America in Decline

I wasn't planning to write on this topic today, but after the interesting responses to my critique of Miley "Hannah Montana" Cyrus, I feel a need to further examine why I believe she represents an America in serious decline. I'd even go so far as to use the word "decay." Now, some might say that it's unfair to put on her tiny shoulders all that is wrong with America, but she is just the latest example of a point I want to make about our capitalistic / materialistic society that pretends to be "the most religious country on earth" because we have more church goers than in any other country. But who cares if you are good one day a week and attend church if in your worklife, you exhibit the psychopathological traits of a greedy, numbers-obsessed, materialistic jerk who will step on anyone in the way of your climb to the top?

First, I admit that I would not have posted a critique of Hannah Montana yesterday if the news did not mention her. Had the story remained on "Entertainment Tonight" (which I rarely watch anymore), that's one thing. But to put her on the national news show...both ABC and CBS (I did not watch NBC's to see if they followed the same script) meant that they found her "controversy" to be newsworthy.

Growing up, I've always preferred the national network news over local news. I didn't know why until I was a young man. It was because local news contained stories of murders, robberies and the like. National news focused on national issues and sometimes international news. But what truly spoiled me was when I lived in Europe and got to see foreign news, in Germany, France, Britain, and Italy. Even if I didn't know the language, I was impressed by how much of their newscasts focused on global issues that were happening outside of their borders. French news had long segments on what was happening in Africa. You never saw "fluff" pop culture stuff on those news reports. Though Britain did have a segment devoted to Princess Diana in the 1980s.

Anyhow, when I was in college, I took a course called "Media in Politics." I learned a lot about how the media portrayed politics, often as a game, rarely with the kind of seriousness that our counterparts in Europe do. In America, the newsmedia's mantra are: "dog bites man is not news; man bites dog is news" and "if it bleeds, it leads." How about a new way of determining what is "newsworthy"? By that I mean, just because someone is famous doesn't make them newsworthy. In fact, fame should be reserved only for those who truly deserve it by doing something worthy and good for humanity. Let's face it, Miley Cyrus is only famous because of who her daddy is, and she follows the line of teenage girls that the Disney Channel has perfected to create a merchandising following: Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen and their ilk. Add Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie to the mix and you have a group of girls who represent all that is wrong with American society: a focus on wealth, plastic looks, and a severe lack of intellect. These ladies are held up as role models for impressionable young girls and to break out of their core following, it seems like our capitalistic society pushes them into becoming sex idols for older men, which is sick. That's exactly what Vanity Fair's photo spread was meant to be: Miley Cyrus' evolution from pre-teen sensation into a male sex fantasy (which is disgusting, considering that she is just 15). That this comes at the same time that over 400 teenage girls were taken from the FLDS compound in Eldorado, Texas only shows how hypocritical our country is, or how big the disconnect exists.

There is a reason why I don't write much on popular culture in my blog. When I started the blog, I wasn't sure how I envisioned it, but it didn't take long for a pattern to emerge. Basically, I'm an advocate for a new culture to form in our society. Pop culture is junk culture. There's a reason why Mozart's music is timeless, while Miley Cyrus will be forgotten in history. The classic culture of Europe gave us Rembrandt and Shakespeare, while America has Rihanna and Tupac Shakur. One culture brings out the intellect and inspires people while the other degrades the mind and only makes people desire the quick and easy wealth for themselves. Our chosen path is not sustainable.

We are Marie Antoinette on the eve of Revolution. She ate pastries and lived lavishly in a gigantic palace while the poor were rioting over bread. And here we are, over-bloated and subjected to fluff news while people are RIOTING in Haiti, Africa, and Southeast Asia over food prices! We're on the cusp of a worldwide epidemic of violence. Even the Pentagon has done a study in which they found that wars of the future will be over dwindling supplies of water, which will make our current oil wars seem like civilized U.N. disputes by comparison. Water is a necessity to life, thus if people are going to fight for it, these fights will be vicious. All our claims of being civilized will be tossed out the window as people revert to pure animalistic survival of the fittest. It will get ugly.

Thus it's imperative that we Americans trash our junk culture and find some depth. It's embarrassing to continue to have a country that finds celebrity "controversy" newsworthy while the vast majority of Americans remain woefully ignorant about our world and the 95% of the planet's population who inhabit it. If I were the head news honcho, I would require all newscasts to start with several numbers: How many days we've been in Iraq; how much the war has cost the American people (both as a total and then broken down per family's share of the cost); how many Americans have died, and how many Iraqis have died. These numbers need to be thrown in American faces every single day until people wake up and realize that we really are in Iraq and the reason why they're paying more at the pump for gasoline, or why their food bill has gone up, why their paychecks afford less and less...is because too much of our economy is tied into debts owed to Chinese, Japanese, and Saudi banks. Paying for the war on credit card is the smartest idea since Napoleon decided to attack at Waterloo.

It is my hope to see a deeper America emerge at some point. An America that only awards fame to people who've earned it by their contribution to humanity (such as the Oregon middle school science teacher who was named "Teacher of the Year" this week: Michael Geisen), not because they look a certain way, have a famous parent, or have made a fortune in the entertainment industry. An America that continually challenges its citizens to push their intellect by learning about difficult or complex topics. An America that does not dumb down education to the lowest common denominator so idiots don't feel so stupid. An America that doesn't pretend to be religious to placate the evangelists and fundamentalists while continually promoting the false values of capitalism. An America where a political debate is more like the Parliamentary debates that exist in the U.K. rather than the shallow, high school student council elections it currently resembles. An America where telling the truth is valued and rewarded while liars and those who made wrong projections about the economy, war, and other facts are marginalized.

Until we have an America that inspires its citizens to continue to challenge themselves to be better people, to develop a deeper mindset about issues, and to value the difference between the essential eternal values over the fleeting false values, our country will continue to decline while Europe and China surpass us with their focus on better and better education standards.

Let's face it, pop culture is the equivalent of porn. It degrades your mind until all you're left with is mush. Learning about new ideas and challenging ideas electrifies your brain cells and if you think of your mind as a muscle, you have to use it to increase it's power. Pop culture doesn't have that effect. All it does is make people shallow and incapable of independent thought. Lord knows, we have way too many citizens who fall in this category. In my America, the likes of Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson, Miley Cyrus, the Olsen twins, the Bush twins, and even Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham would all be sent to Iraq for a year to find their souls. They won't find it by continuing to live in a society that encourages their shallow exploits with salivating adoration.

Here's an example Americans should learn and learn well: in Plato's Republic, he wrote about the "allegory of the cave" in which people are chained in a cave, growing up by seeing reflections/shadows on the wall. They believe that is reality. When one of them breaks free and escapes from the cave to see the real world, he returns to tell those still chained in the cave. What happens? Those chained to the cave think he's crazy and kill him, because he's obviously deluded. Is that prophetic or what?

The reality we see in our country is not REALITY. America doesn't have to be this way. Another way is possible. We can continue our path as represented by Miley Cyrus and her ilk (pretending to Christian values while materialistic greed leads her to make sexually provocative photos to gain a new "respectability" in our capitalistic society that has no spiritual values) or we can pursue the path represented by Angelina Jolie, who uses her wealth and fame to shine a spotlight on the plight of the people around the world. But the best example for me is the path represented by Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi...a truly authentic spiritual woman who gave up an easy life of comfort in the U.K. to suffer among the poorest and oppressed people of her native land.

So, that's why I'm not in favour of posting more on our popular culture. I want to encourage Americans to trash the junk and go deep to where the core of your soul resides. People around the world want us to become better people, to help transform our world from the greed and ignorance of capitalism towards a new ethical, spiritual, and moral value system not found in any "-ism" ideology.

Random Rants

There are a few news items I wanted to comment on, so this one will be lacking a consistent theme.

First, regarding the post I made last week about John Branam who is running for Sam Adams' City Commissioner seat. Rather than go back and edit some mistakes in facts that I made in my post, I will make the corrections here.

According to the alternative weekly, "The Portland Mercury" from April 24th edition, Branam had paid his campaign manager $25,000 for THREE months work (not TWO that I had mentioned) and a city auditor had determined that he had to return $5,000 of the money. Apparently, $20,000 for three months work is deemed acceptable, though still well above average ($3,500 a month is the typical salary for a campaign manager). Still, it's this controversy that has cost Branam my support and my vote. It's unethical and a sign of the kind of corruption that might be in store if he becomes a City Commissioner. I'd rather support the guy who has made sure that utility companies didn't price gouge customers. That would be Jeff Bissonnette.

Government stimulus checks went out yesterday. I'm not sure when I'll get mine. But according to a poll I saw online, the top three things Americans plan to use the money for are: (1) pay off bills/rent/mortgage; (2) save it; and (3) pay down credit card debt. The news media reports that many will probably use it to pay for groceries and gasoline.

What does this mean? It's exactly what Bush doesn't want us to do! If we use it to buy gas, that's money that'll go to Saudi Arabia, so how does that help the American economy?

At the Clinton rally on Saturday, Bill spoke briefly about the stimulus checks. He basically told the audience not to go out and spend it. He said that we should save it or use it to pay off debt. Sly dog! But he's right. $600 is not enough to do much with. I certainly would like to have that money in my bank account so I can start saving. It'll be nice to not live paycheck to paycheck and have some money in the bank. The only thing I'll buy with the money is a passport, which is expensive enough. And perhaps the "John Adams" HBO series when it comes out on DVD in June. I wish I was getting the $1,200 check so I can go back to Atlanta to move my things to Portland finally before gasoline gets any more expensive.

What do you plan to do with your stimulus?

Friday night, I watched the Bill Moyers interview with the controversial Reverend Jeremiah Wright. I knew the media was misrepresenting his views, taking the most inflammatory statements in his lengthy sermons and playing it on a loop (kind of like how they killed Howard Dean's presidential chances by replaying his overly enthusiastic speech in Iowa four years ago). Bill Moyers showed lengthy clips of Wright's sermons and I must say that I was impressed. If I lived in Chicago, I might attend his church. I didn't find anything that he said to be outrageous or offensive. What I saw was a smart man who speaks the truth about our government's foreign policy over the years and putting it into a historical and spiritual perspective. Why he is selected for a false controversy and not some of the outrageous claims made by Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, or James Dobson indicates a bias. While white America might fear an "angry black preacher", I saw nothing to fear. Obama should not distance himself from Wright. It's shameful that the media wants to destroy a several-decades friendship over some false, media-fabricated outrage.

Even yesterday, when Wright spoke at the National Press Club and once again had his patriotism questioned, he said it best: "I served six years in the Marine Corps. Does that make me patriotic? How many years did Cheney serve?" Ouch! That's gotta hurt. Hasn't the media heard that quote: "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." Just because you criticize your government doesn't make you an unpatriotic traitor. Last time I checked, we were better than the commies who enforced patriotism on people. We're more mature than that.

If anyone needs proof that our media is hopelessly shallow and prone to fluff reporting, it was no where more apparent than on Monday's "ABC World News Tonight" and the "CBS Evening News." I watched in complete horror that both George Stephanopoulos and Katie Couric spent considerable time in their reporting of the news over the "controversy" regarding teen sensation Hannah Montana.

Apparently, her "wholesome image" is under fire over provocative photos in the latest issue of "Vanity Fair" magazine. One photo in particular, her bare back is seen as she has a bedsheet wrapped around her body. Oooo, scandalous! Preteen girls are shocked. A billion dollar industry built around her likeness and wholesome persona might be imperil. How are we going to live without Hannah Montana?!?

My thinking is...if the whole Hannah Montana merchandising empire falters, its not because of some stupid photographs. It's because our economy is tanking and Americans are spending more on gasoline and food, which are essential to live, whereas a Hannah Montana lunchbox and makeup kit and clothing line and whatever else her face is printed on is the kind of crap girls will be embarrassed to admit owning a few years from now.

I'm sick of hearing about Hannah Montana. It was a stupid name to begin with and this talentless hack needs to crawl back into whatever hole she crawled out of. I'm sick of our media's shallow focus on fluff issues and false controversies. I mean, there are food riots in Haiti and other parts of the globe. We are facing a crisis of epidemic proportions that is the culmination of over-population, dwindling oil, climate change, and food shortages...and all our superficial media wants to focus on is Hannah-fucking-Montana and Reverend Wright?!?

And they wonder why more Americans get their news online these days. It's so we can pick the stories we want to learn about. In my world, Hannah Montana would be a town on a map, not some faux-celebrity in a magazine or on a television show. And certainly not on the evening news!

Audrey Tautou is "Priceless"

Friday night, I went to see the French film "Priceless", which I had wanted to see at the Portland International Film Festival but was turned away when it was completely sold out. It finally arrives in theaters and is well worth the wait. It couldn't come out at a better time (with the lack of interesting films in theaters right now and well before "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" hits theaters). Since Audrey Tautou is my favourite actress, I had to see it and as expected, I can barely watch the film without falling for her charming sweetness and very French "je ne sais quoi" quality. For years, I've dreamed of having a French wife because the way they speak and express themselves are too irresistably sexy to me. Audrey is a prime example of what I mean.

However, in this film, she plays a coquettish gold digger on the French Riviera. Her preference is for way older men (old enough to be her grandfather, and in her hopes, close to death) who spend lavishly on her, especially on high priced designer clothes. When her geriatric lover falls asleep, she slips down to the hotel bar in hopes of meeting a dashing gentleman closer to her age for a little birthday affair. That's when she meets an unsophisticated bar tender and assumes that he's a wealthy patron of the hotel, which he only happily obliges.

It's painful to watch as she takes advantage of him for all he's worth. Hilarious, but painful. Had the movie continued on that track, I would've been bored with it, but there comes a vital twist that completely saved the movie for me and put it on a different track which kept me interested all the way through the end.

At first, I didn't like seeing my beloved Audrey playing such a shallow materialistic woman who pushes away true love in favor of the lavish lifestyle her older suitors provide. But this being Audrey, she does soften into the sweet lady I suspect of her (is she an actress or is she playing herself? My favourite role of hers remains "God is Great...and I'm Not" in which she plays a spiritual seeker who has a tendency to get more into her boyfriend's religion than he's interested in).

The part of the film that truly floored me was when her old suitor desires to get to know more about her and asks personal questions, like where she's from originally. When she said, "Saint Brieuc" I about fell out of my chair! I had never heard of that town in the region of Bretagne (Brittany) until a French submarine chief I became friends with in 1992 invited me to spend a weekend at his home to meet his wife and infant daughter. Brittany had never been on my list of places to visit in France, but that's what friendships do. My visit means I see a part of the country I never expected to and I loved it. Partly because there were few Americans who traveled to that town in France. He actually lives in a small town (Plerin) outside of Saint Brieuc, where the TGV Atlantique stops.

It also reminded me of when I read Jack Kerouac's "Satori in Paris" in 2001 and was shocked to read that Kerouac had an argument with a French person about the proper pronunciation of "Saint Brieuc" (do you pronounce the "c" at the end or not? French grammar is like that). I had the same argument with my French friend!

Man, of all the towns in France for Audrey's character to be from, I'm in awe that the screenwriters made it Saint Brieuc. It's not a town you'd ever visit if you had only a week or two weeks or even a month to spend in France. I'm glad to know people who live in places I'd never go to on my own initiative, because you get to make cool discoveries by venturing off the unbeaten path. It's a nice town, made even more pleasant to visit by the lack of "ugly American tourists." I've been there in 1992, 1994, and 1997. I'm due for another visit.

When I walked away from the theaters after being charmed by this sweet French film, I also felt a pang in my heart. I've been wanting to visit France again since 1998 during the World Cup games. I don't know when I'll make it back, but I keep hoping someday soon. And even more than that...I wish I could meet Audrey Tautou or even someone like her. She is my ideal of what I find most attractive in a woman. She's someone I would feel comfortable around (not everyone finds her beautiful, she's quirky, she's not interested in a big Hollywood career and won't relocate from Paris, and she values intelligent conversations--just a few tidbits I've learned about her). If I can't meet her, I know that there are women out there who have similar qualities as her.

La femme de mes reves...la belle Audrey Tautou.

If you want to see a film that reflects the tension between a materialistic life without true love versus a life with someone you love who lacks money or a prestigious career, this is the one to see. You'll leave the theater feeling good about life. I know I did. Now, when can I get a ticket for a flight to France to search for my future wife?

The Full Clinton Press

When I arrived home from the Clinton rally and checked my email, I had received a notice from the Clinton campaign that Ambassador Joseph Wilson would be speaking today at PSU from noon until 1:30. To entice turnout, they promised pizza, but I was late and missed out, which was just as well since MAYAs had a group get-together tonight with pizza. I love pizza, but I'm at the age where I'm wanting to eat less of it.

Anyhow, I was shocked by another Clinton campaign event. This one happened in the same room where Chelsea Clinton spoke two weeks ago. And I even saw three familiar faces from the rally last night. I guess I know who's serious about the Clinton campaign.

I had my own reasons to want to see this one. Again, I have a personal connection (I'm telling you, it's the whole "Six Degrees of Me" thing--forget Kevin Bacon!). In 1997, when I served a year in the Naval Reserves, I had to do my two week duty at a joint military base in Vaihingen, Germany (near Stuttgart). In fact, I only did a year in the reserves for a free trip to Germany (shameless, I know). They put us up in a nice hotel (four stars, I think; with restaurant and pool). Besides working every day doing whatever lame work they passed on to reservists, I happened to be there during Ambassador Wilson's last week. I had talked to him then because he had once served as a staff member for Congressman Gore and he had a career as a diplomat, which was something I was very interested in at the time. The way I saw it, Joseph Wilson had THE CAREER I had hoped to have for myself...including serving in various African nations. So, I sought his advice in what direction I needed to take, as well as to learn his opinions of what Gore was like to work for since that was my goal.

I had forgotten about him in the years since until 2004 when he came out with his book, "The Politics of Truth." I bought it and skimmed through it, shocked to come across a paragraph where he mentioned serving as the ambassador at CINC in Germany, which jogged my memory that this was indeed the guy I had met then. When I met him in 1997, I didn't realize then that he was the same guy who was famous for being the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein prior to the first Gulf War. Because of him, I'm "two degrees separated from Saddam Hussein" (see how small and connected our world is?).

Now, he's famous for being the victim of a petty administration with a vendetta against anyone who exposed their lies leading up to the war in Iraq. He was the one who went to Niger to investigate the claims that Saddam had sought yellow-cake uranium to use in nuclear weapons. When he wrote an essay "What I Didn't Find in Africa", the Administration made him an example to strike fear into any government employee what will happen if they speak the truth. Wilson's wife was exposed as a CIA operative, which is illegal. Even George H.W. Bush is on record for saying that people who expose CIA agents are traitors, the lowest of the low, not fit to be Americans. Hmmm...I wonder if he still thinks that after his son has allowed it to happen, and all for petty reasons.

Ambassador Wilson spoke in a Q & A type session, in which he started with pre-written questions about the whole scandal involving his wife. Even though I don't agree with the CIA, I still think that exposing an agent who was working to keep our nation secure from terrorism was a criminal act that deserves no less than the death penalty. And that it was done for purely political reasons of petty revenge because her husband exposed a lie is beyond treason. There's truly nothing lower than what the Bush regime did to Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame.

This being a political event sponsored by the Clinton campaign, Wilson spoke about Clinton and why she's better than Obama in terms of experience. When we came in, we were given note cards in which to write questions. They didn't ask my question, unfortunately, but when I heard the questions asked, they all related to his views on Hillary regarding how she'd act as president in foreign policy issues. Of course, I should've known that. My question was: "What are the chances that President Bush and Vice President Cheney will be brought up on criminal charges after they leave the White House?" It wasn't asked by the questioner, but Wilson said something in a long-winded answer to another question that basically answered mine. The answer to his question pretty much hit the jackpot with me in why I will most likely switch my vote to Hillary Clinton in the Oregon primary on May 20th.

Joseph Wilson with his wife, Valerie Plame

Basically, what Wilson said is that when Hillary is president, she will send a group of envoys to the capitals of the world to deliver a personal message along the lines of: "the era of cowboy diplomacy is over. The America you loved is back. And if you have any cause to investigate acts of war crimes committed by the previous administration, we will not stand in your way."

When he said that, I got chills up and down my spine. That's the answer I wanted to hear. I can understand why Hillary might not want to be so public with it, but something needs to be done. We simply cannot let the Bush Administration get away with their crimes, especially since President Clinton was impeached for lying about a sexual affair while other presidents (always Republican ones) have walked into history with their reputations in tact. This cannot stand, especially when Bush has been the worst of all the presidents we've had so far.

I could see Ambassador Wilson being Hillary's Secretary of State (Bill Richardson has pretty much kissed off his chances of becoming Secretary of State or Vice President if Hillary is the Democratic nominee). And I'm willing to bet that Wesley Clark will be Hillary's Secretary of Defense.

After the official questions (read from cards) were over, a couple people got to ask questions outright, and one guy pressed Wilson on Hillary's claim to be under sniper fire in Bosnia when videos showed otherwise. Wilson proved himself to be ever the diplomat, claiming not to have seen the video footage and saying that all briefings for anyone going into Bosnia had expressed the possibility of sniper fire, which could've confused her. I don't buy it and neither did the guy who asked the question, but Ambassador Wilson was the wrong person to press on that issue.

When the session was over, I got his autograph on my copy of his book. I've been wanting to read it these past few years, but I knew that his wife would have hers, so I wanted to read them one after the other. I still haven't bought hers, but it looks to be a lot funnier (because it has many words blacked out on purpose). I also told him that we had met during his last week at Vaihingen, Germany. I can't believe that was eleven years ago.

