M'eh

Fine, everyone gets to be middle class.

Government is the problem so we'll address it with more oversight... so Main Street doesn't hurt Wall Street... and we're a team of mavericks

It would be four more years of "nukular", folks. Just saying.

And Great. Because it wasn't a repeat of her Couric performance, I'm going to have to listen to people who suddenly feel justified in their still irrational adoration of Ronald McDonald. Ah who am I kidding? Her irrational supporters didn't watch this.

But in all, here's what matters: I got something in my eye and I had a burrito.

Duty Indeed

Oh except for that last one, okay, that can't stand. Paying taxes isn't a matter of duty or patriotism? Going for the ownership society, this time with healthcare? The present financing crisis is a result of that "ownership society".

She's essentially saying we're a bunch of rubes and morons that can't run a country, remember how we screw things up? Doncha' hate the Federal government? But vote for us so you can keep yer money 'cos we don't ask anything of you- except to send your children to kill and die in the Middle East.

Lay it out- your benefits will be taxed so you can pay for your health insurance, though there's no guarantee that you can get coverage, and there's no cap as to how much insurance will cost, and if you were John McCain with all those health conditions, you could not get coverage in your own plan (you should've added that last one)

Oh Bridge to Nowhere- zing-

Ugh

So John Mccain meant the fundamentals of the economy are the American workers... Hmmm do we address the high unemployment or the high worker productivity rewarded with lower wages and income disparity. That's strong?

Hey... Don't live outside your means. That actually is good advice- any time, not just tough times. That's the advice Carter gave the country and Reagan said "Screw That, we're America, no one tells us there's a limit to our freedom to have stuff." And we said "USA USA USA"

I wonder how it'll play coming from Ronald McDonald.

Hey mean man, don't challenge her with facts or "actual events in history."

All right. This is enough hipness for me.

I'm going to listen to the debate like a boring old adult. No more Live-Blogging! for me.

You Betcha!

So it makes sense that Joe would be able to talk about regulation... (Big Government Demeecrat that he is)

Ah shucks... Golly...

She's looking down and blinking a lot isn't she?

Well I'm glad somebody explained what John McCain meant about the fundamentals of the economy being strong.

Hi, Gwen

What would an untoward outburst be?
"Sarah, tell me about dinosaurs and cave men."

She asked, "Can I call you Joe?" That sounds like some sort of vooddoo secret. Don't let her do it Joe, she knows spiritual warfare techniques.

Democracy

Did you know that the debate is in St. Louis because Aunheiser-Busch (sp) are/is a huge donor to the Commisison on Presidential Debates? True.
And they decide with the candidates in secret the format of the debates.

LiveBlogging Rulz!!!

The back of Gwen Ifill's head...

That's funny. When I picture Gwen Ifill in my head, she's wearing blue.

C-Span it's like you exist to make our government lame.

Yo, Kidz This is Straight Up Sick

So I listened to the presidential debate on the radio, to fully swing the pendulum, and make voting and a type of politcal awareness hip, I will be watching the vice-presidential debate on the computer through C-span.

Hmm... Maybe I shouldn't have written C-Span if I want to be hip...

Seriously? 90 second answers? This should be great

I am totally liveblogging, dudes.

The Invisible Hand is Strangling You

How do you determine the value of something for which there is no market?

What are you, some kind of jerk? Why would you even think a question like that in this day and age?

Stop thinking like that and think like this:
There could be anything in this envelope- winning scratch-off lottery tickets, a lovely bit of string, the pink slip to a broken car, art work, keys to a safe deposit box, cash, an IOU for a large sum of money, RAM, cigarettes, the deed to a house, nothing. Who knows?

I know, but other than me who knows? Point is, you don't know, but that shouldn't stop you from offering me money for it. Offer me something reasonable. $100. And don't think of your offer as a purchase, rather think of it as an investment. Invest $100 in this mystery envelope. Now it doesn't matter what is in the envelope because it is worth at least $100 once you give me $100 for it- but wait, in that instant that you gave me $100, you took the first step in this envelope's potentially infinite increase in value. If you're willing to give me $100, how much more would the next person be willing to give you? We don't know. So you just got this envelope for a steal. This envelope could go for $10,000, $100,000, $1,000,000,000- whatever. You got it for $100?! You're a financial genius.

Now I feel a little bad for letting it go for $100, but I am a man of my word. It's yours for $100.

Hey, Kool-Aid

As pathetic and difficult to watch as Sarah Palin's public performances have been since the convention (since she's had to rely on her own words rather than read someone else's crafted zingers), I think she's doing exactly what she's supposed to do.

