchor Man and such limited return on a movie like Step Brothers.

At this point Will Ferrel has already proven himself with flicks like "Stranger than Fiction," so it's got to be the writing and directing. Ferrel is a funny guy who has become a great actor, so the problem has to be elsewhere.


That being said "The Other Guys" is still a funny movie. It has its own list of quirks and repeatable tirades by both Ferrel and Walhberg (Lion vs. Tuna) and the quintessential exchange that makes you cringe and laugh and wonder if you should really be watching this (when grandma is ferrying love messages between husband and wife."

Micheal Keaton plays a great Captain figure, who alternately wants to be called Gene and Captain in an attempt to differentiate between his two careers-Police work and the Bed Bath and Beyond. I felt like somehow they weren't letting Keaton out enough. And maybe if they had he would have stolen the show, but he is another incredibly funny guy who I feel got a little short changed in this. But I love Keaton, so maybe that is tainting me a bit. Hey, I even loved Multiplicity.

Ice-T the O.G., narrates--which is fitting and somehow a funny commentary on Ice. But it works because he takes the lines so seriously.

Part of my hang up with this movie is that it is one of those, like Step-Brothers, in which the main characters or most of them exist in this different world from everyone else. It works in Anchorman because everyone is in the same place. There are no characters who look at the wacky antics of others and go "huhn?" It breaks the mood of the movie and it confuses the issue.
Over all thought it's a funny flick and just what Ferrel and McKay have done several times in the past.

look

the hardest thing

By Francis Robert

open caskets are for suckers.

i have attended a lot of funerals in my line of work. a lot. A ton of them have been open casket. I find it horrifying. I know a lot of people find it gives them a sense of closure or whatever, but to me, I just see a lot of meat sitting in a box. I have seen people I know, not intimately, not family, but people I knew. And it does not help. It just looks... cold. And fills me with dread.

the whole business of being dead, I mean, he chemicals, the caskets, the liners, the biers, the plot, the headstone, the service, the limo... holy crap. It's like this enormous expensive really sad prom. Not to mention the food and the venue for the viewing or wake. How did it come to this? Funerals were once a time of honor for the dead. Burning a fallen comrade as they floated majestically against the waves. Even the old wakes were events to reckon with. the services surrounding the dead were a way of comping, but all of our modern mechanisms seem so sterile and horrifying.

I mean, I want my funeral to not even have my body. I don't get it. What is the obsession with the body? Do we not believe people? I am not being flip, is that really it? Is there some part of us that just refuses to believe the person is gone until we see them lifeless? Let me tell you too, you really are lifeless. I see these people who I knew in life, and they look... dead. Not sleeping, not whatever, they look dead. Like the life has gone out of the very skin cells. It's really kind of incredible.

We all want to be remembered. We all want people to wail and cry and shout and laugh and get drunk and eat and be merry at our passing. We want stories good and bad, told about us. We need that. We human. We all gonna die. It's just a matter of when and how.

Old Article, Still Relevant...

Divestment call 'bold and beautiful'
Christopher M. Tweel, Greensboro, N.C., Reprinted from "The Layman" on Tuesday, December 7, 2004


The call to divest from multinational corporations with ties to Israel was one of the boldest and most beautiful moves the church in general has made for a long time. The action only strengthens my feelings that the Presbyterian denomination is one that is filled with people who make a habit out of study and prayerful consideration on important aspects of faith.

It does pain me however to read some of the comments of other lay people who feel that the church's decision was in error and that, in fact, Israel's position and "right to defend" itself were not being taken into account before the decision was made.

To those, I would ask, or better, plead that they follow the footsteps of those who made the decision and rely on their own research to come to conclusions before passing judgment on the General Assembly. By that I mean more than what Fox News and CNN can piece together and spoon feed to the American public.

To date, 3,492 Palestinians have died since September 30, 2000. Compare this to the 986 Israelis who have died in the same span. Fully 20 percent of the intifada victims were Palestinian children. Consider also that while some organizations resort to terrorist tactics the large portion of those deaths have been civilian casualties while the Israeli losses have been almost entirely within the ranks of their armed forces.

Think also of the numerous American peace workers who have been killed by Israeli armed forces. Rachel Corrie, the American girl who refused to move when an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) Caterpillar was going to tear down her host family's home. The bulldozer simply drove over her, crushing her to death. A sniper shot Brian Avery, from North Carolina, in the face, while he was trying to carry two children off the street during a tear gas attack by the IDF.

Over and over again IDF and the Israeli government have proven to be callous and unwilling to find a solution that acknowledges the Palestinian people as having the right to life, and to a quality of life that all people all people deserve. Israel breaks international rights laws over and over and the UN has condemned its actions more than once. Most recently, the UN voted unanimously (with the exception of the US) that the Wall in Israel was an apartheid action and the World Court declared it unlawful to continue.

Yet the Israeli government ignores them, and the US has yet to withdraw its support-encouraging injustice with its silence.

The action by PCUSA is a bold and brilliant stand that makes exactly the right statement to the world and our own country. We recognize that the situation in Israel and Palestine is complex beyond measure and has been raging for 50 years and more. Yet we as a church will not support oppression – even when that oppression may be described as "deserving." This was never the way of Christ. And that will never be the way of the church that follows him.

Book Nooks:: Cresent

Cresent 
by Diana Abu-Jaber

(c) 2003 W. W. Norton and Co, Inc

4.5 Stars

This is something of a divergence for me. I don't usually read love stories, and I don't usually read things set in the present day (another flight of fancy was "The Bronze Horseman" another excellent read). This book caught my eye. Mostly because I was at my uncle's house and had nothing to read and found this on a table.


There are some reviews I found on amazon that rave about the portrayal of Iraqis, which I find interesting because that wasn't the tone I picked up from it. I read it as part of the family I guess, my family was half Arab growing up and we went to a lot of dinners and gatherings. Which is I think what really brought me to this book. The food. the lovely descriptions of the food. In the same way that I watched "Waitress" for the pie. Also, I think I associated the main character's uncle with my own. Or maybe the kind of uncle I hope to be someday. Full of old stories and mystery.

The middle of the plots drags, so you really have to be in love with the story before that point or you will never make it. I found that easy enough though. I was content to simply drift through the lives of the characters in what was a lull of their lives. Learn recipes and hear simple stories of life. The richness of the descriptions allow you to exist there in California with them.


Also the association with food and sensuality, while not a new idea, is told beautifully in a way that will make you want to cook or make love, or both. A fantastic read, give it a whirl!