And man, I'm on a roll. Thursday began a chain of amazing personal connections coming to the fore. I'll try to get to what I did on Thursday evening (a booksigning by an aunt-in-law of my friend Matt Baker) and Friday evening (an awesome movie featuring my favourite actress whom I'd love to meet). I hope this continues on a frequent basis over the upcoming week. I love being connected in this small world of ours. And I'm really impressed by how active the Clintons are in winning my vote. This is why I love a competitive primary. The Clintons want my vote and are earning it through their easy connectivity, while Obama doesn't need my vote. Honestly, I don't mind being subjected to the "full Clinton press."

Finally, After All These Years...

Photo taken by a photographer for the Oregonian. Clinton speaking at Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon

Finally...after all these years, I got to meet the man, the superstar, the legend, BILL CLINTON. The former president went on a six-stop swing through Oregon today, with Portland being his final stop. What made the whole thing even more personal is that Lincoln High School was selected as the venue, which is not only within walking distance of my apartment, but also where my brother works as a custodian. It seems like fate played a hand, for as soon as I heard that he was scheduled to appear there, I registered on the Hillary Clinton website.
The two photos here were taken on my cell phone camera. I didn't bring my regular camera because I had expected a thorough secret service screening (like when I went to Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia in 2004 to attend Sunday School taught by former president Jimmy Carter). There wasn't any secret service screening, however...but they were present all around. That's okay, though, since I have ten rolls of film to develop and don't know when I'll get around to them, and I'll only add more rolls with my upcoming Memorial Day retreat in scenic Coeur d'Alene and Spokane. The photos below were taken from a Google search.

I arrived at 3:30 pm and there was already a line, but it only grew longer and longer. I caught my brother just as he was getting off his shift to clean the building especially nice for the president. As we waited in line, there were assorted people with signs that weren't friendly towards Hillary, and one old guy showed up with his "Impeach Bush/Cheney" sign and he just started yelling at people, accusing the women in line that the only reason they're voting for Hillary is because "she has ovaries" like them. He was a vocal Obama supporter, but he was so angry. And crazy. He kept accidentally kicking his bottle (Arizona Tea, but everyone suspected it contained booze), then getting even more angry. That's what mental illness looks like.

When 5:30 came with no sign of them letting us in the building, some people started grumbling. But I knew better. As an intern, Clinton was over an hour late for the official photograph with the interns. I almost want to say that we waited for two hours, but I can't remember how late he was. I didn't expect any different. When I heard people complain after an hour had passed, I simply said that the reason why he's late is because he likes to shake as many hands and meet as many people as he can. It's a good thing, and with us being his last stop, there was a chance that he'd stay even longer.

When we finally got into the gymnasium, my brother wanted to sit on the bleachers, but I wanted to stand on the floor as close to the podium as possible. As I moved around for a better view, I saw a group of chairs with reserved seating signs on them. Two of them had my name on them. I was SHOCKED! It couldn't be? I had registered online because I thought we all had to, but maybe I ended up reserving seats? It was the VIP section, made up of teachers and school administrators, who my brother knew. They were shocked to see him sitting there and questioned us as to why we were there, but my name was on the sign and I was claiming my seat. It was great luck, for I was in the second row and I knew from personal experience that Clinton nearly always stays afterwards to meet the folks. I was in a prime spot to meet him.

To pep up the audience, a perky young Clinton campaign staff member threw some t-shirts (like at a sporting event). She was fantastic and knew how to play with the audience. She also wanted everyone to text a message to the campaign (a trick to acquire cell phone numbers). What enticed everyone to do it was that the Clinton campaign staff member said that she'd call someone at random for a private meeting with Clinton before he came to the podium. It was fun to watch who the lucky person was (some guy in the bleachers). Then she did it again for those who didn't do it the first time and wanted another chance. A lucky lady in the bleachers got the call. Darn! I so wanted that.

When Clinton finally came to the podium, he was two hours late, but that was okay. He spoke for an hour, with a few jokes (such as the trouble his daughter caused when she had said to a reporter that she believes her mom would be a better president than her father). He spoke without notes, and in depth on the economy, energy, health care, no child left behind, and college. He said that he likes to read blogs (so I hope he finds this one). He also said that Hillary would be like JFK in making alternative energy solution her "first man on the moon by decade's end challenge." As much as I like Obama, I'm still waiting for specifics, and he's in danger of losing my vote to Hillary...because economic issues and jobs are my prime focus. Clintonomics works. Obama is unknown and untested in that area, so as much as I like his ideas, passion, and hope for change, I'm interested in specifics. And, of course, I'm still nostalgic for the Clinton years. This event only helped remind me of that. Plus, they've been very good to me, so why not? But I'll discuss my thoughts on the campaign in a later post.

Back to the rally. During the speech, Clinton looked in my direction several times and I thought we made eye contact. I had worn my Gore 2000 sweatshirt to stand out in the crowd, with a Hillary campaign button over the "O" in "Gore." After the speech, he worked the line around the podium (we were blocked off by a barrier on three sides). I was on one side in the second row and moved in closer to wait for the moment when he made his way around to our side. It took long enough, but he was shaking hands with several people, while people were all trying to get his attention to say something, while still others handed him slips of paper or books for him to sign. I was greedy...for I wanted all three: handshake, to say something to him, and to get his autograph on a colour photocopy of my picture with Vice President Gore (see the post on April 22nd...it was that photo).

When he did come around to my side, I did manage to shake his hand twice, and then he accepted my photocopy (to sign later and return)...then I got his attention. I told him, "I interned in your administration in 2000." He seemed intrigued so he asked where I worked, and I told him for Vice President Gore and that it was the greatest experience of my life. He then asked where I worked now. I told him, but by then, other people were clamouring for his attention. It was just as well. Sure, I'd love to talk longer (I had wanted to ask if he had any jobs available in his Foundation for an International Politics major), but a lot of people didn't get any moment with him and here I was, getting the three things I wanted. How did I get so lucky?

The Clintons on Inauguration Day, 20 January 1997 for the second term.

How did I get so lucky? I think it was destined. Why? Because when I woke up this morning, I just felt that everything would go as planned. I trusted "the universe" to make it happen. Why? Because of good karma. The Clintons and me go way back. To 1992. I walked through fire for them. No, not literal fire...but fire of a flack sort.

You see, back in 1992, I was in the Navy. I had supported Senator Bob Kerrey in the primary because he was governor when I lived in Nebraska and was one of the politicians who got me interested in politics at an early age. When Kerrey dropped out, I moved my support to Jerry ("Governor Moonbeam") Brown. When Jerry Brown dropped out, I moved my support to Ross Perot. Clinton didn't win my support until he chose Senator Al Gore as his running mate. When he made that decision, I was so impressed because it showed what a smart decision maker and an unconventional one Clinton was. Usually, candidates pick running mates that contrast differently, for geographic, age demographic, and other balance. That he chose a politician younger than him and from a neighboring Southern state signalled that he was a new kind of politician. And who could forget all the comparisons to JFK and that famous photograph of the teenage Clinton shaking hands with President Kennedy. It was a symbolic and powerful photo. But the photo I most liked was taken in my hometown of Stone Mountain, Georgia for the primary. He was talking with an expressive heavy-set black woman and looked very comfortable with her, which impressed me. Plus it was my hometown!

So I became an enthusiastic supporter. And I was in the Navy at the time. If there were any other Clinton supporters on my ship, I never met them. Some might have been more discrete about who they voted for, but I was definitely outspoken and caught a lot of flack for it. What made it worse is that guys in the Navy thought if you supported Clinton, it could only be for one reason and one reason only: you agreed with his plan to allow gays to serve openly in the Navy...which in Navy thinking means that you could only be gay. Thus, the "logic" of "Clinton voter = gay." But I didn't care. That issue didn't matter to me. Like Carville and Stephanopoulos said, "it's the economy, stupid." Even more than that, it was the unfair character attacks on Clinton, his wife, daughter, and mother. The election of 1992 showed the ugly side of Republicans...that they had nothing inspiring to offer the American people in a second term for Bush, so they had to tear down Clinton in any way possible...including his family in the attacks. The nastiness turned me off from Republicans (not that I ever was tempted to vote that way).

When Clinton won, since I was living overseas, I woke up early to watch the results on CNN. I had gotten only a few hours sleep, but I was so ecstatic that he won. I walked around the ship with an extra bounce in my step. And I noticed that no one shared my exuberant joy. The mood was so gloomy, that it felt like someone had died. People thought it was the end of the Navy, that sailors would start coming out of the closet and homosexuality would run rampant in the berthing. I thought the fear bordered on mass paranoia. Unfortunately, my outspoken support for Clinton did cause a couple sailors to reveal to me their true nature, which made me very uncomfortable. I didn't want to be the priest they confessed to, nor the guy they thought they had a chance with.

While I lived in Sardinia, Clinton visited Nettuno, Italy for the 50th anniversary of America's involvement in World War II. And he spent time on the USS George Washington in June 1994 for the D-Day anniversary. I reported on board that ship just five months later. Our timing was off, but it was interesting that we have that ship in common and that he visited Italy while I lived there. In 1996, I got out of the Navy and my first job was in AmeriCorps (a program he started), which lasted only a couple months (I decided to quit because the group I was in was more interested in smoking marijuana than working and there were some race-related issues that I hated). Later on that year, Clinton came to Atlanta for several Olympic events (again, our paths didn't quite cross, even though I attended several Olympic events).

In 1997, when I started BYU, one of the political cartoons in the school's newspaper, the Daily Universe, featured a guy in a panicked call to his mother over his roommate, who was hanging a banner that said, "Clinton's not all bad." It told me exactly the kind of loneliness I would have to expect at BYU. Not only was I not Mormon, but also a Democrat. Two major strikes against me! In January 1998, I first heard about the Monica scandal when an article in BYU's newspaper reported it. But because I didn't believe them, I dismissed it until I got home and watched CNN. The whole scandal consumed most of the year. I was distracted from my studies as I became obsessed with the scandal and every new detail. His August, non-apology confession was "must-see" TV moment for me, but I was angered by his lack of contrition. However, the Ken Starr Report angered me even more (I confess to reading it, but it only had the effect of making me more supportive of Clinton as I saw it as an invasion of privacy and a miscarriage of justice). And as I waited in the airport for my flight home for Christmas vacation in 1998, I was saddened when I saw that the Republican Congress had decided to impeach him. His lying over a personal affair hardly constituted "high crimes and misdemeanors." Censure was more than enough punishment, although his predecessors Bush, Reagan, and Nixon told far worse lies to the American people and to Congress, but weren't impeached for it.

When I interned in his administration in 2000, I finally saw him in person when he gave a speech at the Library of Congress. But I was on the balcony looking down. He didn't forget the folks up in the balcony area, as he looked up at us to acknowledge our presence and wave to us, which I thought was a class act. In that moment, I understood why people felt a deep connection to him. He's a pro at that. It's an ability I wish that I had, but he's way beyond what even other politicians have (Obama is the only one who comes closest, I think). Then next time I saw him was at the end of the semester for the intern photograph. I was just out of reach from shaking his hand after the event.

Now, eight years later, I've been blessed in spades. A handshake, an autograph, and a short conversation. What more could I ask for? He's truly a remarkable president and human being. My loyalty has paid off. As Jenet's friend Nesh often called me...I guess I'm a true "Clintonista." But I'm more like Forrest Gump. I have these moments. However, why is it easier for me to meet famous people, including two former presidents of the United States, but I still can't seem to manifest a better paying job in my chosen field of international politics? I'm hoping Clinton's magic charm rubbed off on me when he shook my hand and this will be the start of something amazing. But today was a great day. Any day in politics is a great day for a wonk-wannabe like me.

My Version of Edvard Munch's "the Scream"

So, this is me at work, being overwhelmed with stress and about to take off my glasses to fling at the manager who was walking around shooting candids with a digital camera and got me before I could duck.

Behind me is the wall of files, which if an earthquake were to hit, I'm sure I'd be buried beneath piles of paper, slowly bleeding to death from a thousand paper cuts.

Just a little humour to brighten your Friday. Remember...no stress today. Also, no in depth post. I'm taking a much needed break.

How John Branam Lost My Support

John Branam and the city he hopes to help lead as one of the four City Commissioners

After a few weeks of pondering my thoughts on a local campaign, I've decided to drop my support for John Branam in his pursuit of one of the Portland City Council seats. As much as I like his resume, life experience, and views, I'm a big campaign finance reform person (having researched the issue to write my final paper on it for the Washinton Seminar program in 2000) and for weeks have been disturbed by John Branam's spending of the public financing he had received for the City Council race.

Portland passed a campaign financing plan which allows anyone to run for local elections (Mayor or City Council) if they can get 1,000 signatures with each person donating $5 each. Once qualified, as verified by a city auditor, they receive approximately $150,000 for a city council race or $200,000 for the mayor's race. In the mayor's race, Commissioner Sam Adams opted out of it, viewing it as a conflict of interest since he was one of the main advocates for passing such a plan. That means he has to raise money from supporters to fund his campaign. That takes a lot of time away from campaigning, plus the pain of having to ask for money all the time. But it's better than his opponent, Sho Dozono, who qualified for campaign financing but recently lost it due to his not reporting that he had been the recipient of a $27,000 poll, which counts as an "in-kind contribution." Now Dozono has to fundraise from his supporters.

But the city council races include several candidates who qualify for financing. John Branam is one of them. However, one of the first things he did when he received the money is to pay his campaign manager $25,000 for TWO MONTHS WORK! Can you say "boondoggle"? I was deeply offended by that. The way I see it, no one should get rich working on a campaign. Campaign staff should get a reasonable wage, but $25,000 for two months work, especially on a low-level campaign in a large field of candidates is beyond reasonable. Not even the campaign manager of the Sam Adams campaign gets paid that much! The whole thing smacks of political back-scratching. I expected better of John Branam, but honestly, I based my support on what he wrote on his website (http://www.john4pdx.org/about_john/interview).

What else has he done with his money once the check cleared the bank? Well, he bought specially-made fortune cookies with a slip inside that says something like "you'll have a great city commissioner in your future" with his website address. Besides being cheesy, can you say "wasteful spending"? Spending public finance money on gimmicks is offensive to anyone who cares about the way we finance elections. He's also paid for print ads in the alternative weekly newspaper "Willamette Weekly" (the only candidate to have such ads) and bought campaign buttons (much larger than the ones for Sam Adams, which I had helped press together). Nothing wrong with print ads and campaign buttons, for that's traditional campaign fare. But I like what "Willamette Weekly" said about John Branam's spending habits: he's "spending like a teenage clotheshorse with daddy's credit card." In fact, he has already spent $80,000, more than twice the amount each of his four opponents have.

Do we want that in a City Commissioner? I sure as hell don't.

Perhaps my distaste is due to personal reasons. He's younger than me, and while he admitted at a candidates forum to having over $100,000 in Law School loan debt, he still managed to buy a home and get a nice job with the Portland Public Schools as an executive. Here I am in a city full of nothing but low wage jobs, trying to find a living wage career in my field of interest (anything international, city/state/metro government, or university). There seems to be some backscratching going on. I'm curious to know how much of the campaign finance money pays for salaries of his staff. Had he paid a modest amount to his campaign manager, I suppose I'd still be a supporter, but in the interest of public integrity, this pay-off strikes as a major ethical lapse. And if a candidate commits an ethical lapse in a campaign, will he have the strong sense of integrity to refuse money from lobbyists and special interests when he's a commissioner? Or will he ensure that his friends get plum salaried jobs, while this city continues to slug along in low wages?

In a crowded field of plenty of good candidates, I've decided that in spite of John Branam's impressive life history and views (I especially like his Peace Corps service in South Africa and his admiration of Nelson Mandela), I cannot in good conscience support his campaign to be Sam Adams' replacement as City Commissioner, no matter how good of a buddy he is to the candidate I wholeheartedly endorse, support, and volunteer for: Sam Adams. Ethical campaign spending is just too important an issue for me to ignore in this race.

So, in his stead, I am looking into supporting Jeff Bissonnette for City Commissioner. From what little I know of him, he claims to have fought with Enron over power issues, so that's a huge inticement for me to support his candidacy. Anyone who saw through Enron's energy manipulation scheme is exactly the kind of person I want on city council. But, I'm not ready to endorse any candidate for city council until I further investigate their views, plans, and meet them in person (I did meet John Branam once and then saw him at the Retrofits concert flirting with all kinds of women, and got the impression that he's a bit too slick and shallow for my tastes).

Branam is a sharp guy, though, and I still believe that he has a future in politics. I might even vote for him at a future date and could even see him running for Congress (I'd prefer him over my current congressman, David Wu, who had supposedly date-raped a lady when he was in college), but for election to Portland City Council, I cannot overlook the way he has spent the public money allocated to his campaign. If he financed his campaign through fundraising, he can pay his campaign manager however much he wants...but when it comes to public finance, accountability matters...especially to a person who has desired a living wage job for awhile now. It gives me the impression that the only way to a better paying job in this city is through your buddies who can hook you up, regardless of your resume, experience, and knowledge.

Disturbing Data

No, not you, my readers...but the Democrats who might defect to McCain if their preferred Democrat doesn't win the nomination. Read on for this disturbing data...

Hillary once again manages to pull a miraculous win to keep her in the game while Obama loses yet another of the "big states" which casts doubts on his ability to "close the deal."

I admit that he seemed off his game during the debate. He looked tired and hesitated on a lot of questions as he sought words to say. Granted, he was barraged by trivial fluff, which Hillary was only happy to pile on. The interesting thing about her bringing up the Reverent Wright issue (and even raising the spectre of Louis Farrakhan) is what Obama does not say. When Hillary and Bill were having marital problems in the wake of President Clinton's August confession that he did indeed "have an inappropriate relationship" with THAT woman (Ms. Lewinsky), one of the religious leaders who came to counsel them was Reverent Jeremiah Wright!

But moving on...the data that disturbs me most is hearing pollsters say that there is a substantial number of Hillary supporters who will vote for the Republican nominee John McCain if Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee! Likewise, there is also a significant number of Obama supporters who will defect towards the Republicans if Hillary is the nominee. When I heard that, I wanted to say, "whoa, there! Are you out of your flippin' mind?" You have to know that the blowhard Rush is laughing pounds off of his fat ass over the Democratic will towards self-destruction. He's loving every minute of this when he's not on his OxyContin high.

What's wrong with Democrats? The thing about Republicans is that they are so obedient and desirous of winning that they'd vote for Satan if he was their party's nominee for president. They've proven time again that when the choice comes down between their values and a winning candidate with major flaws, they choose the flawed candidate over their "pure morals" every time.

Not so with the Democrats. If the Democratic nominee combs his hair wrong, they'll sanctimoniously vote for the likes of Nader than vote for the Democratic candidate, knowing full well that the Republican candidate is FAR WORSE than the Democratic candidate. That's why the Democrats lose election after election. We don't have the loyalty that the Republicans have in their obedient followers.

To further illustrate the craziness of these fickle Democratic voters...we've had 42 WHITE MALE presidents. This year, the Republican party has about 12 WHITE MALE candidates to be the nomination, many of them pretty near retirement age. On the other hand, the Democrats had viable hispanic, female, and African American candidates. The Democrats offer a chance to really break with the tradition. And sore losers of either candidate would rather vote for the opposition candidate rather than their Democratic rival? Do they understand what that means?

It means we end up with a President who will continue Bush's disasterous agenda in foreign policy and domestic policy. It means we'll never get a chance to see justice served with federal investigations of all the crimes committed in the past eight years. No IRS audits of Halliburton, KBR, Bechtel, and Blackwater executives. We'll get more of the same. Granted, John McCain is an honorable man and certainly would be more competent than Bush could ever dream of being. But he's still a Republican and Republicans have no interest investigating one of their own, and Bush's legacy depends entirely on the outcome of his war in Iraq, which McCain has promised to continue for the next century. Also, we'd end up having WHITE MALE PRESIDENT #43 after an election of major historic proportions.

So Democrats need to get over themselves and vote for the Democratic nominee in the fall. While I'm still intending to vote for Obama next month, I'm happy to vote for either of them in the fall...and this is coming from a guy who remains (now and forever) a Gore loyalist. Either candidate would be worlds better than another Republican president. And besides, who can resist a vote for the history books? I'm excited about having our next president break the mold in terms of race or gender.

Other "disturbing data" I've heard about this week include the price of gasoline on the day Bush was sworn into office: $1.47 a gallon; and that the Veteran's Administration claimed that only 800 war veterans have attempted suicide last year (when the actual number was 12,000). First, the gasoline price...it represents a 200% increase in seven years. Very few salaries have jumped that much (I'm making the wage level I made in 1996, which was liveable back then when I had zero debt and owned my car). One of the things I liked that Hillary said in the debate was that she intends to launch an investigation into the price manipulation of gasoline and go after those who have profited over the windfall.

As for the number of attempted suicides...does 12,000 seem like a lot? We now know that 300,000 veterans are suffering from PTSD. That the Veteran's Administration would decrease the number of suicide attempts from 12,000 to 800 seems like they are afraid of data, whatever that data indicates. It's a disturbing number, for sure, but we already know that we have an administration full of chicken hawks who love to claim patriotism and send people's children off to war even though none of them served in war themselves (Cheney being the prime example with his record FIVE deferments). They can wear all the American flag lapel pins they want, but it doesn't change the truth of their lies and cowardice. For all their tough talk, they don't have to face the still, small voice of their conscience that speaks out against the atrocities our soldiers have to live with. No, they can't be bothered with the facts that 12,000 war veterans wanted to end their lives last year. For me, I want to know why. It should be our national leaders committing suicide for the shame they should feel over their ruinous policies and incompetent failures, not our soldiers--many of whom joined to see the world, get money for college, because they couldn't find other jobs in our lousy economy, or to escape their hometowns for whatever reason. Why should they pay the high price for a war that has only enriched the likes of Cheney and company?