I was reading an article that is essentially a collection of quotes from Sarah Palin supporters explaining why they are Sarah Palin supporters.

"'She's real. Everyone can identify with her,' said Karen Rinehart, from Pinkerton, a suburb of Columbus, who praised her clarity. 'She has five kids. I have six.'"

"'She came from a middle-class family. She did it with conviction and grit,' Plessinger concluded. 'God's in charge. I'm voting for God first.'"

"'It's her integrity,' Smalley said, 'what she has done for her state, and yet she is able to have a family, a career, a husband. It just gives woman hope that we can do it. She is sassy and we like sassy.'"

Seriously?

Yes.

Whatever.

I really can see why people like her.
She's a bit of a hole. People can project whatever they want on to her and support her for that.
She is the perfect American candidate, she feeds our narcissism that requires our leaders be some type of "just like us" though there is no single "us" and the "us" that Palin is is actually a small minority of the country. It's the next manifestation of "who would you rather have a beer with?" That is completely irrelevant, but that's how enough of us think.
She's a religious nut of the type that thinks there is an essential value to being that type of religious nut that overrides any other concern. Believing the Flinstones is plausible history is a good thing. Trying to find out how to ban books with the word "Gay" in the title is exactly what she should be doing.

In fact, I think the worse she does in the public eye, the more REAL AMERICANS will support her. She's that perfect naught or place holder for a people terrified of the necessary difference and messiness of democracy.* Whatever you feel you are up against, Sarah's going to overcome it, and since she's just like you, you are going to overcome it. Take that Elitists, and that Liberal Media, here's a poke in the eye Evolutionists, knee to the groin for you Secular Humanism, Economic Insecurity, Swarthy Masses, Condoms in School...

But that's for our imbecilic selves. I think she also has a very important ideological role. I mean she doesn't just exist because of our insipid narcissism, she also serves the destroyer.

She's Ronald McDonald.

She is a mascot, a clown meant to make it easier for us to swallow poison, to want the poison. That's exactly what she was at the RNC, a good-looking package communicating someone else's words to make venom palatable. Read about what she's done to Wasilla. Don't think of how little experience she has or what she hasn't done. Think of what she did do, what she would want to do. Imagine her ideology writ large in the US.

If you're not scared of that... Well... I'd say turn off the TV and go read a book but you'd probably pick your Bible (Oh snap!)

*Isn't it ironic how the idea of REAL AMERICANS is incredibly Anti-American, if America is an ongoing democratic experiment that is. Don't ya' think?

The More Things Change...

I was reading the text of FDR's inaugural address today and because I'm a jerk, I was thinking how I could annotate the text with alternative contemporary statements by our leaders.

So I could take for example the "Only thing we have to fear " portion and contrast it with President Jesus' commercial for the bailout in which all he could do was try to terrify us into acting. Then when you read the less well known "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror... paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance" you might chuckle.

Or when you got to "Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment" I would embed a YouTubes of President Jesus and the Maverick saying the "fundamentals of the economy are strong, blah, blah, blah."

Maybe when we got to the part of the failed, incompetent, rulers abdicating, we might get wistful or nostalgic.

And if you could bear with it all the way to the discussion of using the Constitution to address the problems... well perhaps by then you're eyes would be too full of tears to read.

I should just let the speech speak for itself:

I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impel. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.

More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.

Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.

Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.

Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.

Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. The task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, State, and local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, and unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities which have a definitely public character. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act and act quickly.

Finally, in our progress toward a resumption of work we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order; there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people’s money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.

There are the lines of attack. I shall presently urge upon a new Congress in special session detailed measures for their fulfillment, and I shall seek the immediate assistance of the several States.

Through this program of action we address ourselves to putting our own national house in order and making income balance outgo. Our international trade relations, though vastly important, are in point of time and necessity secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy. I favor as a practical policy the putting of first things first. I shall spare no effort to restore world trade by international economic readjustment, but the emergency at home cannot wait on that accomplishment.

The basic thought that guides these specific means of national recovery is not narrowly nationalistic. It is the insistence, as a first consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements in all parts of the United States—a recognition of the old and permanently important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer. It is the way to recovery. It is the immediate way. It is the strongest assurance that the recovery will endure.

In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others—the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.

If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good. This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife.

With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems.

Action in this image and to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution is so simple and practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has produced. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations.

It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.

I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.

But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

For the trust reposed in me I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.