It is my sincere hope that as Americans make choices on who to vote for the next president, that they will think very seriously about the past seven years and the disturbing trends we've seen. We can't afford to continue with the same old policies whether its in regards to war, economics, health care, jobs, trade, or energy. And Democrats who vote Republican in November just because their choice for the nominee might not be on the ballot should just go ahead and join that disaster of a party. They deserve one another.

A few years ago, a well meaning church member was baffled why I'm a Democrat. She couldn't fathom why any Christian could be anything other than a Republican. Without going into detail about all the reasons why I'm a Democrat (as my friends know, I'd rather be dead than be a Republican), I simply told her: "I never vote against my own economic interests." A party of crusty, rich, old materialistic people simply does not have my economic interest at heart. They couldn't care less if people like me floundered as they preached the false propaganda of "our meritocratic system" in which you too can be rich if you work hard enough! And that's the biggest problem with Americans. Too many have been duped into voting against their own economic interests and that's why we're in the economic crisis we're just beginning to enter.

And folks, it's only going to get worse. Look at the data. There are no positive numbers to be found. We owe the impending economic crisis to the borrow and spend policies of Republican presidents and it simply takes a Democrat to turn that around because Democrats can't afford to have unsound economic policy. The spectre of the malaise of the Carter years haunts all Democrats from acting like Hoover-Bush Republicans.

For me, Hillary or Obama...it's all good! I'm thinking that they have no choice but to form one ticket for the sake of the party (with Hillary at the top of the ticket). At least when all is said and done, we can say it was the most interesting election of our lifetime. Especially if our next president does break the mold of "white and male" that's been with us since our nation's founding. We're living in the Twenty-first century, so it's about time we behave like the enlightened people our ancestors imagined of us. Whaddaya say, eh?

The Best Day of My Life

Earlier this month, I wrote a post about the saddest day of my life. It's interesting to me that just 11 days after that day, I would be blessed with the single greatest day of my life. That happened on April 22, 2000, which is better known as the thirtieth anniversary of Earth Day. It was also the day that Vice President Gore met with his 15 interns for that semester (two of them had already left, which they probably regretted. It pays to stick around!).

After walking around the room shaking each of our hands, he sat down at the table and I happened to be in the prime location directly across the table from him. He said a few words before opening it up for questions. Again, by pure happenstance, he picked me to ask the last question, so I did.

My question was: "I read in the Washington Post this year that as a young man, you had dreams of becoming a novelist someday and I was wondering if you still have an interest in that?"

He looked at me and the first thing he said to me was a question of his own: "You ask that question because you're interested in being a writer yourself, right?"

I was shocked. It was like he looked into my eyes and saw my soul's deepest desire. Of course, you could also say that he's a super smart guy who can easily figure out a person's interests by the type of questions they ask. He went on to talk about his book "Earth in the Balance" making some joke that it wasn't fiction, and while he did enjoy writing, his main priority was to become our next president.

Why did I ask that question? Because when I read a feature article on Gore in the Washington Post earlier in the semester, I was thrilled to see that as a young man he had the same conflicting desires that I was facing at the time (and still do): a political career or a writing career. My goal at the time was to work in his administration for the full term (whether it was four or eight years) before launching into a writing career. Of course, we all know what happened that November.

In my depression over the election results, I started work on the novel that was conceived in November 1989. I finished it four years later and have been seeking an agent for it ever since. I can't believe that a full eight year presidential term will come to an end before I get a literary agent, a publishing contract, and the novel in bookstores. Maybe we are in this strange place where Bush was never supposed to be president, so that's why I've been floundering in nightmare jobs for so long. I'm hoping that when Bush is gone, the spell will be broken and my dream life will manifest.

With that question he asked of me replaying in my mind that day, I left the Old Executive Office Building for the last time. Gore had to run off to the Earth Day gathering on the National Mall which was hosted by Leonardo DiCaprio. I met with Jenet...and unfortunately her friend Nesh, a Bosnian Serb that I ended up staying with for the month of May. We walked around the Mall area as Third Eye Blind played on stage. The whole day took on a magical air, mostly because of the meeting with Gore for the last time. Just him and his interns. Had I not planned to make a career in D.C., I might've left like the other BYU interns when our seminar ended and I would've missed out on the whole thing. But I was still working on the final paper (on campaign finance reform--which I'll write on soon) to turn in to Professor Fry. And I was looking for jobs. But mostly, I knew I would remain in D.C. through June 24th because I'd have to go to Williamsport to fulfill my best man duties. Had that not happened, I most likely would've left D.C. after Memorial Day weekend.

In retrospect, that Earth Day on April 22, 2000 represented the highpoint of my year. It has been a steady and long descent ever since. I've had a few peaks in the years between, but nothing near as close to what I felt that day. As Leonardo would shout...I felt like I was "King of the World!" on that day. God had answered a prayer of mine for direction (writing career or political career?) by using as His mouthpiece a national public figure who didn't know me from the next intern.

So those of you who never liked Gore or didn't like him at the time...do you know understand why I'm such a huge disciple? He has been the politician I have admired the most since the early 1990s, a truly visionary person, and one who recognized my true ambition in a room of interns. He made a different choice when he was younger and it got him to the second highest position in our land. Perhaps his writing career would've went no where. But at least his daughter Kristin has published two hilarious novels of her own. Now it's time to focus exclusively on my goals. After all, my working life is going nowhere. I'm working in a place where career goals commit suicide. Life is more than that.

I hope you have a Happy Earth Day! If you haven't seen "An Inconvenient Truth" yet, make today the special day to watch it. I certainly will be watching it again (my annual tradition), to renew my inspiration and dedication for environmentally responsible living. Mother Earth depends on our commitment to leave no footprints behind!

Why I Love Pennsylvania

On Tuesday, after three weeks of no primaries (who scheduled that?!?), Pennsylvania voters finally get to make their choice known for the Democratic nominee. We'll see if the controversial statements of the Reverent Jeremiah Wright or the "bitter" speech has doomed the Obama campaign from the working class folks of Pennsylvania. Or will hope for a better future endure as voters ignore the questions about flag lapel pins and distant associations with former radical groups to vote for the economy and jobs?

As this comes to a head, I wanted to post on why I love the state of Pennsylvania. I lived there for my second grade year (the best year in elementary school) and I contemplating moving there in 2000. It's probably in my top five favourite states because it has so much history, great scenery, and in one of the best geographical spots in our country. It is known as "the Keystone State", because without it, our country couldn't have survived the early days of independence. If you've never been there, it is one state every American should visit.

Here's why I love this state:

My dad attended Penn State University for a year (1979-1980) as part of his ROTC program before becoming an officer in the U.S. Air Force. We lived in an apartment in State College, with a swimming pool and a basketball court, which I took full advantage of. The apartment was like a model U.N., as I remember talking with a Japanese lady and I resented the dirty children from Sudan who loved to steal shopping carts to push around a dusty field nearby.

What I remember most about this year is how beautiful the leaves were in the month of October, and our trips to Washington, D.C., New York City, Bar Harbor ME, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Quebec City. I especially loved Bar Harbor and Quebec City. When I think back to how much we traveled in that one year in Pennsylvania, I think that's where my love of traveling first formed. It was the most travel I remember doing by that point of my life (though I had seen Thailand earlier).

In school, our class had a pretend trip to California, in which we arranged the classroom to resemble a train. Half the students were passengers and the other half played the roles of conductor, ticket taker, engineer, and baggage handler. We learned about states in our "journey" across the United States. When we "arrived" in California, we learned about cowboy songs and frontier life (okay, that's not how we picture California, but the whole point of the "pretend trip" was to learn about states and the old west). It was the best year in elementary school because of the imagination it inspired in me (of travelling across country) as well as the significant friends I made: Sharon Dunn (who became my first penpal when my family moved to Hill AFB, Utah in May 1980) and an exchange student from Pakistan: Khoram. I think I was his only friend in that class, for other ethnicities didn't faze me much. Probably because no one could figure out mine. We were two outsiders in a predominately white area.

In June 2000, I went to Williamsport to fulfill my best man duties at Nathan Hagman's wedding to Lisa Hudecek, who was from Williamsport (though they met in Bremerton, Washington when both worked at the Naval hospital there). This gave me opportunity to see the town when I went up early to make arrangements for the bachelor's party and floral arrangement that would go on the hood of their car. The population of the town was 30,000, which I've long considered to be the ideal size (Coeur d'Alene also had that population in the 1990s) for a town that I'd live in. I also liked the way the town looked. I did consider moving up here after not finding a job in D.C., but I didn't know what kind of jobs existed. It's a town famous for the Little League World Series and even has a museum devoted to the Little League.

That's me, giving advice to Nathan Hagman at the wedding rehearsal (June 23, 2000). The other guys are his brothers (from left) David, Joel and Andrew.

You might be wondering why we're all dressed like used car salesmen...well, that was part of the gag. I didn't know about it in advance, for I just happened to have brought along a few clothing choices that so do not belong together. When we went to a restaurant for the rehearsal lunch, people stared at us so I said, "don't mind us, we're Mormons!"

A few years later, the gazebo they married under had burned to the ground (along with the whole bed and breakfast place). It was a nice place and I experienced deja vu when my other best friend Nicholas Smith married his sweetheart last year in a bed and breakfast with gazebo in Illinois.

So, I can't live in Williamsport anyway. The site is too sacred for me to ever go back.

My favourite Billy Joel song is "Allentown"...which is a town in Pennsylvania. I've never been there but it's one of the places on my list. Not that I expect to see anything interesting, but I love seeing as much of America as I can. I'm always able to find something interesting in every place that I visit. Plus, it would be nice to have a visual for whenever I hear this excellent song.

In 2000, on my drive between Washington, D.C. and Williamsport PA, I stopped in Harrisburg for the specific purpose of touring the state capitol. My goal is to visit all 50 of them (I think I've been to 12 so far). This is one of the nicer ones (I love the green tiled dome). I'd certainly trade it for the lame one Oregon has.

Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Sacred in U.S. history where the Declaration of Independence was discussed, argued, and voted on. I've been here twice, once as a kid, and the second time during my internship in D.C. as one of our two field trips. What was different the second time was the addition of a museum with a video presentation (though the video was very cheesy and should be updated). Philadelphia is one of those cities where you can spend just one day in, as the most interesting part is in a small area. It serves as an excellent place to launch out to other locations like Valley Forge, Pennsylvania Dutch Country in Lancaster County, and Gettysburg.

After lunch in Philadelphia, our BYU Washington Seminar group went to Lancaster County to learn about the Amish, the Mennonites, and (drum-roll, please) Amish-Mennonites. We toured an actual Amish farm and were advised not to take pictures of the Amish (though my roommate Jantzen snuck a few shots in like the secret rebel he truly is!) and we visited a touristy market where you can buy goods made by the Amish (and I spotted a very attractive young Amish lady who was probably underage, but two other guys on the program were talking about her too when we got back to the bus, so at least I wasn't the only one who noticed). Best of all was the restaurant we ate at, in which everyone was fed at the same time in a large room. It made me think of being part of a Waltons family reunion.

One thing I learned about the Amish is that you can arrange to do homestays with them, where you live and work among the Amish for a week or so. That's something I'd be very interested in doing, just for the experience of it. There's a lot we can learn from the Amish (such as alternative energy use or living without) but overall, I'm glad that I wasn't born into their community. It's a hard life to live separate from a changing and evolving world.

Finally, Gettysburg. I stole the photo above from Nicholas Smith's website (sorry, Nick!). He's a big Civil War aficionado and has been to many sites connected to that great war between the states. The photo was taken with his then-girlfriend (now wife) Jennifer a few years ago.

I haven't been to Gettysburg since I was a teenager (1985) so I'm due to revisit, because back then, I was only mildly interested in it. I wish I would've appreciated more the historical sites my dad planned as family vacations. But I suppose most people don't appreciate things as teenagers like they should (since we're always worried about what's socially acceptable and cool, which history is mostly not).

My view of Gettysburg is that it's sacred ground. Plans by ignorant developers to open a casino or amusement park near Civil War sites should always be rejected. These parks get enough tourists already, people interested in history. The last thing they need to do is create some amusement to draw even more people in. They won't get interested in history just because they want to gamble at a casino adjacent to the Gettysburg battlefields or visit a specially-themed Civil War-era Disneyland amusement park. Americans need to keep sacred sites sacred. Many men died in battle at Gettysburg (and there are many rumours of ghosts sightings in that area) and the best thing we can do for them is to limit development of anything (casinos, amusement parks, golf courses, mega-mansions, shopping centers, and the like). It should as close to the 1860s as possible.

So, those are just a few of the reasons why I LOVE the great state of Pennsylvania. There is also a big Quaker influence (a cool religion that I'd most likely be a member of if I wasn't Community of Christ) and Benjamin Franklin is a favored "adopted son." And no, that famous statue in Philadelphia is NOT Benjamin Franklin as most people think. It's of the state's founder: William Penn. The state's name means: Penn's Forest. As I've said above, if you've never visited this state before, you must. Between history, scenery, and religious diversity, it truly is one of our country's best states. I wouldn't mind settling there someday if a future job transferred me there. It occupies one of the best locations in the country, as befitting it's nickname as the Keystone State.

Pope Benedict Arnold Schwarzenegger

Today's post title might seem a little odd, but I couldn't help myself. I love joining words and names together in creative ways. It was simply too irresistable to pass up, especially on a day like today. What happened today in history, you ask? Why, the world's most evil tyrant was born: Adolf Hitler. It's hard to imagine how different our world would be today if he hadn't been born. The map of Europe would probably look different. Six million Jews wouldn't have perished. Israel might not have been created. Even the Middle East might've looked different.

And speaking of Hitler, since Pope John Paul II died a few years ago, Cardinal Ratzinger of Germany was selected as the successor (over a Brazilian bishop, whom the Catholic Church should have chosen just for history's sake). He chose Gregory XVI for his official papal name. Though I'm not Catholic, Pope John Paul II was pope for so long, even today, it's hard for me to realize that he's gone. I can't get used to the new guy as pope. No matter what he does, he'll never fill the shoes of the last pope. In fact, what would the 1980s be without Pope John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Mikhail Gorbachev?

One thing disturbing about the current pope was his participation as a Hitler Youth. While it's easy to claim that he had no choice in the matter, conformity and compliance to something that goes against what you believe is hardly the mark of a true leader. And who knows how much of what he was taught was ingrained in him, even if he didn't agree with everything he was taught? He could still retain some of what he was indoctrinated with. And his history as one of the more conservative cardinals seems to hint at his easy comfort with fascist tendencies.

The American media seems to be on a lovefest with the Pope's visit to the U.S. To me, he's just an archaic reminder of a corrupt church that is so far removed from the Christ they claim to be the uninterrupted organization he started on earth. Did Jesus wear silly outfits or ride around in an armored Mercedes "Popemobile" (or "Christmobile")? Of course, these are different times...what with crazy terrorists and easy access to semi-automatic weapons. But, it galls me that people claim that the pope is in the equivalent spot that Jesus would occupy if he were alive on earth today. Somehow, I think Jesus would shun the wealth and power of the Catholic Church in favour of wandering the streets among the downtrodden, humble and simple. He is the opposite of the materialistic Catholic Church (which took wealth from poor countries and built many cathedrals through slave labour).

Moving on from Pope Benedict, I come next to Benedict Arnold, infamous in American history for betraying the Revolution. In fact, not much was taught about him other than that he was a traitor. In history books, that's all he was known for. Which is a shame, because I finally watched the film "Benedict Arnold: A Question of Honor" starring Aidan Quinn as the notorious patriot-turned-loyalist and Kelsey Grammar as George Washington. This movie came out in 2002 and has been in my netflix queue for years. Since I won't be able to see HBO's "John Adams" mini-series until it's on DVD, I decided to watch other films about our Revolutionary War figures. The movie was made for the Arts and Entertainment cable network, so the quality is less than what HBO or a major film production would be. However, it was still pretty good.

What struck me most is that Benedict Arnold was a hero who helped the patriots win key early battles at Saratoga and on Lake Champlain. He even tried to overtake Canada (which only consisted of Montreal and Quebec at the time), as the Americans had hoped it would become the 14th colony to join the rebellion against the British Empire. These days, Canadians joke about Quebec's constant desire for independence would render Canada as the 51st state (not that that's a bad thing!). What caused Benedict Arnold to switch sides were several factors...such as Congress not willing to back pay what he's due, the loss of his shipping business, the promotion of Horatio Gates over him, and his second wife's loyalist tendencies. She apparently told him that the patriots had no chance of winning and if he backed the wrong side, he'd be hung as a traitor. If he switched to the loyalist (royalist), the King would most likely name him as "Viceroy of America." Ego got the better of him and he made arrangements to keep weapons under lock and key at the fortress of West Point (now known as the military academy for the U.S. Army) on the Hudson River. He planned to have General Washington caught unaware at his home when the British moved in for the surprise attack. If the British gained control of the entire Hudson River, it would've most likely ended the Revolution because New England was east of the Hudson and considered the most rebellious. It would've chopped off the head of the American colonies, separating New England from the other colonies.

By divine providence, the patriots captured a British officer (John Andre) who had in his possession a safe passage letter signed by Benedict Arnold. When the message was delivered to General Washington, the treasonous plot was discovered, but Arnold had escaped to the British ship waiting on the Hudson River. The most interesting thing about the whole deal is that Benedict Arnold lived the rest of his days in England, where he was never fully trusted by the British. I guess that's the moral of the history: nobody trusts a traitor, even those on the side you end up joining. He apparently died an unhappy man and was dressed in the bluecoat of the American patriots shortly before he died. Had he not betrayed the patriots, he most likely would've been one of the heroes of our Revolution.

Lastly, we move from Benedict Arnold to Arnold Schwarzenegger, undoubtedly the Republicans wet dream of a presidential candidate. All I can say is thank God for the foresight of the Founding Fathers to not allow foreign born citizens the chance to run for president. Though that might change someday, it requires an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which is one of the most difficult things to change (requiring 2/3rds of the state legislatures to approve--or is it 3/4ths?).

I'm no fan of him because I think the way he came into the governor's office is disturbing. He has personal ties to Enron and it was Enron's manipulation of energy in California that caused the crisis of rolling black outs, high rates, and ultimately a huge dissatisfaction of Governor Gray Davis, who had won reelection by a comfortable margin in 2002. The Republican Party in California has the poor strategy of nominating only the most religiously conservative Republican nominee for Governor, guranteeing a loss each time. Arnold Schwarzenegger could never hope to win the nomination of the Republican party through a primary process in which mostly evangelical and cultural conservatives have a heavy impact. His best way of acquiring office was through a ballot initiative created by progressives called a recall. Ironically, Schwarzenegger was in a 1990 movie called "Total Recall." Coincidence?

It's grossly unfair to blame Governor Gray Davis for the energy crisis that was manipulated by Enron. It wasn't known then, but Enron was in deep financial crisis and shuffled money around to hide their losses from auditors. They saw that the best way to bring in money was to manipulate energy in California to raise rates. Governor Davis might not have been the best governor, but he won a clear majority in his reelection and he wasn't caught doing anything illegal nor was he incompetent. Why he paid the price when more incompetent leaders remain in office (cough, cough, Bush, Cheney, cough, cough) is baffling. But the recall election became such a farce with well over a hundred candidates, including Gary Coleman and Arianna Huffington, a porn star, a college student, and anyone else with money for the filing fee and the ego's need for attention.

So, that's how Schwarzenegger was able to accomplish his dream of becoming governor of Cah-LEE-forn-yah. His fellow Austrians cheered his accomplishment as local boy who made good in America (though a few years later, they removed his name from a sports arena when he wouldn't do away with the death penalty). What's overlooked was that a young Schwarzenegger praised Adolf Hitler as a person he admired. His own father was a member of the Nazi Party and became a member of the SS (Secret Police). Considering the Nazi ideal of superhuman strength, it's no wonder that the steroid-enhanced musclehead like Schwarzenegger is a fan. And despite his liberal cultural views and Democratic wife (Maria Shriver, daughter of JFK's sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver), he is the most popular Republican politician today. If he was born in America, he most likely would've run for president this year. Perhaps if they can get the Constitution changed in time for 2012 or 2016, he might run. But I hope not. The last thing we need is a Nazi-admiring, sexually-harassing, B-actor with a horrible accent as leader of the free world.

Stop-Loss, the Movie and the Concept

Thursday evening, I went to see the film "Stop-Loss" because it was disappearing from theaters due to lack of interested viewers. It's a sad commentary on Americans, but not surprising. EVERY single film regarding the Iraq War has bombed. Even excellent documentaries like "No End in Sight" have failed to find the kind of broad audiences that "Fahrenheit 9/11" enjoyed in 2004. In fact, that film remains the only successful one that touches on the Iraq War, but a lot of its success probably had to do with the lingering anger many felt over the stolen election of 2000.

I read an article a few weeks back in which the writer had said that the failure of films dealing with any aspect of the Iraq War, War on Terror, or Guantanamo Bay is a sad indication that Americans are so disgusted with what has happened, that they've pretty much checked out on the war. We don't want to be reminded of it. We simply want to continue our shopping madness and be entertained by trivial fluff. Its sad when Americans won't get outraged over Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay or the fact that Dick Cheney has put the VICE in "Vice Presidency" by his sadistic pleasure that our government uses torture as a means to an end (the end being "the complete eradication of evil", as Bush loves to put it)...but the "Saw" films keep spitting out sequels every autumn, a sure-fire moneymaker. It's a sick and a disturbing sign of our country's sickness.

You know what this denial reminds me of? When I saw the excellent HBO series "Band of Brothers" a few years ago, I was struck by the scene in which American soldiers first happen upon a Concentration Camp. They had no idea what it was, because they had never seen anything like it before (can you imagine being so naive? Its sweet that our country was so earnest in another era...before our foreign policy betrayed our founding principles). What aggravated them even more was that the Germans who lived nearby acted as if they didn't know it was going on. Many of them probably didn't. So what did our soldiers do? They FORCED German citizens to clean up the camp. It had the effect of forcing willfully blind people to see what happened when they pretended that all was well. Germans were resentful of having to clean up the mess, deal with the stench of death, but so what? They needed to have their faces rubbed in the evil they allowed to happen.

Now, we are the Germans. We don't want to deal with Iraq. That films about Iraq continue to bomb means that Americans simply don't want to face the biggest foreign policy disaster our country ever embarked upon. But what good is it to live blind, avoiding the biggest elephant in the room? Iraq continues to rage on and Americans can't be bothered. So long as we continue to send our military back to the meat-grinder (I've heard talk of soldiers now serving a SEVENTH tour of duty over there!!! By comparison, it was considered a big deal that some soldiers served TWO tours of duty in Vietnam), Americans seem okay with that. Talk of a draft has died down since the spectre of it during the 2004 election. In one promise kept, Bush has not called for a draft. However, that probably has a lot to do with military resistance to it (due to the headaches of having low-quality recruits to train who don't want to be in the military) but also because having a draft would increase the anti-war movement as people's personal stake in war will be increased. We can't have raised awareness. Our government wants people distracted by fluff (Britney Spears being the perfect Bush-girl for the task at hand) so we can't see how incompetent and greedy our leaders are. So, crappy films like "Saw" become hits, while "Stop-Loss" becomes the latest casualty of our disasterous war.

Now about the film, "Stop-Loss." It was written and directed by the director who made "Boys Don't Cry." This is her first film since that one (which I had never seen and only heard about it because Hilary Swank won Best Actress for that film over my choice of Annette Bening in the more deserving "American Beauty" role). Continuing with the theme, in this film, boys DO cry.

It begins in Iraq, where we meet the main characters as they run a routine traffic stop that becomes a flashpoint (reminding me of "Black Hawk Down"). We get some heavy action scenes in the opening of the film before it transitions to the homecoming, complete with parades and speeches and readjusting to civilian life. Two members of the unit (played by Ryan Phillippe and some new actor I don't know the name of) are set to get out of the Army. The unit's commander even offers one guy sniper school if he stays in, but he's got a girl to marry and wants none of that.

Life at home isn't easy, however, as the veterans deal with flashbacks, nightmares, and hair-trigger reactions to various sounds that remind them of the war zone. One soldier even digs a foxhole in his girlfriends front yard to sleep in at night. Fights happen over rude comments, alcoholism makes another soldier unstable, and domestic abuse occurs when there's no prior history of it. These are just a few examples of what war veterans have to deal with. I'm certain that it's not easy for veterans of war to deal with the insipid questions clueless folks back home have. I know from personal experience, which I'll share two for an example.

When I came back home from Navy Basic Training in May 1991, I had to wear my uniform since I had no civilian clothes. I was often approached by people thanking ME for my service in the Gulf War! It was over before I even got a chance to go over there, but I just let them have their fantasies. I thought at the time that it was a silly thing to thank me for, especially since I only joined for selfish reasons (money for college and to see the world). It wasn't about serving my country. The military offered an easy escape from college and home life, and it offered adventure. Just the prescription a young guy needs.

The second experience of dealing with clueless people after a transforming experience was when I went to South Africa and was robbed at knifepoint by a group of street thugs. The experience in South Africa (it was the greatest vacation of my life, despite that single scary moment) was sacred to me yet hearing other people's comments about "why South Africa?" and other statements that revealed their complete ignorance, it was hard for me to deal with. So, I can totally relate to Iraq War veterans who hate being accosted with questions about their experiences in Iraq (especially the most asinine question of all: "did you kill anyone?" NEVER ask a veteran that! At least not as a first question, but only after letting the veteran share his experiences and being really interested in hearing about the good and the bad without passing judgment). When one has an experience like war or travel to an exotic country, it is hard to process what you've experienced because you feel different from the person you once were and you don't know where it will lead. Yet people want to treat you like you're the same person they always knew. They don't want to hear that you've changed or how you've changed. They want you to be the same person they remembered, and that's often not the best way to deal with veterans of war. The truth is, war changes you in ways that you can't fully prepare for.

But our society that's quick to send young men (and increasingly, women) off to a foreign war is the same one that doesn't want to deal with the reprecussions when they come home. News this past week have reported that over 300,000 veterans are suffering from PTSD. 300,000!!! That's a lot of people. What's the big deal about PTSD? I believe it's symptomatic of the conflict within, as our conscience is pure and wants us to live up to our highest values and aspirations. We're taught that violence and fighting is wrong. Growing up in school, we get into trouble if we fight, regardless of who started it. So, after being taught these values, survival in war depends upon our ability to do anything to stay alive (including killing others before they kill you). War is an adrenaline rush situation, so it's easier to act/react without processing your experience. It's when you have plenty of time, when you're alone that your conscience comes back into the fore to remind you of your highest aspirations. Guilt plays into it. Subconscious reacts without your thinking, thus any ignorant comment by someone could set you off. I know from my own experience, after I came home for two weeks after Basic Training, I finally had time to process my experience that I wasn't able to during the actual experience. It was hard to deal with my feelings of the experience when people were asking dumb questions. You basically want them to experience it for themselves so they can KNOW exactly what you're feeling, because nothing you say can truly help them to understand what it's like.

Anyhow, the film "Stop-Loss" was pretty good. It gets the point across, that "Stop-Loss" is the backdoor draft. Granted, people who join the military are made to know that even if they enlist for two or four years, an enlistment is considered eight years, so after the active duty you sign up for, you serve the remainder in the inactive reserve (which is different from being in the reserves where you serve one weekend a month and two weeks a year). If a war happens and they need you, you'll be called back to active duty if you're in the inactive reserve. So, that's where "Stop-Loss" happens. Your four year enlistment might be up, but your inactive reserve time is not. You're still Uncle Sam's to do our country's bidding.

The film covers most of the bases regarding war, PTSD, dealing with the hometown folks, stop-loss, male camaraderie (I miss that the most of my Navy experience--civilian life simply doesn't have it), decisions regarding AWOL and running away to Canada or Mexico, and honoring your commitments to others. The ending was exactly the one I was hoping for and Ryan Phillippe's character makes the decision I would have made. When the credits rolled, I was in awe of this film. While it's not perfect, it is a good film about the issues facing our military. I know that most people see movies for escapist entertainment, but I've always been one who needs to be fed intellectually. I love movies that educate as well as "entertain" (though I hate the word "entertain" because it trivializes things, since I like movies that make me feel a multitude of emotions as I watch, and I like walking away inspired or educated on something I wasn't aware of before I started watching). This movie does make the audience feel emotions and when I walked home, I thought maybe that's it. That's the reason why Americans avoid movies about the Iraq War or the war on terror. They don't want to "feel" the emotions these films bring to the surface. They want to remain in denial that they supported the war at the start (even accusing anti-war people like me as being unpatriotic) and don't want to feel the emotions. They prefer to medicate their depressions, to live life numb. But having experienced being numb and dumb, it's so much more liberating to feel the emotion (even ones like sadness, anger, horror). It means that you're alive and able to do something. Feelings are what they are, guiding you towards an action.

So, if you're hesitant to see a film about the war in Iraq, I must recommend that you see this one, at least. It's not as good as "Jarhead", but it does raise important issues. The question I keep asking is, if people support this war in Iraq, is it right to keep sending veterans back to Iraq for tour of duty after tour of duty? It's time for more Americans to step up to the plate. If you supported the war when it was launched (80% of Americans did in 2003), what are you doing about it now?

The Pursuit of Trivial Values

I was planning to post on other topics and there won't be any "Fun Friday Post" this week because I'm still in shock over the focus on trivial issues in the ABC Democratic Debate on Wednesday. I've long been a loyal ABC viewer. Peter Jennings was my favourite anchor and I grew up watching his newscast.

When he passed away a few years back, I thought Charlie Gibson was the natural successor (just as currently, Terry Moran would be the next newsanchor in line for the spot). Gibson has often filled in for Jennings and he was a familiar face from his years co-anchoring "Good Morning, America." He has an honest, trustworthy face...so when he was passed over for that newsanchor position in favor of Bob Woodruff and Elizabeth Vargas, the reasoning was obvious. ABC News went for looks over tenure. I like Woodruff (I could see him as newsanchor someday, after some tenure) while Vargas is very enjoyable to look at, but I want the news, not a Hollywood movie. It seems like the universe was in agreement over this unjust selection, as Woodruff nearly died during his time reporting from Iraq and Vargas got pregnant and returned to the less demanding position she once occupied at "20/20." I was happy for Gibson that he got the promotion he well deserved.

So, I'm quite disappointed to see that he's just as shallow as all of them. In the debate, he was obsessed with the potential rise in Capital Gains Tax from the current 15% to 20%. You know he's an elitist when he's arguing why raising the Capital Gains Tax a mere 5% would not increase the desired revenue to pay for other things both Hillary and Obama want. In a previous debate from New Hampshire, he got laughed at by the audience when he claimed that a college professor at Dartmouth or some college like that was paid on average $200,000 a year. He was talked down and seemed to agree that his life in Manhattan made him clueless about the kind of salary that teachers and professors make.

When I was in New York in 2002, I was both in awe and in shock. In awe because I understood why New York was such an exciting place. You could feel the energy all around you. I totally got the "Sex and the City" joke where the ladies made fun of someone who hadn't left the island of Manhattan in ten years. New York inspires that kind of elitist attitude, where they think they are the greatest city on the planet and the rest of America is just a "flyover cultural wasteland." What shocked me, however, was that New York was filthy dirty, with trash dumped on streets everywhere and graffiti decorated buildings. It was like a bad movie set. How can you have pride in such a dirty city? I'd refute any New Yorker about their claim of being the greatest city in the universe. That title belongs to the aesthetically gorgeous Paris. But New York is exciting and I could see how easy it would be to get intoxicated by the elitist attitude if I spent any length of time there. With it being the financial, publishing, and media center of the country, that elite attitude blinds them from the lives most Americans live. If you've only lived in Manhattan and fly to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, Chicago and Miami...you don't truly know America. I'd advise every New Yorker to venture out in the country. Take a road trip that goes through Iowa and Kansas. Get to know the heartland of America. You most likely won't be tempted to stay, but you can see how the majority of this country lives.

Enough on the elites...I did want to talk about the false values of "patriotism." Republicans claiming to be more patriotic than Democrats is one of the biggest lies Americans have been fed since the Reagan years. And let's remember Reagan, shall we? Was it patriotic that he made deals with the Iranians who held American citizens hostage for 444 days, just so he could defeat President Carter? That sounds like treason to me. During the Reagan years, because of that deal to get him into the White House, hostage-taking became a cottage industry. Reagan assured the country that "we don't negotiate with terrorists" while in secret, selling weapons to our sworn enemies and funneling the money to terrorist groups in Central America. Again, I ask...why is that called "patriotism"? Even Benedict Arnold wouldn't go that far in selling out America.

The photo above is classic. I love the irony of it. Uber-patriots want to accuse Senator Obama of being unpatriotic because he won't wear a lapel pin that was made in China by an underpaid village lady working in sweatshop conditions. But is it patriotic to buy products from China? They are a major rival for the planet's resources...and they have exactly one billion more people than we do. And one of their biggest problems is what to do with the excess of males over females (some 40 million or more who will never have wives; who are in the Generation X age group due to the one child policy and the tribal traditions favoring a son over a daughter). That number would trump our military and frankly, I would not want to mess with them for that reason alone.

So, patriots who think wearing an American flag lapel pin somehow proves that they are patriotic, I'd tell them "Show me the money!" or "Where's the beef?" Especially if they are not outraged by what the cartoon below represents:

If you're a flag lapel pin wearing "patriot", are you okay with waterboarding, rendition, and the denial of Constitutional rights of the prisoners held these past six years at Guantanamo Bay without being charged or being allowed access to a lawyer?

If you are a flag lapel pin wearing patriot, how many states have you been to? Which historical sites have you visited? Can you name all fifty states and their capitals without looking at a map? How many presidents can you name? Can you write or give a brief history of our country if asked on the street? Have you read any books by or about our Founding Fathers? Which Founding Father's views comes closest to your personal philosophy? What do you consider to be the best thing our nation has done for the world?

These are the kinds of questions I'd ask flag lapel pin wearing patriots, because chances are, they'd fall silent. It's easier to wear the flag than to give personal evidence that your patriotic views are deeply rooted and reasonably arrived at.

Let me give you an example...I find it very interesting that many of the women who lost their husbands on 9/11 (either on the flights or in the WTC) were against the war. They didn't want wives or mothers in Afghanistan or Iraq to feel the pain of loss that they felt. In contrast, a lot of the gung-ho, let's go kick some Arab ass attitudes were from those who didn't know anyone who perished on 9/11. It's classic "knee-jerk reaction." People who are ignorant of the world and of foreigners tended to desire revenge for something they don't understand.

Remember the question that was often asked in the days after 9/11? "Why do they hate us?" I thought the question was embarrassing because again, it reflected our nation's ignorance about our own history. Most Americans have no idea that our government has done a lot since 1945 to undermine governments of other nations, particularly those that were left-leaning. We've supported many genocidal dictators all too willing to get aid and arms from our government to wipe out communist elements within their borders. How may innocent dead bodies have to pile up until you get genocide? Being ignorant of our government's foreign policy is no excuse.

Yet, here we are. Seven years into the new century and millennium, and our country is still obsessed with trivial fluff. Bush's No Child Left Behind Act is the epitome of the value we place on fluff. Our obsession with test scores, based on multiple choice exams, creates a citzenry that can play Trivial Pursuit or "Who Wants to be a Millionnaire?" but is not well suited towards understanding, nuance, or making connections between different ideas. We get a series of questions which are not related to either the previous or the next one. And we learn "the tricks" in which we can automatically dismiss one of the options and that there are two answers that are really similar to one another but only one can be right. Fill in the bubble and move on to the next question.

If anyone is not disturbed by this way of education, one should look at where this leads. Europeans tend to be far more educated than Americans as well as more aware of the rest of the world. The education gap is growing. It's even growing between China and the U.S. Anyone who believes that keeping our citizens ignorant is a good thing doesn't know the trend of history. Democracy only thrives with a well-educated populace. Democracy is an active process and people who are too lazy to educate themselves on the issues are only handing power over to an elite few who are glad to take it. When we give away our power, little by little, it will one day reach a point where we don't recognize the country we were born in (though that moment happened for me in December 2000 with the unConstitutional Supreme Court decision that handed the presidency to the fraudulent Bush). We will have enslaved ourselves, making it harder to get our rights back.

So, will someone please explain to me how willful ignorance can be considered "patriotic"?

When Did George Get So Shallow?

Surprise! Today's post is not a knock on our beloved boy-king named George, but another one who shares the same name with not only the prez-uh-dint, but also my all-time favourite magazine: George! As in STEPHANOPOULOS.

He became a superstar in 1992, one of the bright "wunder-kids" who helped Bill Clinton get elected president. After I saw the documentary "The War Room" in 1993, I found the career I wanted...campaign aide/strategist/political aide. He represented exactly what I wanted for a career. If you haven't seen "The War Room," I highly recommend it. It was the first documentary that I actually loved.

In 1996 when the "anonymously-written" novel "Primary Colors" came out, some of the speculation on who the author was centered on George Stephanopoulos. Did he write it? In the novel, his character is represented by the young black man of a Civil Rights preacher who joins the Jack Stanton campaign (the 1998 film starring John Travolta is an excellent adaptation of the novel and one of the best political films I've ever seen). The author was revealed to be reporter Joe Klein, who covered the Clinton campaign in 1992.

However, in 1999, George finally came out with his memoirs of what it was like to work in the Clinton White House and of course, I devoured that book...reading it instead of my college courses assigned readings. I wanted the inside scoop because I was hoping to intern in the White House and wanted to know some good behind the scenes kind of information. His memoirs became my political bible. I was even struck by some of the things we had in common. He credits Robert F. Kennedy as the politician who inspired him to get into politics. In fact, when shopping for a campaign to work for in 1992, he said that Bill Clinton was the RFK of his generation. I also consider RFK to be the political ideal for a dream candidate. An assassin denied our nation of an RFK Administration in 1969 through 1977 (if he lived to win and serve two terms). Who knows how different our country would be if we had RFK instead of Tricky Dick?

Back to George...he worked on the 1988 Dukakis campaign and knew how shallow the Bush attacks were on Dukakis' patriotism, by making issues of the Massachusetts governor's membership in the ACLU, his stand on not requiring school children to recite the pledge of allegiance, and not making flag burning illegal. Republicans are always trying to attack Democrat's patriotism because they think frivolous displays of patriotism counts more than action. So, you're damned if you refuse to say the pledge of allegiance, even if you work to improve the health care of war veterans. Republicans have shown that they pride themselves on their worship of the American flag, but when it comes to war veterans receiving shoddy treatment in run-down hospitals, they can't be bothered.

What's this have to do with George? Well, as I watched Wednesday's Democratic Debate on ABC between Senators Clinton and Obama, I was shocked by some of the questions Stephanopoulos asked. What happened to the young, idealistic, wonky aide who wasn't afraid to call bullshit on phony controversies? If there's ever a case to be made in how corporate money changes a person, I present to you Exhibit A: George Stephanopoulos.

And I was saddened, disappointed...daresay, disillusioned? Is the salary worth becoming an empty suit asking shallow questions that serve little purpose than to keep Americans grossly misinformed and obsessed with sideshow issues?

Case in point...he focused in the beginning on the Reverent Wright's controversial statements. Hasn't that been covered enough already and dealt with? He also asked about Obama's "connection" to a former Weather Underground radical. Obama was awesome in how he responded, pointing out the media's shallow questions that have little to do with the concerns most Americans care about. He has proven time and again that he's a different kind of politician and I was happy to see him do what no other politician has done in decades: call out the media types on their superficial focus. Ooh rah!

What really shocked me the most is that they featured a question by a Pennsylvanian voter. This wasn't an open, YouTube debate that featured many questions by regular Americans. There was only a couple questions from voters, and the one that outraged me the most was a middle aged lady asking Obama why he didn't wear a flag lapel. She went so far as to question his patriotism because of it! I wanted to bitchslap that shallow woman. Where the hell does she think she lives? I thought America was the land of the free. What, we're going to require people to wear flag lapels from now on? You know who was big on flag lapels? Soviet politicans, that's who! Nazi Germany had party people wearing swastika armbands. Is that the kind of country we want to become? Whatever happened to freedom and individuality? Why must we become unthinking clones who wear flag lapel pins as proof of our patriotism? I don't want our country to go in that direction. All this flag worship is considered idolatry, and don't these patriotic, Christian Republicans believe their Ten Commandments when it commands us not to worship other gods? Nationalism and capitalism are American gods that these patriotic types worship like fellating porn stars.

I was quite proud of Obama's answer to that question. He told the audience the ways in which he was patriotic and every one of those were about actions he has done or will do as president. But, by George, old George kept trying to claim that Republicans would make Obama's supposed lack of patriotism an issue in the fall. Obama doesn't seem worried about it because he knows what issues Americans truly care about. I am of the opinion that in tough times, Americans generally aren't persuaded by shallow controversies such as not wearing an American flag lapel pin. The election of 2000 was called "the narcissism of small ideas" and that's what people like George Stephanopoulos are trying to do for this election, ignoring the most pressing concern our country faces: economic collapse a la 1929. Will we be the country that dances as our ship of state is sinking, like what some did on the Titanic? Or will we by like 1992, when "it's the economy, stupid!" was the rallying cry that cost a formerly popular incumbent president to lose to a Southern governor with "character issues." Surely, George can understand the importance of this election. The stakes are even higher than they were when his candidate won.

The picture above was taken from the Fox News website. They love that photo because it's "proof" that Obama is an unpatriotic subversive (a Muslim agent!) who will destroy our country. What the picture shows me is what a great man Obama is. He's doing what I do. I don't pledge allegiance to the flag. Ever since my senior year in high school when my atheist government teacher told me that I didn't have to and wouldn't get in trouble if I didn't, I sat out the pledge in my class (to much criticism from a few classmates). Even now, at my work's monthly staff meeting or at a monthly Democratic meeting, I'll stand, but I won't put my hand on my heart or recite the pledge.

Why don't I do this? Out of principle, out of conscience, and out of my own nonconformity.

Principle: I've read about communist countries since childhood because I was fascinated by their level of conformity. The odd thing is, the more I learned about how communist countries conformed the masses into wearing patriotic lapel pins and reciting oaths in unison in public, the more I saw similiarities with things we do in our country. If we're truly all that different from communist countries, then why do we enforce the same conformist bullshit on people? If we're truly free, that also means the freedom to not to act like a conformist idiot, reciting a pledge by rote, without any conviction in their voices.

Conscience: When I read the words of the pledge and thought about it, I realized that I was a liar everytime I had to say it. I don't pledge allegiance to people or material objects. In fact, I only pledge my allegiance to two things: my conscience and God. Once, a certain friend of mine wanted me to pledge my allegiance to him and I balked. I don't pledge allegiance to any person because the person could change into something I don't agree with (like George Stephanopoulos, for example). We could evolve in different directions. Pledges of allegiance have a sense of permanence to me. I don't take pledges and oaths lightly. They are deadly serious to me. Thus, to pledge allegiance to a piece of cloth is kind of silly, for the cloth means nothing to me. Especially since many American flags are made in sweatshops in China. And if I was in the wilderness and needed to wipe my ass and all I had was an American flag, well...sorry Old Glory, but you're just going to have to surrender to the higher cause of personal comfort. Is that sacriligious? Better to offend a country than to offend God. The reason I won't pledge allegiance to America is because our country has gotten so far off track from our Founder's intention that I don't believe in it anymore. To pledge allegiance to our flag and the nation it represents means we agree to torture, illegal warfare, unlawful detaining of prisoners of war, and a whole host of other objectionables. When I die, my conscience will be clear and if Bush thinks of me in the enemy camp...well, good for him. When he faces the judgment of God, I want it known throughout the heavenly realm that I never agreed to any part of his administration and its destruction of authentic American values.