We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of the national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stern performance of duty by old and young alike. We aim at the assurance of a rounded and permanent national life.

We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.

In this dedication of a Nation we humbly ask the blessing of God. May He protect each and every one of us. May He guide me in the days to come.

What a nerd.

Someone's Trying to Lose His Job

"But I am interested in broadening the agenda of [evangelical] concerns. And I'm of the opinion that some people are going to vote Republican no matter what.... Party line voting in my opinion is unbiblical. It says you don't think. If you're simply voting on same sex marriage and abortion, you're not thinking. What I'm saying is that a lot of evangelicals don't think, sad to say."

Richard Cizik, chief Lobbyist NEA with beliefnet

He also mentions the racism of White Christians. Go figure.

White People Go to the Bathroom Like This...

There is a lazy, lazy, lazy, lazy, lazy way of doing sermons, self-help books, relational counseling, legislation, and who knows what else. It involves using facile and sloppy generalizations about categories of people to make facile and sloppy points that apply to no one anywhere but feed an abstract sense of identity that is irrelevant to actual people and so leads to their eager interest in more facile and sloppy sermons, self-help books, relational counseling, and legislation.

It happens to no end, especially in churches, in matters of men and women relating to each other.

Guys you know what I'm talking about, right? Right? And all the ladies are just looking at me, "What? What does he even mean?"

There are entire careers built on convincing men and women in relationships that women need someone to translate their words to men.

Ladies you say: I had a rough day with my boss today.
He hears: Tell me how to fix this problem I have.
The problem is, women are oriented about relationships whereas men, by their nature, need to fix things. He hears the world through his blue earphones.

I suppose, in the world of at leasts, it could be good for people who have submitted to a certain ideological conception of their existence to use the tools of their oppressors to build themselves some sense of relief. I guess if you're a man who has internalized the idea that men are universally barely more than retarded taciturn baboons, incapable of any kind of verbal expression, then it could be helpful if someone came along and offered you a means of communication as the imbecile you are.

I dunno. It seems like giving someone something to drink while they're hanging on a cross. Doesn't quite seem honest, and I'm not sure it's better than nothing. I think if I tried to relate to The Qweenbean as an abstract concept, or the idea of a woman, rather than who she is... well, that would be hell for both of us.

This would be a good intro to a skit about me relating to my wife that way, I would say, "I bet it would look a little something like this..." Then we would dissolve to some scene of domestic hilarity that skewers, skewers, I say, the ideas of men and women by applying the ideas to real situations.

And me, well I'm no better. We always carry some chains. I'm only different from, not necessarily better than, the mouth-breathing ape of a man that refuses to say "I love you". But that's only a bit here or there.

I'm convinced this is part of the reason THE CHURCH panics so much about teh Gay. We're not really interested in how people actually relate to each other- even in what we call heterosexuality. How could we possibly then address the actual complexity and diversity of human interactions that do not fit easily into our simplified categories? MAN and WOMAN as complementary binary already doesn't work, don't ask us to think about the possibility of gender as multiplicity even if that's what it really looks like in existence.

Anyway what got me thinking about this was a reference to research that shows men and women actually hold the remote about the same amount of time when watching TV.

So next time your pastor, family counsellor, camp speaker, or self-help guru says something about how men channel surf and women stay put, you'll know you're being lied to. Just like with that bit about men and women using a different average amount of words in a day. And isn't that what everyone wants?

I Love The Future

Another BBC News video to make you forget all about America's looming financial apocalypse.

Life Is Like Some Cheesy Japanese Movie Where The Hero Pulls On a Pair of Jet Pants and Flies Off The Balcony Like AstroBoy

Sorry it's from FOX News... Oh never mind. I do get the video from the BBC site.. Let's go there instead.

-ed. Note how even with the non-political, FOX distorts the truth. There's nothing "Rocket" about this pack at all. It's a jet. Dummies

This Is How They Win

I didn't sell out, I bought in.

The Silver Lining

As funny as these are, they only go to demonstrate more what a crank I am.

The Bailout as SPAM

"Dear American:
I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.
I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.
This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.
Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.
Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson"

And government for the people

Both via BOING

No War But Class War

This post is not for babies

There.

In a previous post I made passing mention that we are the kind of people that would be up in arms (figuratively) if half of the money used to kill Iraqis were offered as reparations or used to build Iraqi infrastructure (legitimately and competently). I think a similar phenomenon is at work with the presently debated Wall Street hand out.