Nonconformity: Really. If we're truly a nation that believes in freedom, then why get so worked up over the fact that some people might not be pledging allegiance next to you or not placing their hands over their hearts? They tried this stunt one Sunday at the Atlanta North Community of Christ congregation back in 2002...making the entire congregation stand up to recite the pledge of allegiance. In all the years of attending church in many congregations, this has never been done and I was upset about it and complained afterwards. The pastor thought it was a great thing to do as his protest against the Circuit Court in San Francisco's ruling that the pledge was unconstitutional. You bet it's unconstitutional. Making people do stupid shit like that is what Soviet communists do...so it's quite ironic that these people who love to enforce conformity on me are the same ones who often accused me of being a commie. I thought the whole point of our country was freedom, and if we truly believe in freedom, that means not having some coniption fit when the person next to you or a presidential candidate decides not to participate in a meaningless ritual that most Americans do by rote anyway.

Soviet leader in the 1970s Leonid Brezhnev, a stellar example of a lapel-wearing commie bastard. Is he the model of leadership we desire for our country? If that's the direction uber-patriots of the Repugnant party want to take us, then who truly represents American freedom? Didn't Jesus say something about how actions were preferable to making a big show of things? Like how the widow gave her mites discreetly but the Pharisees made sure everyone in the Synagogue knew they were about to drop a load of clinking coins into the collection box?

Is the true patriot the one who visits the wounded veterans in the hospital, who fights to give them more money and better care, and who makes a stand to bring them home from a long-exhuasted and pointless war? Or is the true patriot one who avoids serving in war, sends other people's children to wars of his choice, and wears American flag lapels on his jacket to "prove his patriotism"?

I'm going on a limb here...but you know I'm damn right about this. Anyone who loves freedom has to understand that freedom means not having to conform to your idea of patriotism by phony displays such as lapel pins and magnetic bumper ribbons. Let's get over ourselves and our shallow obsessions.

And back to George: You know better, but your questions at the debate were pathetic. What the hell happened to the young idealist I admired? If joining the media elite turns you into a vapid zombie, then I don't want to be like you after all. Honesty and consistency matters more than all the money on K Street.

Battle Between the Bitter Elites

The biggest sign that we live in such a shallow country was made obvious (though I've known for many years) in the past week when the media harped on a selection from a speech Senator Obama made to a group of financial bundlers in San Francisco (of all places!). Taking a couple sentences out of context and feigning outrage is what the pundit class seems to do best. Heaven forbid you send them to Guantanamo Bay to get waterboarded along with the illegally detained prisoners gathered up in the months after 9/11 and not charged with any crime. I mean, can you have a more shallow outrage than the one the pundit class in Washington have been on since Saturday?

What the hell am I talking about, you ask? Well, in case you hadn't heard, the elite group of pundits were outraged (OUTRAGED!!!) that Obama had the gall to explain to a group of San Francisco elites why the working class of the "flyover states" are "bitter" and turn to guns and God. I've read the speech and didn't find it outrageous at all. That's what happens when you take things out of context, especially the part that would generate the most outrage. Man, if outrage could be harnessed, we'd solve our energy crisis forever!

But let's not be sanctimonious, ye chattering class of hypocrites in the beltway. What the hell do you all know about outrage? You're overpaid to mouth pithy opinions in order to shape American public opinion to agree with their corporate masters on Wall Street and K Street. You don't live in the real world, where rising gas prices have the effect of increasing food costs, which trickles down in the economy, making things even more expensive for everyone who works in a dead-end, soul-destroying low wage job. Our economy is tanking like the Soviet economy in the late 1980s and the thing that outrages you is that a black man is supposedly making elitist statements that insult the working class people! How dare he!

And not to be outdone, Queen Hillary has jumped on the bandwagon, accusing Obama of elitism and even running commercials featuring testimonials by working class Americans who were "deeply hurt" by Obama's comment. Man, if his comment "hurt" you in any way, you truly are Bush's inflatable whore. Please, sir, whip me again! Send me to Iraq to die so my neighbors can continue to drive their gas-guzzling SUVs to the corner supermarket to buy overpriced bread, milk, and eggs.

What is wrong with our country? Why don't more Americans wake up and see where shallow thinking leads to false outrage over trivial fluff. This is not Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Enron, waterboarding, 9/11 complicity, or any of the many other outrages of the Bush years. This is a couple sentences taken out of its context, designed to create a false controversy for a bored media loving the prolonged battle between the Democratic candidates.

Let's talk about elitism, shall we? Who's the bigger elitist? A black man raised by a single white mother and grandparents of modest means. From humble beginnings, his life's trajectory was blessed by attending the most prestigious high school in Hawaii (Punahou), followed by a bachelor's degree at Columbia University and then a Law Degree from Harvard, where he was elected as the first black person to be editor of the Law Review. Afterwards, he taught at the University of Chicago and earlier this year, asked Iowans if they were as outraged as he was over the price of arugula at Whole Foods (Iowa does not have a single Whole Foods supermarket and even I have never heard of arugula until that "controversy" and couldn't tell you what's the fair market value of them).

Next, we have a Goldwater girl from an upper middle class Republican family in Chicago. She attends the all-female Wellesley College in Massachusetts (the most liberal state in the Union) and is elected valedictorian, where she is featured in Life Magazine. She attends Law School at Yale, where famous classmates include Bill Clinton and Clarence Thomas. She, of course, marries one of them and serves on the committee that is doing the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon. After serving as First Lady, she wins public office as the honorable Senator from the Empire State, New York.

Not to be outdone, even John McCain has jumped on the elitism outrage bandwagon. But let's look at his biography, shall we? His father and grandfather (both named John Sidney McCain, making him a "threequel") were both Admirals in the United States Navy. Now, I was a Navy guy myself and the McCains are famous in the Navy for being the only father and son Admirals. After attending the prestigious Naval Academy, John S. McCain (III) was on his way towards becoming an Admiral himself, except for the fact that his plane was shot down in Vietnam and he was held as a prisoner of war for five years. After his release, he knew that he'd never rise to the rank of his beloved father and grandfather. When he served a stint on Capitol Hill as one of the military liaison to a member of Congress, he catches the political bug. But his wife was disfigured in a car accident and a gorgeous young bombshell (18 years younger than him) has caught his eye. Not only is she gorgeous, but rich as well. Her father made a fortune in the beer industry. Wow, he could use her family wealth and connections to make a run for Congress, selling his POW experience as the perfect way in. After being savagely attacked by the Rove slime machine in 2000, he is now the Republicans redemption candidate (make no mistake...McCain's nomination is a sign that the Republian Party is remorseful for coronating the idiot son of a former president over him in 2000).

What part of elite don't you understand? All of them went to elite universities. And trust me on the Academy...there was a point in my Navy enlistment where I applied to a program that included a year of prep school followed by enrollment in the Naval Academy (I didn't get selected)...it is prestigious and elite.

Will America truly ever have a president like Lincoln (who became a lawyer after finding old law books in a barrel and studying on his own) or Truman...men who didn't attend an elite university? Somehow, I doubt it. In fact, if Obama hadn't gone to Punahou, Columbia, or Harvard, I doubt we'd ever have heard of him. Elite universities are a ticket to the big time, because you meet legacy students whose parents are the elite class in America.

So it's simply outrageous that these elite types would feign outrage over a couple sentences taken out of context as they pretend to care about the feelings of working class of Americans. To that, I have to say: "bullshit!" If you pundit class of elites truly cared about the working class of Americans, you give up your six and seven figure salaries and try to live on wages that is less than your age (times a thousand; i.e. if you're 40, then under $40,000 a year salary). If you care about working class Americans, then you volunteer to go over to Iraq or send your children there since you parroted the president's desire for war in 2003. If you care about working class Americans, then you give up your health care and live without insurance. If you care about working class Americans, turn in your elite degrees and tell your kids to go to a state university or a community college and write a letter as an alumni to the president of your university demanding that they pick some working class person in Pennsylvania or West Virginia to go in your child's stead.

If you don't want to do any of that, then you don't give a shit about working class Americans so shut the flip out with your phony outrage!

Who loves you more, baby?

Do I sound bitter?

Nah...I just can't stand phony, sanctimonious outrage by elite pundit types who are overpaid for their lack of original thinking. For them to pretend to some outrage on behalf of people they wouldn't want in their country clubs, in their walled off neighbourhoods of mega-mansions, anywhere near their yacht clubs, is dishonest. I wonder how they can stand to look themselves in the mirror knowing that they're full of shit. Like I said, outrage is a wasted emotion. If we could find a way to harness it, we might solve our country's energy crisis. At least we know that all their hot air could fill up a balloon, and maybe that's the transportation solution to all these bankrupting and grounded airlines. Hey, at least it's a start.

There Will Be (Wonder Working Power in the) Blood

The bad thing about Hollywood's schedule of movie release dates is that they save the best for the end of the year. That means that there are more interesting movies released between Labour Day and New Year's Eve than I have time or money to see. The flip side is that the movies released between New Year's Day and May Day tend to be a dumping ground of crap, so I get to catch up on all those quality films I wanted to see when they arrive on DVD in the spring.

"There Will Be Blood" is one of those films.

I didn't think I would like this film, because director Paul Thomas Anderson's track record has not been very good. I hated "Boogie Nights" and the only thing I liked about "Magnolia" was Tom Cruise's performance as a charismatic love guru. He was nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar for that role (it's too small a part for the ensemble, Altman-esque film) and I still get chills when I think of his character telling an interviewer: "I'm judging you with my silence!" Yow. Bone chillingly cold.

So, I was weary about seeing this one. What convinced me to watch it was an article I had read somewhere which said that this film was the perfect metaphor for our capitalistic culture. It claimed that Daniel Plainview (played brilliantly by Daniel Day-Lewis in an Oscar-winning role) was representative of America. With such comparison, I had to see it. Besides, I wanted to see the role that earned Daniel Day-Lewis his second Best Actor Oscar (I was rooting for George Clooney, although in retrospect, the Academy made the right choice because Day-Lewis' performance was truly one of the most impressive that I've ever seen while I found the film "Michael Clayton" to be quite dull with Clooney acting like Clooney).

The film was slow going at first and I expected to be bored out of my mind, especially since it clocked in at over two and a half hours! But, once it got rolling, it became more and more compelling with a lot of that having to do with Daniel Day-Lewis. First of all, he speaks in an odd voice, like he's channeling Sean Connery. But he's commanding and interesting. You're meant to like him, and perhaps even root for him in the end. That's not to say that he's a nice guy. He tells another that he views everyone as competitors...including his brother and even his own son near the end. He's all about the oil business, an early 20th century tycoon who becomes a wealthy man.

On the flip side is a young charismatic preacher who rebukes evil spirits from people in church. The pentacostal church services is stunning in the level of discomfort it brings up in me. The film even uses the evangelical hymn "There is Wonder-Working Power in the Blood of the Lamb." It brought to mind a song that was sung in my brother's evangelical church that disturbed me. But most of all, it hit me on the head about the Bush Administration. I don't know if its the director's intent, but the use of that hymn is one of the most brilliant things about this film. For anyone who doesn't know, Bush has a tendency to use "code words" and phrases in his speeches that evangelical listeners pick up on (thus why they think he's the best thing since Jesus). In one speech, in particular, he used the phrase "wonder-working power" and though I didn't know the hymn, I knew it was one of those code phrases that evangelicals love. Now that I've heard the hymn, I'm quite disturbed about it. One thing I hate about Christianity is its obsession with violence and blood; especially how it views Jesus' crucifiction as a "necessary blood atonement" for our sins. I don't agree with that viewpoint regarding his death, but that's besides the point.

The point that I think the film is making is that we see an oil tycoon who uses religion to further the means of his wealth attainment and a young preacher who bows to the oil tycoon to get funding for his church and missionary work. In the end, it comes to a head and not to spoil the ending or anything, but capitalism wins. Are you surprised? I'm not. I've felt for a long time that capitalism and authentic Christianity are diametrically opposed. In capitalism, the greatest value is selfishness and greed. Christianity (at least the authentic Jesus form of it) is about charity and community. How our country managed to warp Christianity into Capitalistianity is worth investigating. But anyone who thinks the Christianity advocated by Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and many of the mega-churches throughout our country represents the authentic values of Jesus, they are sadly deluded not to mention blind. In the end, capitalism will snuff out Christianity once it no longer serves a purpose.

Thus, I am very impressed by this film. It has a weird title, but by the end of the movie, you learn that the director delivered as promise. It's a brilliant movie and the perfect metaphor for the conflicting values our country has been debating for decades. It's the one movie I'd love to watch with George W. Bush followed by a discussion. But he's probably too dense to realize the deeper meaning behind the film. It's a cautionary tale against greed. His soul needs to hear that message if he truly wants salvation. Otherwise, there will be blood.

The Saddest Day of My Life

Jeff, Janell, and I in D.C. on one of the last days of our Washington Seminar experience.

Eight years ago on this day (Friday, 14 April 2000) was the saddest day of my life. It was the day that the BYU Washington Seminar, Winter Semester 2000 officially ended. Most of the interns left shortly after their room inspection and receiving a copy of the memory book I put together for everyone. Only a few stayed on, some for a weekend, others for a few weeks, and me? I had planned to stay for the next decade (for the entire eight years of the Gore Administration and a couple years of his successor, President Evan Bayh). Crazy, huh? It's funny to reflect on my views then, on my confidence in Gore's ability to become the next president. I had often told people that Clinton was only the opening act. The real show would begin when Gore became president.

But, I'm getting way ahead of myself.

The last week of my internship was a busy one. I went over to the White House several times, once for a special lunch in the White House Mess in the West Wing with my intern supervisor and co-worker; again for the official White House Interns photo with the president (who kept us waiting for well over an hour); and again to go on the White House Intern tour group to the CIA headquarters. Also that week, I was sent to take notes on a couple Senate hearings: one on the funeral home industry, the other on education policy in which I was pleasantly surprised to hear Graceland College mentioned (which is founded and operated by my church). The surreal thing about the funeral home industry is that I learned just how immoral some of the people are. Interesting enough, when I was in the Navy, a sailor I knew was getting out of the Navy around the same time I was and suggested that I go into the funeral home business with him ("because you know how much money we can make on grieving people?!?" he had said). I thought it was sleazy then, and the hearing confirmed it for me. Anyhow, when I got back from the hearing, in the office's constant monitoring of CNN, I got to see myself on CNN as they covered that hearing! Strange.

The night before the seminar ended (Thursday, 13 April 2000), I got one of the best gifts anyone has ever given me. Because I didn't get the personal info pages back from everyone sooner, I had no time left to run copies of the memory book I put together. This 38 page book included a few pages of cartoons, a six-page summary of our semester, and the most important part: the two-page info sheet on most of the interns. I set the price at $5 for everyone and ran 40 copies. My roommate Matt volunteered to go with me to Kinko's in Crystal City at 2 a.m. to help run the copies. It turned out to cost me a whopping $146. But it was fun to have Matt helping me put these together and shortened the time it would've taken by myself. He sealed his friendship with that gift to me, because he was sacrificing sleep to help me finish this and he had to be the one to help inspect people's apartments before they were allowed to leave. Also, he was set to leave D.C. that Friday as well.

The reason why that day was the saddest day of my life is because all my life, I was always the one moving on. I was used to leaving friends behind when my dad got assigned to another duty station with the Air Force. I never really experienced being left behind, and for the first time in my life, I was seeing everyone leave while I stayed behind. I had plans for a career in D.C. while everyone else was only there for a semester. Many had plans for the summer. Some were even graduating that semester.

What made the day a little more endurable for me was that I still had to go to my office for my last official day, which I was surprised with gifts (including two books on the U.S. Capitol, an Al Gore tie-bar; a Bill Clinton key chain; and a White House internship sweatshirt) and I even had a message for a job interview with the White House's National Economic Council. All should've been a happy time, but I feared returning to the lonely apartment, with roommate Matt gone and Jantzen going away to a conference in Annapolis. That left the roommate I couldn't stand: Elliott. He and I weren't on speaking terms for much of the last month or so and he was the last person I wanted to deal with in my newfound loneliness.

I remember going to Janell and Brooklyn's apartment to hang out and watching with sadness Jeff and Brooklyn dancing in the apartment. It was hard to feel like celebrating, hard to see past the sadness of one of the greatest experiences of my life coming to an end, with friends scattering with the wind to their separate futures. I remember chiding myself for feeling so sad, "because they're Mormon, after all." I didn't think I'd ever miss Mormons so much (considering how disappointing BYU was in finding true and lasting friendships), but I did. When I went to bed that night, I'm sure my pillow was soaked in tears. And when I woke up on Saturday, I couldn't believe it, but it was close to 7 PM! I had slept probably close to 20 hours. I got up because I had a party to go to, invited by the lady I worked with in the OVP for Legislative Affairs office. But at that party, I wasn't entirely there. I was among young Capitol Hill employees, but I only missed the connections I made with the BYU interns.

I've never felt as sad as I did on that day. I'm glad, because that was something hard to experience and get through. It was a combination of many things, but eventually I adjusted to the new reality as I spent more time with my fellow church members and looked for a job as my bank account continued to dwindle. I even had the coolest coincidence of bumping into Brooklyn in a grocery store, when I had thought that she had already moved to Philadelphia.

So why reflect on that day and its sadness? Because it's nice to be reminded of those times and to realize that eight years later, I still get value out of that experience. And I'm appreciative of those fellow Washington Seminar interns who keep in contact with me. It's hard to believe that our experience came to an end eight years ago today. It's also hilarious to think how far off track I've gotten from my prediction of where I'd be in ten years. I still have two years to go, so who knows? All I knew then is that I wanted to live in D.C. for ten years (for all eight years of the Gore Administration followed by two years of a President Evan Bayh Administration) before moving to Portland, Oregon or Coeur d'Alene, Idaho to begin my career as a novelist. We all know that didn't pan out, but my novelist ambitions will never die. I guess that means I should spend all my energies making that dream come true in the two years I have to make it come true so that my prediction won't be a total loss.

Anyhow, I guess the message of this post is that an experience such as deep sadness is not a bad thing to endure. It was hard to go through at the time, but all it truly means is that I at least know what love feels like. You don't feel that kind of sadness without first loving the people you've lived with and shared in a great experience together. If I have only one regret about that experience, it's that I didn't accept Mandy's offer to go to Palmyra, New York one weekend. I still haven't been there (or Kirtland, Ohio). But man, those were the days.

Now it's back to my present reality...

Happy Jefferson Day

This photo of me was taken by Matt Baker in Williamsburg, Virginia in 2000.

Happy Jefferson Day everyone!

That's right, on this day in 1743, he was born in Virginia. When I was in elementary school, he was my second favourite president (after Lincoln). I remember reading a book about him and wanted to become an architect someday, just like him (until I learned that there was a lot of math and science involved). He didn't catapult into the favourite president slot until I lived in Virginia and visited Monticello as well as reading several biographies on the great man. He was well-rounded, a true Renaissance Man, a political offspring of the Age of Enlightenment. Our country has gone a long way from his era of great men who were uncomfortable about power to the current president who famously said that he wishes to be a dictator.

It was baffling to me in the 1990s to hear conservative Republicans claim Jefferson as their own. Granted, Jefferson believed in a smaller government. That has been the Republican platform for a long time, but reality betrays the rhetoric. The Republican Party is far from the Jeffersonian ideal. When our nation was founded, Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton were about as far apart as you could get politically. The two parties were founded based on this divide. Hamilton (along with John Adams) was part of the Federalist Party, which was the forerunner to today's Republican party. They wanted a strong central government with a powerful Chief Executive. Hamilton, in fact, wanted a "President For Life." You can easily imagine Bush wanting that for himself. The Federalists wanted less accountability to the people and in the Adams Administration, he passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which could be viewed as the USA PATRIOT Act of its day. It was totally un-Constitutional. Thus the election of 1800 was vital for Jefferson to win. Evangelicals of the day were scared of a Jefferson Administration and even warned voters that if he won, he'd ban the Bible. The Evangelicals of today are just as fear-mongering, claiming to voters in West Virginia that if Kerry won in 2004, that he'd ban their Bibles! It's a tactic that unfortunately still wins among an unthinking mass of people.

That's who Jefferson feared. Though he wasn't an atheist, nor a Christian, he was the biggest advocate of a separation of Church and State. Unfortunately, a lot of Evangelical Christians today don't understand the importance of that separation. At least they don't when their religion is influencing the White House. But heaven forbid we get a Catholic or a Mormon president. Then these Evangelicals will thank God for Jefferson's wall of separation. That's the catch, isn't it? If you have the numbers to influence national policy, you're against a wall of separation, but when the president is of a religion you despise, all of a sudden, the wall of separation looks very good. Well, we should be consistent in our support. It should always be there. Religion has no place in government. There's nothing wrong with government neutrality in religion. It's a silly demand to have a Ten Commandments posted in every courtroom or school classroom, as though that would make people moral. No, increasing it's presence everywhere will turn it into a joke, into wallpaper that people hardly ever notice. And it also violates two of the commandments not to make a graven image and not to commit idolatry.

Whenever I meet a conservative Republican who claims Jefferson as one of their forebears, I ask them why they think so. Jefferson was a radical. He believed that we needed a revolution every twenty years or so, just to keep our government fresh (the tree of liberty must be renewed with the blood of tyrants, he had said). Conservatives are afraid of revolution. By their nature, they want the status quo. Look at how they defend the current administration and always look backwards to the Reagan years as the ideal (never to a better future, because they see any change as "unpatriotic"). It has been the Democrats who have revolutionized our country time and again...with FDR to lead us out of the Great Depression; with an inspirational JFK and his New Frontier to put man on the moon; with RFK's plan to end the war in Vietnam and address the issue of poverty; with Carter for focusing on Human Rights issues; with Clinton to bring more people out of poverty and into the middle class; with Gore and his environmental vision that is just now becoming more and more talked about in businesses starting to see green in a new light; and with the historic choice between a black man or a woman to lead our country out of the darkness of the Bush years. There's nothing revolutionary about conservative politics.

One of Jefferson's biggest ideas concerned the creation of a meritocracy, in which those who have virtue and talent would rise to the top in society. He, like other Founding Fathers, had seen degenerative effect of children and grandchildren of kings rule. It's always a diminishing value because there's nothing meritorious about the happenstance of birth into wealth and privilege. Many trustfund babies don't accomplish much because everything has been given to them and they live a life behind rose-colored glasses. True worth comes from testing of one's mettle through the experiences of life, where one's talents can be developed. After reading about Jefferson in various biographies, it's easy to know what he'd think of the current president. It wouldn't come as a shock to think of Bush as the worst president our country could've chosen in any election. Just to listen to him speak, you know he isn't a bright or curious person. He even said when he ran that he never had a desire to be president. He is the true "trust fund baby" who has come to haunt us all with his gross incompetence. He is the opposite of what a meritocracy would produce.

No, we don't have a meritocracy. We have a neo-conservative's wet dream of a government. In their belief system, they aren't accountable to the people because they believe a distorted view of Plato's ideal of rule by the Philosopher Kings. That those who study politics (even a politics by Machiavelli) have the right to rule and that the use of lies in service of their goals is justified because the people are ignorant and thus don't deserve to know the true motives of our rulers.

So, given that, how can any Republican think that they represent the true legacy of Jefferson? They don't. Just because Jefferson advocated for less government doesn't legitimize the Republican ideal of less government. Jefferson wanted less government because he believed that the Federalist ideal of a big government which ignored the will of the people and had the power to wage war, increase taxes, and accumulate wealth among a small elite that continues to rule is exactly the kind of government he was against. In the Jeffersonian ideal, Obama and Clinton are the true meritocrats in this election. Both candidates have risen to the top based on their own accomplishments, intellect, and even a bit of luck (in the case of Obama winning a primary in a multi-candidate field back in 2004). And if we end up with either of them as president, the legacy of Jefferson will come back into vogue. It will revolutionize our country in ways we haven't seen in decades.

Hope you'll learn more about this great president as you observe this great day.

Two Degrees from Chelsea Clinton

First, a disclaimer: I didn't take most of the photos posted on my blog. I usually find them in a Google image search. I'm not sure what the copyright laws are for blogging, but because I'm not making money or taking credit, you can safely assume that the photos posted on here are ones I've taken from a Google image search (unless the photos are of me, my church events, or places I've traveled when I take credit as the photographer or give credit to the person who took the photo, such as Sean Langdon or Rachel Porter or others I know).

Now, that brings me to today's post...about Chelsea Clinton. Why her? Well, why not her?! The truth is, she came to Portland today. I had no idea about it in advance. I was being a lazy bum. I actually woke up at 3 pm...way later than I had wanted because I had a lot of things to do today. Plus, it was a gorgeous day (no rain, finally) and the hottest day of the year (so far)...at a balmy 78 degrees fahrenheit. So I decided to go for a walk instead of cleaning my apartment (which needs to be organized and cleaned). Generally when I walk, I head over to Portland State University a couple blocks away and start walking in their quad, which is also known as the South Park Blocks for several blocks. It's one of my favourite places to walk in Portland because it's an oasis of trees and grass covering several blocks through the downtown. The city's goal is to the link up the South Park Blocks with the North Park Blocks eventually, but that'll be difficult to accomplish since there are several buildings in the middle sections of downtown Portland that stand in the way.

Anyhow, while I passed through the campus of Portland State University, I saw a couple tables outside of the Smith Student Union building with Hillary Clinton campaign information, so of course I stopped by to get my free bumper sticker (for my imaginary car), button, and literature. I even filled out a form (though I didn't sign the line where you promise to vote for Hillary in the primary). I asked about the set up (why today? why here?) and found out that Chelsea Clinton was going to speak in a Q&A at 6:15 pm tonight. Wow, imagine that. I was open today for whatever, so this was a bit of serendipitous luck.

I went over to my brother's apartment to see how he was doing. Then I asked if he'd like to come along. He did. So, we returned by 5:50 pm, to an already packed audience in a room with stale air. It was hot, crowded, and we were kept waiting when Chelsea was an hour late (so, she takes after her father in that regard). When she finally got to the stage and started speaking, I was impressed. She was articulate, wonky on the facts, funny, and intelligent. And yes, she has blossomed from that girl we all remember from the White House years (subject of some of the cruelest jokes the Republican hate machine threw to their rabid supporters). In her command of the facts, she is a much better speaker than Bush (who often repeats himself whenever he speaks to make it seem like he's saying a lot of things but really just hitting the same note over and over like the idiot he truly is). She spoke in depth about health care, campaign finance reform, energy independence, foreign policy, and college loan repayments (in the form of public service). I was impressed. But then again, with her being the daughter of two of the wonkiest public servants our country has ever seen, why would that surprise me? She inherited great genes. I couldn't imagine this size turnout for one of the Bush daughters, nor could I imagine them saying anything of substance the way Chelsea was able to. She truly is a remarkable young lady.

After the Q&A was over, I went up closer to wait for a chance to speak with her personally. I didn't think I'd get my chance as she was swarmed with people wanting to pose for photos or get autographs. I didn't have my camera with me, so I wasn't really pushing to get my time with her. I only had a question to ask and when she was about to leave, she passed next to me. We shook hands and then I got to ask my question. I asked her, "Are you still friends with Hollie Hatch?" She looked stunned for a moment and then said that she had spoken with her last two years ago and said that she was doing well. I said, "I knew her at BYU when she and I were classmates and she always spoke well of you and your family. I haven't heard from her in ten years and was wondering what she was up to." I know, that's a weird thing to say to someone as famous as Chelsea, but it's the message I wanted to pass along because I believe friendships are important and hope that Chelsea and Hollie will always be friends. Why?

Well, let me tell you about Hollie (I can't remember if she spelled it like that or "Holly"). When I was in French 101 in Winter Semester 1998, next to me sat a sweet girl named Hollie who was sensitive about how skinny she was (but I could relate to that). She was someone I enjoyed talking to and we practiced our bad French together. When the scandal broke in 1998, I must have said something about the Clintons that got her attention. What surprised me is that Hollie was the first person I met at BYU who liked the Clintons. I thought I was the only one. So, we'd talk about the Clintons and I assumed she was a Democrat. When I found out that she was a Republican, I was further baffled. I had never heard of a Republican who liked the Clintons. That was when she revealed to me that she was friends with Chelsea. She was kind of hush-hush about it because she didn't want to seem like a name-dropper or making herself seem important. She just stated it matter-of-factly. But my reaction was, "yeah, right. You know the Clintons. Yeah, tell me another." As we got to know each other, I started to believe her, because she didn't want other people to know about the friendship. Why she told me probably has to do with the fact that I was a Clinton supporter already and I wouldn't make friends with someone because they knew someone famous. When she trusted me, she showed me a copy of "Life" magazine when the Clintons first went to Washington and sure enough, Hollie was among the girls who traveled with Chelsea. There she was in a black and white photo of that magazine! She also showed me some personal photos she had of that trip. I was amazed. When the Clintons came into office, I was a sailor in La Maddalena, Sardinia...the only sailor on board my ship who was seriously happy about the election outcome. I was used to being the lone Clinton supporter on my ship and at BYU.

In the semester I knew Hollie, she knew that I wasn't LDS and always inquired about my meeting with Mormon missionaries. Even several semesters later when I bumped into her on campus, her first question was always if I had joined the church yet. She was sweet that way, but I hated to disappoint her. What struck me most about her friendship with Chelsea is that she was often weary of keeping in touch with Chelsea, because she worried that Chelsea might not want to keep in touch with her anymore. They hadn't seen each other in years and maybe the politics of their parents got in the way (they met and became friends during ballet practice in Little Rock as young girls before Clinton became a national figure), but I kept encouraging her to keep in touch with Chelsea, because I was certain that friends a person makes before they become famous are the ones they cherish the most because they can be certain that there isn't an ulterior motive involved. Like I said, I'm a believer in maintaining friendships, even if there is a religious or political divide (as Hollie had indicated there was).

Here's one more Chelsea story: When I interned in D.C. eight years ago, Kathy Weatherly (a young lady in the OVP for Legislative Affairs office that I worked with) gave a tour of the West Wing to some friends of hers and me. When we were looking into the Oval Office (we weren't allowed to enter, of course), a Secret Service agent walked through and told us we had to move on because "Energy was coming." We thought that was Bill Richardson, the Secretary of Energy. Soon enough, Chelsea appeared with a group of friends to show them the Oval Office. We were by the Cabinet Room and I looked over and saw Chelsea smiling at me. We were too far to say hello, but had we been able to talk, I would've asked her if she still kept in touch with Hollie Hatch. It's weird that eight years later, I finally get to ask that question. It might seem like such an odd question to ask someone (as I said above), but perhaps my question will prompt Chelsea to give her old and longtime friend a call. If that's the case, I've done my job. I've encouraged communication between longtime friends. Maybe some of it has to do with my feelings lately of wanting to connect with old friends who've stopped writing over the years. I'm always sad when an old friendship dies through neglect, but when people make a friend with me, they can count on my friendship for life (so long as they don't commit an act of betrayal--only two people have committed such cardinal sin that caused me to end the friendship).

This post is probably longer than I intended, but I guess what I wanted to say is that what I most appreciate about my life is how connected I seem to be despite my "peon status." If I, the nobody, could cross paths with so many famous people (I should do a special post on "Six Degrees of Me" sometime), it shows how small our world truly is. I am a believer in the connectedness of our planet and the idea that we can't hurt another person without it coming back to harm us. Thus why it's in our own personal benefit that we help other people. And we should strive to connect with others, fostering relationships and friendships.

While I appreciate Chelsea's visit to Portland (a week after her mother's visit and two weeks after her father's visit) and to hear her for the first time, I can't promise to vote for her mother in the May 20th primary. But if she does become the Democratic nominee, I will most certainly vote for Hillary for President. I hate having to make that choice, but I signed on early with Obama and feel a deeper connection to him (being a bi-racial kid struggling for my own identity among whites in the post-Vietnam era of prejudice towards anyone with an Asian heritage mixed in). If Hillary wants my vote and support, she'll have to win a convincing margin in Pennsylvania and elsewhere to close this thing.

One of my favourite photos of Clinton with his daughter.

Clinton and his two favourite ladies in his life. Say what you want about the man, but Chelsea is proof of how great at parenting the two political pros are. That says more about "family values" than all the political speeches any Republican has ever given. It brings to mind the debate between speech versus action. Action wins every time!

Emma Smith on the Silver Screen

This week, I just learned about a movie being released today for all the lucky people in Utah and Idaho. The film is about the life of Emma Smith, wife of Joseph Smith, Jr. I had no idea that they were even making a film about her, so it was a very pleasant surprise to learn about this from my LDS co-workers, who had heard about it while watching their church's General Conference last week. It came as a surprise, because when I was at BYU, I only heard one Mormon girl say nice things about Emma Smith. Everyone else said some rather mean things about her, probably because Emma Smith didn't like Brigham Young and denied that her husband practiced polygamy. Without her, the Community of Christ would most likely not exist. She is a remarkable lady whom people in my faith community have nothing but the deepest love and respect for. So, click below to see the trailer for the film.

I'm really excited to see it because out of all the films to be made, bio-pics are by far my favourite. I believe every historically famous person should have a movie made about their lives. I can't wait until HBO releases "John Adams" on dvd so I can finally see it. I'd love to see movies made about people like Joseph Smith (Richard Dutcher, who started the LDS film industry with his "God's Army", had planned to make a bio-pic with Val Kilmer starring as the prophet until his LDS financiers backed out when the writer/director refused to make changes to the more controversial aspects of Smith's early life as a treasure hunter), Henry David Thoreau, William Sherman, Socrates, Napoleon, Jack Kerouac, Martin Luther King, Aung San Suu Kyi, Vaclav Havel, Thomas Jefferson (he deserves more than just "Jefferson in Paris" and "Sally Hemings"), and others.

A World At-One-Ment

Yesterday, the Olympic torch passed through San Francisco for it's only appearance in the United States as it makes its way around the world before the torch relay arrives in the host country of China in a couple months. It has been the most protest-inspiring relay in history, already setting off groups of protesters in Paris and London.

What is going on in our world?

When I hear about mass protests of people, I'm inspired by the idea that we truly live in revolutionary times. I'm happy to see people show up to make a scene and to protest China about everything from their support of evil regimes in Sudan and Burma, to the crackdown in Tibet, to human rights violations, and to a lesser degree, the deadly or dangerous products it exports to the United States.

China should not be let off the hook. They have desperately sought the games since the bid for the 2000 Olympics, in which they promised "a more open China awaits the 2000 Olympics." The International Olympic Committee made the right choice when it selected Sydney, Australia to host the first games of the second millennium. It truly was the greatest Olympic games ever, starting with the brilliant design for the lighting the Olympic cauldron (using water) and the selection of an Aboriginal athlete to light it.

Now it's Beijing's turn to showcase their country through these games. Ever since the Berlin Olympics in 1936, when Hitler used the Olympics to show off the "supremacy of the Aryan race" and the technological wonder that was Germany (which was the most technologically advanced nation at the time), the host nation has seen a propaganda value in the Olympics. Don't think so? Well, what about the way our country paraded the American flag that was at the World Trade Center on 9/11 into the Olympic stadium at the opening ceremonies of the 2002 Winter Olympiad in Salt Lake City? We were essentially rubbing the memory of our biggest tragedy in the faces of the rest of the world and it was obscene. It has no place in the Olympics. In the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, a controversy ensued when the Atlanta Olympic Committee banned the Georgia state flag from any stadium or athletic event. Many feared that it would embarrass the organizers, the state, and our country when all these bubbas proudly waved the state flag which had the Confederate battle emblem on it. But it was the right decision, because the Olympics are an international event, not a state-level event. When I attended a few events, the only flag I waved was the South African one (for the UK v. South Africa field hockey game).

The wrong thing to do is boycott the Olympics like our nation did in 1980 to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. I consider it to be President Carter's worst decision as president. He only punished athletes who dream of participating in what is perhaps the greatest athletic competition of their lives. For many, it's their one shot at glory. And even those who don't win anything, just to be a part of the experience is amazing. I only experienced it from a spectator's perspective, but even that was still amazing. So, let the games go on! I do have to admit though that I was actually glad that the communist countries boycotted the Los Angeles games in 1984. It made it better for our country to win more events.

So, even though China is a country that is a major threat to peace, the Olympics should be allowed to go on. Let them put on the show for the rest of the world. However, that doesn't mean that we should let them off the hook. I hope that during the entire time of the Olympics in August, that people around the world will continue to participate in mass protests to raise awareness for Darfur, Burma, and Tibet. We mustn't let the leaders of China sleep well at night. We should be the face of conscience, raising a joyful rabble to remind those in power that in spite of the good will the games are meant to foster, that the people of the world won't be distracted by athletic competition from the reality of the world. The Chinese government's pageantry can't erase the truth of supporting genocide in Darfur and suppression of Buddhist monks in Burma and Tibet. The world is watching.

Anyone who believes nations should boycott should consider this: The single greatest Olympic moment ever was when American Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics. Granted, our country was nowhere near perfect, since Jesse Owens would have been told to sit in the back of the bus in the South despite his gold medals...but imagine what went through Hitler's mind when a black man beat his beloved aryan athletes at a games meant to showcase the superiority of the German race and culture. That's a priceless image to remember for the ages.

I hope that China will be similarily embarrassed by some event at their own Olympic games. The Chinese consider it a curse to wish someone "May you live in interesting times." Well, China..."May you host an interesting Olympics!" Remember...the world is watching.

Free Tibet!

End the genocide in Darfur.

Liberate Burma and force the military junta to honour the 1990 election results.

Most of all, don't be a rat this year!

Something Rotten in Texas

Surprise, surprise. Once again, the Lone Star State has come into the spotlight with another religious group controversy. This time, it involves a polygamist compound of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which I thought was centered in Colorado City, Arizona. Apparently, they also have a group in Eldorado, Texas. Over 400 children were taken away, probably due in large part to the fear of repeating what happened in Waco fifteen years ago this month. In fact, April seems to have become the deadliest month in our country. This is the month that we've seen the Waco firestorm with the doomsday cult of David Koresh back in 1993. The Oklahoma City government building bombing happened two years later, which Timothy McVeigh had claimed was his retaliation for the events in Waco. In 1999, the bloodbath at Columbine High School shocked the nation, becoming the deadliest school shooting until being surpassed by last year's rampage at Virginia Tech that left 32 dead.

I've learned to dread the month of April. Past tragedies have turned the phrase "April showers bring May flowers" into a more morbid meaning (shower of bullets and flowers for funerals). The most notorious date of all is April 20th, the birthdate of history's most infamously evil psychopath: Adolf Hitler. It was his birthdate that the Columbine shooters cited as the day they'd launch their own massacre.

So, given that bad history in the month of April, I totally understand why officials in Texas are preempting any potential tragedies by taking young girls away from a dangerous leader, who uses faulty religious "traditions" to justify child sexual abuse. The sad thing about this religion is that girls are brainwashed since childhood that their religion's practice of polygamy is "the everlasting covenant" that was never to be removed from earth. In their belief system, it is the eternal scheme of things. The god they worship is a polygamous god and women have little say in the matter because their salvation depends upon the man they marry.

Pictured above is the polygamist compound in Eldorado, Texas


Remembering the firestorm at Waco, Texas in 1993 in which the FBI and ATF were blamed for the deaths of numerous children who lived under the control of cult leader David Koresh.

Brigham Young, considered a villain by many Community of Christ members

Who do I hold ultimately responsible for introducing polygamy in American life? It's an interesting question.

I grew up in a church that was reorganized after the leadership succession crisis in Nauvoo with the untimely death of the founding prophet, Joseph Smith. Those who reorganized the church were adamantly opposed to the practice of polygamy. Joseph Smith's widow, Emma, was one who did not like Brigham Young at all, so she refused to follow him west to Utah. It is her view that was passed down through the generations in our church. What she told her son, Joseph III, was that his father did not practice polygamy. In fact, many members today still believe that it was Brigham Young who introduced polygamy into the church, that he was the culprit that lead to the disintegration of our church. Polygamy was the issue that divided our church into factions and I've always been proud that my ancestors chose the right one to be members of.

When I was at BYU, I heard the quote that when polygamy was introduced into the church, it was called "the new and everlasting covenant" with the caveat that if it was ever done away with, it was a sure sign that the church would be in apostasy! I was struck by that statement, because it put the LDS Church into a serious bind. Because my faith community (formerly called the RLDS Church, now known as the Community of Christ) never accepted the doctrine of polygamy from the start, our hands are clean.

Anti-polygamy was part of the Republican Party platform in the late 1800s (along with their being anti-slavery, I would've been a Republican in the 1800s) and when Mormons wanted Utah to become a state, the Federal government didn't approve until polygamy was done away with as a practice. It was the one case where the Federal government proved "more powerful than God", for the LDS prophet at the time (I forget his name...Woodruff?) received a convenient revelation that polygamy was no longer to be practiced on earth at the current time (though it's still the "reality" in the eternal realm).

Those Mormons who could not accept the rescinding of a practice that was proclaimed an "everlasting covenant" broke away to form the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They view the LDS Church as having fallen into apostasy because of that earlier prophetic proclamation that if polygamy was ever done away with, it was a sure sign that the church had fallen into apostasy. So, in their minds, they view themselves as the true heirs of Joseph Smith's vision and legacy.

Isn't religion wacky? Especially when they make absolute statements that pin down future members into practices that might be impractical or considered immoral by later generations.

This isn't meant to be a knock on the LDS Church and its followers. Many that I met at BYU were troubled by the polygamous part of their church's history and I've met many LDS ladies who would have difficulty accepting the idea of their husbands taking on another wife, in this lifetime or in the hereafter. It is grossly unfair to hold modern-day Mormons to the bad practices of their ancestors. While I disagree quite strongly with the idea of polygamy, I do understand why it might've been considered practical at one point. In the ancient world (when polygamy was practiced in Old Testament times), many men died in battle, leaving behind a lopsided ratio of women who were widowed or who might never find a husband. Because women were considered property and couldn't make a living, their livelihoods depended on a man. So, to alleviate the problem of an excess of women to the limited number of available men, polygamy was the best solution at the time.

However, when it was introduced in the 1800s (by Joseph Smith or Brigham Young, whoever the true culprit was), I don't believe it was God-ordained. I believe it was an extension of ego. We see it today in any cult that pops up. There's always a sexual deviancy involved. It happened with Jim Jones and with David Koresh. We see it with televangelists as well. I hate to say it, but charismatic men seem to be able to seduce people into believing that they are entitled to more women than they deserve. But to pass off such ideas as God-ordained smacks of blasphemy.

So, while we shouldn't hold modern Mormons responsible for the practices of their ancestors, the LDS Church does hold some responsibility for what the FLDS Church does. Because they refuse to proclaim that the practice of polygamy is false doctrine, it only opened the door to other groups who don't accept the manifesto, which merely stated the practice was to be taken away in the present time until some future day when the principle will once again be practiced on earth. It was my biggest frustration with Mormons at BYU. Why is it difficult to admit that polygamy was false doctrine or that it was a practice that happened in ancient times but humanity has evolved beyond that now? Polygamy is like slavery. Just because ancient peoples practiced those things doesn't make it moral or just for us in the modern era. That's what human evolution is all about. That's what I wanted to hear a Mormon say at BYU, but I didn't. Everyone I met said that if God told them to practice polygamy, they'd do it. They may hate it and disagree, but they'd do it! I guess that's where our different religious heritages plays an influence in our theological mindset, because I retain my religious ancestor's strong distaste for polygamy.