So there's some debate about compensation limits, the degree and nature of oversight, how or whether to address housing issues, and just how we will own what we are about to own. But that's it. We have, "Give us a blank check," on one side, and, "No, no blank check for you," on the other. For many of us, these are legitimate points of debate. This is what we must hammer out in order to pass this legislation. They are legitimate points of debate because we are idiots.

You've probably heard the $700 billion price tag- that's an imaginary number. Imaginary because it's 700,000,000,000 but also because it's only meant to address the outstanding moneys owed at a single time- ("The Secretary’s authority to purchase mortgage-related assets under this Act shall be limited to $700,000,000,000 outstanding at any one time") It is not how much this will all cost us in total related expenditures. That limit is fixed (on paper anyway) in the trillions. But let's pretend that is the number. Let's pretend that $700,000,000,000 is how much money we will ultimately shell out, give or take a million. That's how much we say would give to these companies, and when I say companies I mean the people that created these "hybrid instruments" and insurance schemes that deliberately and predictably orchestrated this meltdown.

You've got that, right? This wasn't an accident.

This was not the result of Free Market capitalism. You must put out of your head the idea that anything called "The Market" exists anywhere but in high school economics texts. This was the result of actual people seeking the legal allowances and avenues for systems of mergers and lending machinations to make themselves and their cronies very rich. There is nothing "Free Market" about lending out $1000 when you only have $10 in hand. That is an artifice, it is a created possibility. We built the world that allowed this to happen.

And we say we don't believe in magic anymore. Pfft.

And now? Now we are willing to give at least hundreds of billions of dollars to this "emergency".

This should echo. We should have in our memories the USA PATRIOT Act and the congressional authorization to wage a war on terror. Both were legislative moves we had to make else we would meet certain ruin. Both were sold as necessary for our protection, necessary for our safety- just like the notmurder and nottorture done for our protection.

So we will let it happen. We want it to happen. And it says a lot about who and what we are.

Idiots.

Just as we'd be upset if we considered giving $250,000,000,000 to Iraq to rebuild their country, I'm sure we would consider it out of the question to devote even half of the proposed bail out one time limit ($350,000,000,000 to give it a name) to a single payer health care system, as an investment in educational infrastructure and resources, as a housing subsidy disbursement, or to even fix our screwed-up roads.

But this is happening. It will happen. We can efficiently and quickly create the means for a successful and well orchestrated bail out. Rich people, you don't know, are too rich to be left hanging. But people you do know with medical debts, people you know who are a paycheck away from foreclosure, people you know who are squeezed out of the housing market, people you know that have to forego college?

Fuck them. Perhaps you should tell your neighbor next time you see them.

I'm sure we could cynically say, "This is simply the nature of power, and there it goes looking out for itself." Or we could look at our national financial priorities and rationalize it as a matter of "personal responsibility" that we don't take care of each other. Sometimes we get a glimpse behind the veil and see someone's turning the screws. That's an eye-opening moment, and we feel our cynicism is justified. But this isn't that. There's also nothing exceptionally revelatory to say we don't care much for poor people however we rationalize it. No, here we are confronted with something far worse than those things; here we realize we have been cowed into participating in our own destruction. I'm sure we call it something else, though.

Our hands are not clean in this. We are not ignorant. We see exactly what's happening. We're eager for it to happen, to borrow a metaphor, like asses in heat, sniffing the wind. We are damned idiots. Really idiots; it's strong enough and perfectly appropriate.

Look it up.

Anyway...

Goddamn #1:
Pretty much all of Section 2, b. but especially:
(2) entering into contracts, including contracts for services authorized by section 3109 of title 5, United States Code, without regard to any other provision of law regarding public contracts;

Goddamn #2:
In exercising the authorities granted in this Act, the Secretary shall take into consideration means for--

(1) providing stability or preventing disruption to the financial markets or banking system; and

(2) protecting the taxpayer.
[I'm sure this is put here as a joke at our expense]

Goddamn #3:
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
[This makes actions outside of the law within the law. That's magic for you- the kind of magic that makes torture nottorture. Hooray.]

Hopeless.
These are the strangers we love.
It's after them we will go.

You could call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 to contact your representatives, but what could you say about this? I guess you could at least ask them to [redacted 'cos I'm a baby too sometimes] and say your name before it's over.

So what's the phenomenon at work? I think we call it freedom.

Sighs all around.