That's not to say that I can enjoy the show "Big Love." I watched Season 2 about a month or so ago. It's good drama (though I like Season 1 better). It portrays polygamy in a positive light, because the women are all consenting adults. I've heard of polyarmory situations where people choose to live in open and free romantic/sexual relationships with two or more other people. The libertarian part of me is willing to allow consenting adults have whatever relationships they want to have with another (whether its polygamous, polyarmorist, homosexual or heterosexual), but I'm also a single guy in search of just one woman, so I find it greedy of other men who want legal, marital claims on more than one. Besides, such relationships seemed doomed because of the jealousy issues (I know I would not want to share my wife with another man). So, while "Big Love" is entertaining with such a likeable family at the center, it is Hollywood fiction more than reality.

The reality is what we see on TV...with young girls having to be taken away by the government to protect them from middle-aged men little different from child molestors. It's sad that these girls grow up being brainwashed into believing that their way of life is the only option for their eternal salvation. It deprives these young girls of living out their true potential, where they are allowed to choose their own careers, husbands, clothing styles (the pioneer dresses are, uh, so two centuries ago!) and life they might wish to live.

Shame on those who use God to justify their sexual dysfunctions on an unthinking mass of sheepish followers. I hope Brigham Young is paying the spiritual price for the practice he possibly brought into the movement and his promotion of its widespread practice in Utah territory. The bad fruits of that practice still continues to this day among those who refuse to spiritually evolve. It only makes me grateful that Emma Smith refused to be a part of it and helped reorganize a church closer to the principles she believed Joseph Smith had wanted to establish before the madness of Nauvoo.

A Writer's Dojo to Get My Mojo Flowing Again

On Saturday, I met with the founder of Portland's brand new "Writer's Dojo" in the northern neighbourhood of St. Johns. About a week or so ago, I was feeling a bit down about my job search and asked God for guidance again (I've been doing that a lot lately because I've never felt so far off my career path). I dreaded going to work. In the breakroom, I happened to glance through the Oregonian and saw a special article on a writer's "dojo" that has just recently opened for business. The founder, Jeffrey Selin, is the same age as me (36). My dread immediately disappeared as excitement overtook me. This is the very thing I had been wanting to be a part of in Atlanta! In 2002, I had found out about a group in Atlanta called Bluemilk, which was a lot like the Beat Generation in that artists, musicians, poets, and writers got together for impromptu events. But it disappeared when the group had to evict from a building that was scheduled for demolition. It was over when it just started getting good and everyone went their separate ways.

Two years ago when I was debating whether to move to San Francisco or Portland, one of the appeals of San Francisco was Dave Egger's writer's group on Valencia Street in the Mission District (my favourite neighbourhood in San Francisco) and Po Bronson's Writer's Grotto. I wanted to be an active part of one or the other (or both!). There's something to be said about being in a community of writers. I've felt since childhood that writers were born not made. Anyone can learn to write and write well, but true-born writers are those who feel they must write or die. To live a life without writing is to live a life without soul, without beauty, without passion. In all honesty, there has never been a friendship, relationship, a travel experience that compares to the feeling I get when I'm creating a story with characters and their tendency to do their own thing (even when I have a plot to consider). Writing the novel that I did took on a life of it's own. It was my four year long obsession. And I haven't submitted it to an agent in almost a year because I've been desperate to find a better paying job first.

But this article in the paper was a true godsend! It confirms the information I get from meditation. Writing is where my true passion lies. It is where I should make my career. But it won't happen until I devote more of my free time to it. Granted, I'll have to balance it with my commitment to the Sam Adams campaign (because I believe he would make a great mayor and is the only one experienced enough to take Portland to the next level of cityhood), but I'll have to expand my horizons. After all, things don't manifest when you feel down in the dumps. Writing is when I'm most happy and it is when I'm most happy that things happen. Life transforms in unexpected ways.

The article was excellent. And the interesting thing is that it's not open to just anyone. You have to fill out an online application with references and be invited to join. So, that's what happened in the past week and I went for a tour of the place on Saturday. And it was like walking into a dream! Jeffrey created a writer's dojo out of a yoga studio and its very zen. Wood floors. Shoes have to be left at the front foyer before you venture further. The main floor has a few tables for writers to work in communal silence. There's also a conversational pit to discuss writing with fellow writers. Up the spiral staircase is a loft with smaller desks, including one where you can type on your laptop while sitting on the floor. The desk is slanted, with a small square to hold a mug at level (though it's biased towards righties). And most interesting of all is a desk with a purple wood top. I have never seen purple wood before (Jeffrey said its natural, no dye used).

Next door is an aikido dojo that his brother runs. In the lower level is a hallway in which the restrooms and shower room have sliding doors (Japanese style). When I saw that, I couldn't believe it, because that's what I hope to have in my home someday (I want a Japanese style home). Like I said, the tour was like walking into a dream I've had years ago. A dream finally being manifested into reality. Amazing when it happens.

What impresses me the most is that even though Jeffrey and I are the same age, he's so much further along in life. He worked in a New York advertising agency for 15 years, he has a wife and infant daughter, he has written a novel and landed an agent, though his novel didn't find a publisher. And here he is, opening up his own business that connects and caters to serious writers (he already has 15 dues paying members who are journalists, novelists, and editors). He even wrote an article for the "L.A. Times" about Buckhead, the neighbourhood I lived in Atlanta from 2001 to 2004. I said the magic word when I told him about Buckhead being Atlanta's Beverly Hills, which is what he had written in his article (he called it the Beverly Hills of the South). I told him about my hopes and dreams of a fellowship of writers of our generation that would rival the Lost or Beat Generations. Both those literary movements happened in the aftermath of war. And our generation hasn't had a defining novel to call our own. Not that that should be our objective, but the idea of having a place to commute to in my off-time to work on my novel in fellowship with other writers, even if we're all lost in our own literary worlds, there's still an energy that binds us in community and inspiration.

In a phrase, I hope that this dojo is just the thing to regain my mojo. I think I can knock out another novel before year's end, because my next one will only be 12 chapters long and probably under 100,000 words on first draft. Shorter novels are easier to sell than my mega 154,000 word "Seasons of Silent War" that I believe will be published someday. So, after this visit to the writer's dojo and talking with the founder, I'm excited about prospects for the future. You never know where things might lead. It simply feels like I'm getting direction finally, after being in a dark tunnel for 15 months.

The two photos here are of the most popular bridge in Portland, the St. Johns Bridge. It crosses the span of the Willamette River north of Portland. On the west side are hills that block any development of Portland north of the Pearl District, Nob Hill, and NW Industrial neighbourhoods. So, when you drive north from Portland on the west side of the river, you feel like you've left the city behind and are in the country. Crossing the bridge, you come to the neighbourhood of St. Johns, which feels like a small town. It even has its own downtown full of shops that feels like you've stepped back in time to the 1950s. When I got off the bus, a store was even blasting a Buddy Holly song!

It's a nice little community. It's such an odd feeling to have, thinking you're in a small town far from any city, yet it's still considered part of the city limits Portland (which means I can move there and still vote for Sam Adams for mayor).

When my apartment lease is up in August, I might consider moving to St. Johns, just for a change of pace. Though I love living downtown and being on a streetcar line and having a choice of every major bus line within a five minute walk, St. Johns offers an even slower pace, a feeling of being in a small town, and I'd be close to the Writers Dojo to work on my next novel (as well as editing my current one again to get it closer to 140,000 words).

We'll see where this leads. I have to credit the month of March for my intuition returning in a big way. Now to follow these intuitive insights towards a brighter future...

No Amnesty for CIA Agents

Eight years ago was one of the best days of my life. Then again, eight years ago, I had so many great days in the first half of the year because I was living my dream: working for Vice President Gore and living in Washington, D.C.

On this day eight years ago, we had our Friday class lecture by guest speakers. This one happened to be with two LDS members who worked for the Central Intelligence Agency. By fortunate luck (divine will?), our regular meeting place (the LDS Ward in Eastern Market) was being fumigated so we had to have the lecture elsewhere.

The spooks were "spooked" by the idea of holding the lecture outside in the parking lot. But being paranoid is practically a requirement for a CIA job. So, my roommate Matt Baker had the brilliant idea to use the conference room in the building where he worked. I consider it to be the greatest "coup" ever! See...he interned at Amnesty International and while the CIA agents were very uncomfortable about holding their lecture/Q&A in such a building, the idea of holding class in an open parking lot was far worse (never know which vans have secret surveillance!).

So, they lectured on the CIA and what it's like to work there. After they finished and opened it up for questions, both Matt and I asked questions that made them even more uncomfortable. I forget what Matt's question was. Mine, however, was about the golden rule. I had mentioned that we Americans see nothing wrong with involving ourselves in another country's internal political affairs, going so far to even alter the outcomes in our favour. I used Iran as an example. Then I asked how could we be outraged or upset when people of another nation rise up and retaliate against us? After all, we'd be just as outraged if another country's government meddled in our presidential politics. I asked them how they reconciled their religious beliefs of the golden rule with their work objectives. I knew they wouldn't be able to answer it effectively. They stammered and gave a talking points kind of answer about how they are gathering useful information to protect our country from enemies who want to do us harm. Yadda yadda yadda.

I like to think that my question attacked their consciences and that they eventually got out of that line of work and devoted full time to their church's missionary work or something. Who knows? It'll be one of those things I can't wait to see in my life review in heaven someday.

I was the only BYU Washington Seminar intern who got to go on a CIA tour (through the White House internship program). It was one of the most coveted tours, but because our program had three foreign interns (two Canadians and one Hungarian), we lost out on a group tour. See how paranoid the CIA is!! I mean we're talking about an organization that was worried about the Furby toy and banned them from the building complex. Foreign students were equally banned.

Anyhow, the tour was awesome. In the main hall of the George H. W. Bush Building, there is a Biblical quote: "And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free." I was reading that when the tour guide told us about the stars on the wall representing agents who have died in service to our country. No name, just a star. She even told us that most agents spouses and children don't even know that their loving family member works for the CIA! I wanted to ask, "so, tell me about knowing the truth again?"

Honestly, I totally understand why there has to be secrecy involved. Children do babble too much information, which could fall into the wrong hands. But still...the secrecy doesn't help the relationship. I can't imagine living that way. It's for that reason that I believe CIA agents should be single and not allowed to marry or have children. Tall order, I know...but I just can't imagine being in a relationship where my girlfriend had to lie about her job. I value honesty. Perhaps I could find it a little more palatable if the CIA didn't blaspheme God the way they do. Don't put a Bible quote up on the wall that contradicts the entire mission of the CIA! Don't use the good name of Jesus to justify actions that Jesus would not approve of! The CIA is a secular organization. Using religion to justify any action is the surest path to hell and damnation. And this was well before our country has fallen down a deep, dark rabbit hole...publically acknowledging the use of torture, rendition, secret trials and prisons, and even death without consequence.

Honestly, I don't see how any CIA agent ends up in heaven at the end of their lives. The Golden Rule is nothing to scoff at. You can't get around the hypocrisy factor of doing things to other people that if done to you, you'd cry foul about.

I like the Buddhist concept of "right livelihood." It's one of the Eightfold Paths. An authentic spiritual being would choose a line of work that doesn't contradict one's inner spiritual light and guidance. I wish more Christians would accept the basic precepts of Buddhist thought. There's nothing that contradicts what Jesus taught.

However, I do feel sorry for any employee of the CIA. They cannot trust anyone (what with double and triple agents, any employee of the CIA could turn on you in an instant). To live and work in such high-tension paranoia is probably the surest path to mental illness. I don't wish that on my worst enemy.

I know that we can't do without the CIA, however. Other nations have intelligence services (with Israel's MOSSAD being the worst of the bunch) and unfortunately, it's needed if we don't want to be overrun by enemies seeking to destroy our country. I am also grateful that there are people seeking a career with the CIA. But I do feel sorry for them. It's definitely not a calling for anyone who values a spiritually authentic life and seeks to bring a greater spiritual dimension to our beleagured planet.

I suppose it's a job for "lesser developed souls" who are nationalistic and not much interested in a spiritual life. As someone once said to me, "it takes all type to make a world." I'm just glad it's not me. And I'm very glad that I, along with my awesome D.C. roommate Matt, put those agents in the hotseat and made them sweat a little bit. It says something about a person that they would feel very uncomfortable in a building belonging to an organization that seeks to eradicate torture and unlawful imprisonment in our world (no matter who the torturers are), and dedicated to human rights. If God told us to choose sides, which one truly represents the values of Christ? Ironically, the building with the Bible quote on it makes mockery of religious values while the building with no religious quotes on it is the embodiment of Christ's mission. Go figure.

Remembering the Birth of a Movement

The above log house is a replica of Peter Whitmer's home in Fayette, New York, which was the site of the first official meeting of the Church of Christ on 6 April 1830. We know that church today as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints AND as the Community of Christ. In honour of that anniversary date, I wanted to wish fellow "saints" of both the Latter Day Saints and the Reorganized churches (Community Christians) a happy anniversary and to reflect on my feelings about our movement.

I often wondered what church I'd be if I hadn't been born into a family that belonged to the Community of Christ. Would I have found this church on my own? We aren't as well known as our more famous and wealthier cousins the Mormons. But we share the same history from the founding of the church in 1830 (well, even before...since it goes back to the fateful day when a teenage Joseph Smith went into a grove of trees to pray for direction on which church to join and received a heavenly visitation that told him to join none of them) through 1844 when our founder was assassinated (interesting enough, Joseph Smith and Martin Luther King were both named after their fathers and JS was 38 and MLK 39 when they were assassinated).

I consider myself lucky to have been born in the church and to have lived most of my life in the church community. It truly is an extended family for me and has given me more coincidences among fellow members than anything else I've ever been a part of.

Awhile back, my friend Brooklyn mentioned on her blog an interesting comparison between our churches that I really liked. She said that our two churches could be thought of as the differences between Microsoft and Apple. Microsoft is a huge corporation that almost has a near monopoly on computer programs while Apple occupies a niche market with more free-thinking individuals. She says more, but I'd have to go back and find that post because I found it to be a pretty interesting comparison.

Those outside of the movement probably don't know much about the differences or even care, but this is my take on the two churches. When the church arrived in Nauvoo, Illinois and built up a city from unwanted swampland that was larger than Chicago at one point, that's where things went wrong. According to my faith traditions, a lot of ideas were introduced into the church that was not accepted by the church body (such as Masonic temple rites, polygamy, the doctrine of eternal marriage, baptism of the dead, and the Pearl of Great Price). The power seemed to go to Joseph Smith's head (with his making himself leader of the militia, running for president, angering Masons for ripping off their rituals, destroying the printing press, and the most controversial one of all: introducing polygamy--though many members of my church believe it was Brigham Young who brought that doctrine into the church) and he "lost the cloak of God's protection." After his assassination, the majority of the members accepted Brigham Young's leadership and followed him west to settle Utah. Those who didn't like what they saw in Nauvoo remained in the Mid-West and eventually reorganized in 1860 under the leadership of Joseph Smith's son, Joseph Smith III, who was 24 years old. Amazing enough, Joseph Smith III is our longest serving president and prophet. He assumed the leadership role of the church before the Civil War started, in the year Abraham Lincoln was elected president...and led the church through the World War I era under the presidency of Woodrow Wilson.

What I love most about my church is how democratic it is and how generally accepting people are. I'm sure a lot of it has to do with our small number of members (all my life, I've heard the number at 250,000 members worldwide). One of the biggest culture shocks I experienced at BYU was how much their general authorities talked and preached common sense morality. I don't recall getting lectured by our church leaders on morality. No one ever said anything about not drinking alcohol or smoking or taking drugs...yet at every church function I went to all my life, no one smoked or drank. I loved that the church respected the intelligence of its members by not obsessing over morality issues in talks, sermons, literature, etc. It's a church that allows members complete freedom of one's conscience to live his or her life without acting as an overbearing parent indoctrinating an obedient child.

That's not to say that my church is perfect. Sure, I have my frustrations. Certainly I wish more young adults would find value in being involved in the life of their congregations. I believe our church has something unique to offer people, but I also love that we are not obnoxious like a lot of evangelical churches in which members' first question of people is often: "are you saved?" I love that we are a non-creedal church. I'm a loyal member who loves the church, but whenever I hear more conservative members wanting our church to force members to accept church doctrine as truth or to profess that they believe doctrines to be true, I cringe. My personal spiritual evolution is beyond where most church members are willing to go. People think of me as a bit too "new agey" in my beliefs, but it's only because my spiritual experiences in life come closest to ideas written about in new age spiritual books (spiritual evolution, reincarnation, ESP, orbs, spirit guides, coincidences, manifesting dreams into reality, etc).

If the church does make it a requirement that I have to strictly believe the church doctrines, it would force me to choose between my desire to live a spiritually authentic life and being a hypocrite (if I have to confess to believing certain doctrines as truth). It would only push me from the church that I love. But, as much as conservatives want to make that part of our church membership, I don't see it happening because our church leadership are smart people who study spiritual concepts and history. Everyone with an enlightened brain knows that there's no such thing as a pure history. Even the founding origins have some unproven claims that could cast doubt on the authenticity of our entire movement. I'm grateful that our church doesn't force members to accept any doctrine as being the absolute truth. It's quite a mature faith that entrusts its membership to seek truth, pray, study, and experience, while still communing in fellowship with members who might completely disagree on every point. To me, I couldn't ask for a better church than one that gives me absolute freedom to live my own life in truth to my own experiences. Because of that, I believe our church comes closest to replicating heaven on earth. God is no authoritarian dictator. He gave us complete freedom to live our lives, which includes even rejecting Him if we so desire. But we'll always be loved and welcomed back to the fold with open arms.

I don't know what Joseph Smith would think of either church as it exists today. Both have evolved greatly from the one he founded 178 years ago. But does it really matter? One thing I hated at BYU was the obsession with some Mormons to convince me why the LDS church is the same organization founded by Joseph Smith while we're just a "cult" devoted to his family (which is odd, considering how often JS is talked about in the LDS Church but rarely in the Community of Christ). I've never been one for being obsessed with the legitimacy of origins (since I see it as the Catholic Church's obsession with being viewed as the same uninterrupted church Jesus organized on earth). I love that our movement was founded by a simple prayer request for which church is true and God told him to join none of them, but to create a new one instead. I believe we are all called to do that in some way. The church of my grandparents is not the same one as the one I attend today. And the church of tomorrow will be much different than the one I currently attend. That's what spiritual evolution is all about.

One story I shared at the retreat last week was an experience I once had when I wore a lapel pin with the above logo on it. I was at the checkout counter of Whole Foods with a friendly and conversational cashier. When she saw my pin, she read part of it ("Community of...") and then said she couldn't read the final word, so she leaned towards me to get a closer look. As soon as she saw the word "Christ", she said, "oh" in a disappointed voice and wasn't friendly anymore. I was surprised by it and later laughed about it when I was outside. It's funny about labels and how people interpret them.

My guess is that as soon as the lady saw that I had a pin with the word "Christ" on it, she probably automatically assumed that I was one of those obnoxious evangelical Christians who "witness" to other people with threats of hell if they don't convert. She probably thought I was a Bible-thumping Jesus freak who doesn't believe in evolution and listens only to Christian music and votes Republican.

It's a shame that she clammed up. If she had gotten over her preconceived notions, she would've discovered that I'm the type of Christian that many consider to be a heretic, a blasphemer, a disobedient, immoral, heathen who is bound for hell because I'm too "new agey", I believe in reincarnation, I love Buddhism, and I don't believe that there is a "one true religion."

It was interesting to share ideas at the retreat. There's no doubt that too many overzealous evangelical types have turned Christianity into an obscene belief system. I read somewhere that many of these people are actually Pauline more than Christian. The Apostle Paul was the fanatical zealot who helped Christianity become what it remains today: intolerant and far too damning of people who disagree.

If only people knew the Community of Christ as I know it. In a word, it's simply FAMILY to me. People who try to convert me away are only wasting their energy. I love my church. I've lived without it for a few years in my life, and let's just say that I'd rather be an active part of it than to go without again. But just because I love my faith community doesn't mean that I can't love aspects of the Mormon faith and appreciate the insights and experiences of my Mormon friends. Some day, I believe we will all realize how silly religious divisions are and know what a colossal waste of energy was spent trying to convert people away from religions they are happy being a part of. There are many people who don't have what I have in this faith community and those are the ones that need to be reached out to, in a loving and peaceful way.

In closing, in my favourite hymn "We Are One in the Spirit", I love the line: "And they'll know we are Christians by our love..."

Happy Anniversary, fellow saints in the Latter day movements!

Hillary Hears a Clue

Today, Hillary came to Oregon to let us know that our votes still matter on May 20th. Last week, her husband came to Oregon and pretty much followed the same plan as Obama two weeks ago: stopping in Portland, Salem, Eugene, and Medford. I couldn't help but wonder if he also paid a visit to a famous Portland resident who moved back here last year: Monica Lewinsky.

I wanted to attend Hillary's rally, but unlike Obama, she decided to hold it at a high school in Hillsboro, which is not easily accessable by public transit. Why she picked a suburban locale to hold a rally baffles me. Both times Obama came to Portland, he chose big venues downtown, a short walk from a MAX lightrail station. It seems like Hillary is limiting herself to suburbanites with cars. I'm a city guy who rarely leaves Portland (just as when I lived in Atlanta, I rarely ventured far outside "the perimeter"--I-285). Suburbia is such a cultural wasteland for me...full of over-privileged teenagers and their family folk. Besides, Portland offers everything that I could possibly need for my ideal life. So, I'm a little disappointed that I couldn't go to the Hillary rally.

I know that I've often seemed a little harsh on her in some of my posts, but that doesn't mean that I don't respect her or think that she won't be a great president. I'd love to see her as president and think she would be quite capable, surprising even her harshest critics. However, for all you passionate Hillary supporters out there, you have to admit that she has not run a great campaign, especially in South Carolina where it looked like she took a chapter out of the George W. Bush campaign playbook. In the weeks since, she seems to have floundered on sticking to a theme that sells. And then she was caught in an embarrassing lie regarding her "memory" of being subjected to sniper fire on a trip to Bosnia with her daughter in the 1990s. The media dug up stock footage and reminded her of the truth. It brings up bad memories of Gore's over-exaggerations in the 2000 elections (even though we all know the real liar got into the White House). She's a smart lady. She should know the media is not fair and balanced. They play favourites and it is true that the media has a major puppy-love crush on Obama. Knowing that, she should be very careful about making statements that plays into the media's hands, portraying her as Lady Macbeth who will do anything for power.

Based on the local news, Hillary's rally in Hillsboro (I'm wondering if she chose Hillsboro because it shares the same first syllable as her name) was a major draw. It was packed full of people and she gave a rousing speech to an enthusiastic audience. She's coming off a better week. On Friday, I was impressed by her heartfelt comments about the Martin Luther King assassination (not afraid to let her voice crack with emotion). That's the side we needed to see more of, not this coldly calculating "fem-bot" her handlers believed was the best way to victory. Those high-priced handlers who work on K Street in D.C. are the same people who counseled Gore and Kerry and what good did that do?

In the news, I was shocked that Obama was in Indiana yesterday when he spoke about his feelings over the Martin Luther King assassination. If I was one of his campaign aides, I would've not recommended it...because that's where Robert F. Kennedy was campaigning when he famously calmed a black audience that didn't hear the news yet. And we all know what happened to Robert Kennedy two months after that tragedy. Like I've said before, this year has a bad 1968 vibe to it and I'm very concerned about Obama's safety especially the closer we get to the Democratic National Convention.

Part of that concern stems from the Republican fear of his popularity. A few days ago, I saw a news broadcast that showed the worst Attorney General in U.S. history John Ashcroft speak at a university in which he made a freudian slip, calling Obama as Osama, which got laughs that turned into boos before he finally apologized. Too late. The world knows his true thoughts with that revealing slip of the tongue. It shouldn't be surprising, since Rush supposedly has made "Obama-Osama" his mantra to his sheepish devotees.

In my last job in Atlanta, one co-worker would get so irate about Clinton that she still blamed him for not going after Osama bin Laden after the 1998 embassy bombings in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. Well, gee. He was in the middle of the most expensive government investigation of his personal life, then impeached, followed by a Senate trial. Compare that to the fact that Bin Laden has been completely free during ALL of Bush's term. Clinton was expected to catch bin Laden in his last two years in office when the opposition kept accusing him of trying to distract the American people from his sexual problems...but Bush gets a complete pass for not capturing him at any point in his entire administration? I just don't get their mentality. People who have double-standards are hypocrites. If you're going to raise the bar on what a president should do when a Democrat is in office, but then lower it when a Republican is in office, how does that help our country? Why is a personal witch-hunt acceptable for one, but anyone who has unanswered questions about 9/11 and the war in Iraq is considered a traitor?

Which brings me back to Hillary Clinton. If she somehow becomes the nominee of the Democratic Party, these are the kinds of things we will have to endure all over again. As much as I like and admire her, I just don't want to go back to the same old arguments of the 1990s. I love that Republicans are deathly afraid of a black man as president. Especially one running a high-minded campaign about unity and community. Fears of his safety, however, puts faithful Democrats like me in a bind as well as concerns about his inexperience in the federal government. The same old arguments between my head and my heart that Thomas Jefferson once wrote about. Hillary may have won over my intellectual side, but my heart's with Obama. I hope they will form one ticket for the race in the fall. I'll let them figure out who should be at the top of the ticket, though I just can't see Hillary accepting the VP slot.

Hillary began her campaign by talking about holding a conversation with the American people. Today, she brought her conversation to the voters of Oregon. Unfortunately, she stuck to the suburbs, discounting city folk like me who depend on public transit or my own two feet to get places.

The Day America Started Its Decline

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

Those words came from the mouth of America's closest thing to a prophet. That's right. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Truer words have never been spoken. On this day forty years ago, an assassin's bullet struck down one of America's greatest public figures. I believe it was a government-planned execution, probably with neo-con fingerprints. King was a threat to our government's bloodthirst for war and more war. He was a threat because he had changed his crusade from being about Civil Rights and equality for African Americans to focusing on poverty in general and seeking to unite poor whites and poor blacks into a powerful coalition that was against the war in Vietnam. Like JFK and Malcolm X earlier in the decade, I believe King was viewed as a threat to the war-mongering ambitions of certain elements in our government (the neo-conservatives, who were part of the Democratic Party until 1968), thus certain immoral officials determined that the threat to the state had to be removed by any means necessary. Big mistake. You can kill the dreamer, but the dream only grows more powerful. Funny how martyrdom works.

Of course, I can prove none of this. It's all speculation and we truly won't know the truth until we die and get to see the unvarnished record for ourselves in the library of heaven (where no lie can exist). What I will say, however, is that I believe America began its decline in 1968. While we've never been a perfect nation, we were at our moral greatness in 1945 when we defeated Hitler and the Nazis with the help of our communist allies, who bore much of the burdens of warfare (we couldn't have won without the Soviets). Unfortunately, soon after we won, our government saw communism as the next threat in which to build a "national security state" to keep Americans in fear. Dropping atomic bombs on Japanese civilians was probably the first inclination that we were going to go downhill in terms of morality, but things didn't really get rolling until that fateful year forty years ago when two of the most beloved individuals were killed within months of each other. The Vietnam war was just in its third year but Americans were starting to wake up from the lie. Tricky Dick Nixon managed to con his way into the White House, due in no small part to the Democratic choice of Hubert Humphrey, the Vice President of a very unpopular Lyndon B. Johnson who decided not to run for reelection because supposedly his conscience finally got to him. Unlike Bush, LBJ apparently couldn't ignore the protestor taunts: "Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?"

I was born in the Nixon years, but I often wondered how our country might have turned out if Robert F. Kennedy was not assassinated and went on to win the election. Can you imagine how great our country might've been if we had a President Robert Kennedy with an influential Dr. King at his side? With the loss of Dr. King, we no longer had a charismatic and conscientious spiritual leader to guide us in the right direction. I believe that in every era, humans on planet earth are never without a spiritual leader to guide us. However, I don't believe that God's prophets are within one religion or even American. For instance, I believe we have a few of them now: Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama and Aung San Suu Kyi. But our country hasn't had a spiritual leader like Dr. King in the years since. And our nation is suffering greatly because of it.

One idea from the Bible that I find most appropriate is the concept of being in the wilderness for forty years. That's exactly where our country is today after forty years of conservative policies, starting with the criminal Nixon and ending with the current band of criminals who unlawfully occupy the White House. We are living in a bad deja vu from forty years ago. Now, as then, we have a much despised and reviled president and vice president who do not care about the public interest and opinion at all. This is evidenced by Dick (why is it that we end up getting "dicked" by these dickless wonders named Dick?) Cheney saying in an interview "so?" when a reporter brings up the American people's belief that the Iraq War is a costly mistake. If we read about the events of 1968, a lot of this year seems to be a bad acid flashback to that traumatic year. Like then, Democrats seem hell bent to self-destruct into factions at the Democratic National Convention (will there be riots in Denver as there were in Chicago?), which is the only way the Republicans can win an election for yet another term.

Scenes from the notorious Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Site of one of the worst tragedies to happen in our nation's history.

It's sad to reflect on the loss of a great spiritual man. Granted, he wasn't perfect. He supposedly committed adultery, but are we to toss out the complete person for a few flaws? If Bush and Cheney are faithful to their wives, does that make them morally superior to Kennedy and King? Not when their public behaviour of waging immoral war, authorizing torture and death to get their way, stealing from the public treasury to enrich themselves and their friends, and a whole host of other sins...when are Americans going to wake up and learn to weigh morality more fairly?

It's hard to believe that in the past forty years, America hasn't learned from history. We're in another quagmire we will never win (in war, you can't beat the home team advantage because they have a larger stake in victory than invading foreigners who don't really want to sacrifice their livelihoods to go fight overseas). A lot of people like to compare the two wars and some say that there is no relation. However, while I agree that you can't really compare the two conflicts or even call the Iraq War as a new Vietnam, I will say that our current war is much worse than Vietnam ever was because: (1) we're funding this war on credit, in which we haven't seen the bill yet and it's financed by Chinese banks, which benefits our future rivals for the planet's resources (anyone who doesn't think the Chinese are smart is deluded and racist); (2) we don't have a draft, which means Americans can "afford" to be emotionally detached from this war and tune out, focusing their short attention spans on video games, reality television, and the latest Britney news update; and (3) the malaise and stagflation of the 70s is a direct result of our Vietnam War; and we are now seeing the economic effect of our trillion dollar war in Iraq: housing crisis, credit crisis, faltering investment firms, rising fuel/food/tuition costs, stagnant wages, job losses.

Pardon my language, but we're seriously FUCKED as a nation...all because history major George W. Bush didn't learn the right lessons from Vietnam. Maybe he should've read Dr. King's "Drum Major for Justice." Or the brilliant "Letter From Birmingham Jail." Or even browsed the titles of Dr. King's books, particularly "Why We Can't Wait" and "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?"

I like the title of his last book. Where do we go from here, indeed. The choices couldn't be starker. On one hand, we've seen the chaos of a disasterous presidential administration. On the other, an inspirational Democratic Senator is talking up uniting the country and building a new community, one that is inclusive. We have that choice in this election. It is the most important choice we might ever make in our lifetimes. This truly is the election that matters like nothing before. What worries me most is the talk of December 21, 2012 being the mystery end date and speculation that we have a choice between chaos or community. We have plenty of examples of what Bush's exclusionary administration policies have gotten us (making our nation the most hated on earth, even more than China!) and with the majority of Americans saying that we're on the wrong track (it's been polling that since 2004), it simply does not make sense to vote for the same party to continue to hold the reigns of government. We need to listen to the words of a true prophet. As I quoted above, America is approaching spiritual death and we have to reject the chaos of Republican rule and vote for community, make a stand for community, and rebuild a country that Dr. King and Robert Kennedy imagined for us forty years ago.

Another world is possible. But the choice is ours to make.

I also hope you'll take some time out today to reflect on the life and message of Dr. King. Let us commit ourselves to realizing the vision he lived and was killed for.

And let's restore some "Pride (In the Name of Love)" the U2 way:

One man come in the name of love

One man come and go

One man come, he to justify

One man to overthrow

In the name of love

What more in the name of love

In the name of love

What more in the name of love

One man caught on a barbed wire fence

One man he resist

One man washed on an empty beach.

One man betrayed with a kiss

In the name of love

What more in the name of love

In the name of love

What more in the name of love

(nobody like you...)

Early morning, April 4

Shot rings out in the Memphis sky

Free at last, they took your life

They could not take your pride

In the name of love

What more in the name of love

In the name of love

What more in the name of love

In the name of love

What more in the name of love...

Dear Younger Self

At the retreat, Sean told me about an interesting idea for a meme that he hasn't posted on his blog yet. I told him that I would do it for Friday's post, until I looked at the calendar and realized that I couldn't because it's a significant day deserving of a special post. So, I'm doing the meme for today's post.

What is it? Sean's idea is to write a letter to our younger selves about what we know now that we wish we knew then. Not a regrets kind of thing, but an interesting exercise that's meant to help us reflect on where we are now. So, it'll be interesting.

The color photo of me above right was taken when I was either in the first or second grade. Maybe even third grade. I don't have every school year's photo with me, so I can't remember. Anyhow, enjoy...

Dear Nic (and yes, that's how my parents spelled it),

You may be surprised to hear that I am not living in Japan with a Japanese wife as you sometimes fantasized about in the second or third grade. I remember a short story you wrote for class about how you saw yourself in your thirties living in Japan. Perhaps it was because you loved the Godzilla films or "Shogun" at the time. But, one thing that won't change is that you're always internationally focused. From checking out books on the Soviet Union in the first grade and fantasizing about leading a new revolution to bring freedom to the Russian people, to your fascination with Japan, to later interests in England, Australia, France, and South Africa.

You love other cultures so much and have consistently been internationally focused that you will switch your degree from Political Science to International Politics in college. Your heroes tend to be dissidents from other countries. And you feel most comfortable among foreigners. But, for some reason, you don't have an international career as you had hoped. Things went wrong for your career goals with the election of 2000, but that's too painful to think about. Perhaps if you're wise, no matter how much you'll come to admire Vice President Gore, you should not put all your future dreams into his hands, expecting to work as a political aide in his administration. Evil people will conspire to steal the presidency right from under his popular vote win and America will go through the darkest days in its history. If you're wise, you'll save up your money so you can leave the country during those depressing years and not return until Americans decide to elect a black man as president.

But more practical advice that I'd give you?

First, your best friend in the third grade (whose name I don't even remember now) is not worthy of being your best friend. You might think so, but when he makes an ultimatum that he won't attend your birthday party if you invite your other friend Brian...do the right thing and invite Brian instead. Mom noticed why I didn't invite him and I ended up feeling guilty because he was the first friend I had whose parents were getting a divorce and he took it hard. You were a true friend to him...until you didn't invite him to your party. And your best friend? His gift to you is one that you absolutely hated! A poster of Darth Vader. Your hero was Luke Skywalker and his was Darth Vader. Just so you know, 'kay?

This is what I looked like in the Seventh grade. I know this because this is my passport photo, which was taken in my seventh grade year since my father got the great news that the Air Force was sending my family to West Germany for three years. It was the duty station location our whole family had wanted and remains to this day the best place I've ever lived (slightly edging out my Navy assignment at La Maddalena, Sardinia).

More advice? In the seventh grade, you just had to fall for the girl every guy falls for...the Madonna-wannabe named Kristin Rikkers. At the last dance of the school year, she'll subject you to a humiliating dance, in which she asks her best friend to stand next to her so she can proceed to talk to her and not even look at you while you're dancing together. A simple no will do, but she couldn't say no, even when the thought of dancing with you disgusts her. Instead, you should've focused on Stacy Bird, who a good friend said has a crush on you and wanted to dance with you, even as she helped you get up the nerve to ask Kristin to dance with you. Besides, Stacy looks exactly like Maryam D'Abo, before you even knew who Maryam D'Abo was (the Bond girl you'll have a major swooning crush on in 1987). So, save yourself some humiliation and forget about Kristin Rikkers and her plastic personality. Stacy is sweet, pretty, and interested in you!

When you're a senior in high school, forget about what other people think about race and just ask out that tenth grade African American girl you were attracted to. What have you to lose? Because if you don't ask her out, you'll always wonder "what if?" whenever a radio station plays Kool and the Gang's "Joanna." That was her name. Joanna. And the very first African American girl you were attracted to. You'll never know until you ask, so why not?

In the Navy, save as much money as you can...because in your last year in the Navy, you'll end up envying the guy who came in the same year as you who managed to save $30,000 and he even had the Navy College Fund of $30,000 on top of that (double the amount you got). It's a sacrifice, but one you'll be grateful for when you get out.

When you do get out of the Navy, stay in Norfolk, Virginia. Moving back home is a huge mistake. Remember what your twelfth grade English teacher said? "You can't go home again." You'll learn how true that statement is if you move back home. Besides, you wanted to go to school in Virginia anyway. But then again, you wouldn't end up going to BYU and you most likely wouldn't have met the great college friends you ended up meeting on the Washington Seminar program, so perhaps it turned out for the best.

But whatever you do, listen to Jenet when she asks you to stay in D.C. instead of returning home in defeat after running out of money and failing to land the job of my dreams. Take her advice to work at a temp agency until you find your dream political job. After all, you dreamed of living in D.C. for five years, and you're ready to give up after five months? The years in Atlanta after the internship were some of the hardest years to endure. It was your "Plan C" after college. An afterthought you never expected to come true. You won't find your dream job in Atlanta and you never truly wanted to live there in the first place. It was the one place you sought to escape when you joined the Navy and then when you went away to college. So, listen to Jenet. She knew where your heart belongs.

So, here we are. Career-wise, you haven't "arrived" as you'd like, but you are in a city that you love, thrilled with the ability to choose between a number of great candidates for political office in which to volunteer on a campaign. You didn't have that in Atlanta because you didn't like any of the Democrats running. Here, you have almost too many choices, so hopefully you'll choose wisely.

But if I could say anything about your life...it is what it is. You're blessed to be able to travel far and wide, meet interesting people, have a church family to belong to when your family lives so far away, and things look promising on the horizon with a few groups to get involved in where your passion for writing, traveling, and rail/streetcars will soon be met. The only thing you have to focus on is landing your dream job that pays a living wage, work on those novels and short stories, and finding that special internationally focused woman to date. You just have to find your flow again, after being sidetracked for so long. The only thing that truly matters is what you learned along the way, even in the most disappointing moments.

Your older and wiser self,

Nicholas

Faith, Discernment, Action

The theme of last weekend's MAYAs-sponsored retreat at the Community of Christ Lewis River Campground in Washington was "Faith, Discernment, Action." It was a great theme and capped a month in which I've followed quite a few of my intuitive hunches to good effect. It was great to learn more about how to develop this important trait so we can discern God's will for our lives.

The group of attendees was at a manageable size, perfect for getting to know people I don't know really well and a couple of folks I've met for the first time. Besides three class periods (each devoted to one part of the theme), we had some free time (in which I read, napped, and explored the campgrounds) and had a lot of fun playing games like Murder (though it was short lived because no one knew who the murderer was and thus didn't "die" on cue), Mafia, Apples to Apples, and the notorious "What if.../Then" in which the person with the raunchiest humour "wins" (okay, not really...but I've developed quite a reputation for my outrageous questions and responses).

The weekend was much needed, because I always enjoy being with "my peeps" (fellow young adults of my faith community) and the mix of deep-bellied laughter (which I don't get enough of in my life), heart-felt personal testimonies, and great music (both the fun ones and the more spiritually moving ones). I'm glad that MAYAs has decided to make this one an annual event in the spring, because the YAPS-sponsored one in the fall at Samish Island in the Puget Sound is simply too long to wait for.

The group of participants, posing on the stairs "Brady Bunch"-style! I'm the dude in the hat.

That's me with the beautiful Christine King

Chatting with Rachel about...politics? Or maybe her bad taste in movies!

Yes, I still wear my BYU clothes/hats/jacket sometimes. Why not? It's my alma mater, whether I like it or not. It remains to be seen if I'll go to grad school someday (I've narrowed it down to three places if I ever get the money: University of Virginia, Stanford, or Naropa University).

I think Sean took this shot. He claimed that I looked like a Russian, so I proceeded to do that Cossack dance for the group (where you drop down and kick your leg out). It's something I've done since elementary school (because I'm such a commie).

Chillin' on the couch.

This photo would be considered "offensive" in all of the Asian countries. Do you know why?

Someone caught me reading. And the book would be yet another Wayne Dyer title ("The Sky's the Limit"). I try to read one of his books every few months or so. He has a lot of useful information about how to become a more spiritually authentic person, able to manifest your dreams into reality. Well...that remains to be seen. I've learned a lot, but maybe I need to take better notes!

This is apparently what I look like when I'm angry. Not that I was angry (peeved?)...but I was reading and Sean called my name and then I see a camera in my face. So not cool! But, it's hilarious, I think.

So, with that retreat out of the way...next up is the one I'm putting together in Spokane/Coeur d'Alene/Hayden Lake for Memorial Day. It comes right on the heals of the Oregon primary in which we finally get to vote for either Obama or Clinton; as well as the local races for Mayor and City Commissioner. I'm looking forward to the retreat as a break from the campaigning because I plan to volunteer as many days as possible to help Sam Adams win a clear majority of votes so his campaign will be over and I can have a summer to focus on other things or as probably likely, another campaign (like Merkley's or one of the City Commissioner races).

But once the May 20th primary is over, I will look forward to the retreat in Spokane. I have a lot of great ideas that I've been wanting to try out. Things to help "ignite the fire" within each of the attendees with the hope that they will bring back the inspiration to their local congregations and help the Young Adult movement within our faith community to grow and network.

If this retreat is successful, I might consider trying an inter-region Young Adult retreat with the Young Adults in California for next year. But, that's if I want to organize another one. We'll see how this one goes first. Hope to see some of you there!

W Stands for Dubya, Which Means "Worst Ever"

Instead of a "V" for Victory sign, I'm making a "W" for Dubya sign. Does that mean I've crossed over to the dark side now? Yeah. Okay, April Fools! But you probably guessed that. Me becoming a Bushie is about as likely as Fox News telling the truth for once.

April Fools Day is one of those days on the calendar that I now associate with Bush (along with 9/11, March 19th, and May 1st) because he is a foolish man. There is no evidence of wisdom ever emanating from his life choices or actions as governor and president. He's a complete disaster of a human being and what's even more shocking is the number of blindly obedient supporters still drinking the Kool-Aid he gives them.

In the above photo, I can't imagine the gall of his to still believe that he is the epitome of "Compassion in Action." Compassion means "to suffer with" and when has Bush ever suffered for anything? He who smirks at prisoners getting executed or tortured is hardly the poster boy of compassionate leadership.

When are Americans going to wake up and realize that we have a fool for a president? The longer he remains in office, the more he makes fools of us all.

Happy April Fools Day!