Solitude

"Whoever takes up the subject of theology discovers himself immediately, recurrently, and inevitably banished into a strange and notoriously oppressive solitude. In our old church hymnal we used to sing with emotion a song by Novalis containing the line, 'Be content to let others wander in their broad, resplendent teeming, streets.' These words might sound very appropriate as a slogan for theology; however, they would not be altogether honest, for who at bottom would not really like to be an individual in a greater crowd? Who, as long as he is not the oddest of odd fellows, would not like to have his work supported by the direct or at least indirect acknowledgment and participation of the general public, and understood by all men or at least as many as possible? As a rule, the theologian will have to put up with pursuing his subject in a certain isolation, not only in the so-called 'world,' but also in the Church... This isolation must be endured and borne, and it cannot always be easily borne with dignity and cheerfulness."

Karl Barth Evangelical Theology

It Just Makes Sense

I've heard that having a child and buying a home are two things that tend to make a person more politically conservative.* I don't know about the latter, but having a child has certainly made me more fond of the idea of traditional marriage. Of course by traditional marriage I don't mean the modern conception of marriage with which we are all familiar. That's the result of militant feminism and the homosexual agenda-** hardly traditional in the big picture and largely worthless to me given my present needs.

Obviously by traditional I mean the Judeo-Christian tradition (and don't give me any nonsense about Jews and Christians by virtue of their being Jews or Christians not sharing a tradition). I mean the tradition one finds in the Bible, and not the Jew Bible, which isn't a Bible, I mean the tradition found in Jesus' Bible, that Judeo-Christian tradition.

So I'm making dinner last night and it occurs to me, "I'm making dinner a lot these days." I like to cook and I do it pretty well, but lately I have to make dinner and I think "I don't want to have to make dinner." And then I think, "I'm a man, should I be making dinner... ever?"*** No. That's what a woman does. It's what she's supposed to do, it's what she's good at. Nature itself shows us women are food providers- they have boobs.

So I wonder, "How do we fix this?" "This" being the problem that I have to cook. And I say to myself, "I dunno, but it sure would be nice to take a break." And then I realize, "Hey, what if I just make my wife do it?" And that makes sense to me.

It's a lot of work of course and I don't know exactly how a woman is supposed to get everything done, I mean feed me and the baby along with everything else- it's something to do with her ovaries, or uterus, or her smaller brain I'm sure. The point is: a woman is supposed to cook. That's what she does, that's what she likes to do. It's what ought to happen.

But then I'm confronted with reality.

There's just not enough time in a day for a woman to take care of my baby and me. But then I realize there's an answer as plain as anything.

Obviously, a day is just as long as God made it. That's not the problem. My taking on the roles of a woman by cooking is clearly wrong. A man cooking for his family is probably an abomination; that's no good, I gotta stop that. The solution, as always, is returning to a sense of tradition, in this case traditional marriage. Adding another wife to the mix would solve a lot of problems. It's brilliant- but it's probably not necessary to say that. It's God's way after all.

If I had an additional wife, she could do the cooking and I could spend my day among the elders at the city gate, just like I'm supposed to.

And then the sex. If I may be vulnerable here for a moment. We still really like the idea of sex, but who has the time or energy when there's a baby around? How does anyone get around to making more than one baby? Fill the earth and subdue it, indeed. How can I when I only have one wife? Nature seems to require that I have more than one wife. Obviously by nature I mean, my wanting to have sex and our need for more babies.

With at least one more wife around, the opportunity for sex increases as does the chance for making more babies. And it also allows them to share responsibilities. I get to act like a man again, and their womanly jobs are spread among more workers. It seems like the perfect solution because it is.

So to these people invading our churches with their "think of the children", "save civilization," arguments about traditional marriage I say, "One man and one woman, indeed." Where do you get that from? Certainly not the Bible, certainly not from nature or what is practical. If we're not going to base our reasoning and decisions on what's in the Bible, what nature requires, and on plain old just what works, then what do we have? I'll tell you what, this topsy turvy world where I'm stuck cooking dinner all the time.

So in conclusion... in conclusion have more wives. That's all.

* That, and depriving the brain oxygen.
** Actually, it was largely borne by the rise of capitalism and urbanization. Still, not traditional if one wants traditional to mean "authoritative by virtue of its affirming what I like". But, whatever.
*** Granted I make a good dinner. I made a variation of pasta caprisi (with homegrown tomatoes), garlic and rosemary (which I grew) potatoes, sauteed mushrooms and spinach salad with a home made balsamic dressing. The Qweenbean is so lazy these days we'd probably eat macaroni and cheese or hot dogs every night if it was up to her. G'uh.