Decisions

"I made one decision in my life based on money. And I swore I would never do it again." - Brad Pitt (as Billy Beane)

This month's baseball movie is Moneyball.  For me, Moneyball is not just a nice respite into the world of basball General Managers, trades and the ridiculous season the Athletics had in 2002, but helps me think through a couple of life issues.

First, life requires choices and when you make choices sometimes they work out great.  Sometimes not.  The question is do we bang our head against the wall hoping to change things or do we change.  Billy Beane had been a first round selection of the New York Mets, but finished is career only after six seasons with a .219 batting average.  He had the opportunity to go to Stanford University, but turned it down to play baseball.

As his career failed to progress he made the choice to move into scouting - a move that would ultimately help him into the GM's offices later.  This is important because like noted elsewhere in the movie - we all stop playing the game at some point.  We don't know when and many don't get to choose how.  Beane on the other chance made his own choice, changing paths as circumstances dictated.  By adapting to circumstance he overcame the situations that held him back.

The bigger thing I get from this movie though is money.  You do not have to make millions to be great or to do great things.  Making decisions based on money is just fool hardy and it is entirely possible to live on a reasonable budget and enjoy yourself.

I listen to sports radio all the time and a regular topic are the rookie dinners in the NFL where rookie players are expected to pick up the tab for older players so that they can eat steak and then take steak home to their dog.  This is moronic and sophomoric.  Why?

What this tells me is not that you are cool NFL Player, but that you are wasteful and not focused on the right things.  I like the idea of Beane turning down the Red Sox offer of millions of dollars in salary to stay in Oakland and demonstrate that some things are more important than money.  I like the idea that he showed decisions can be about more and they should be.

Our America?

Wow John Whitehead.  You might have hit the nail on the head with this post.

There's a lot to love about America and its people: their pioneering spirit, their entrepreneurship, their ability to think outside the box, their passion for the arts, etc.  Increasingly, however, as time goes by, I find the things I don't like about living in a nation that has long since ceased to be a sanctuary for freedom are beginning to outnumber the things I love.

Here's what I don't like about living in the American police state: I don't like being treated as if my only value to the government is as a source of labor and funds. I don't like being viewed as a consumer and bits of data. I don't like being spied on and treated as if I have no right to privacy, especially in my own home.

I don't like government officials who lobby for my vote only to ignore me once elected. I don't like having representatives incapable of and unwilling to represent me. I don't like taxation without representation.

I don't like being bullied by government bureaucrats, vigilantes masquerading as cops, or faceless technicians. I don't like being railroaded into financing government programs whose only purpose is to increase the power and wealth of the corporate elite. I don't like being forced to pay for wars abroad that serve no other purpose except to expand the reach of the military industrial complex.

I don't like being subjected to scans, searches, pat downs and other indignities by the TSA. I don't like VIPR raids on so-called "soft" targets like shopping malls and bus depots by black-clad, Darth Vader look-alikes. I don't like fusion centers, which represent the combined surveillance efforts of federal, state and local law enforcement.

I don't like being treated like an underling by government agents who are supposed to be working for me. I don't like being threatened, intimidated, bribed, beaten and robbed by individuals entrusted with safeguarding my rights. I don't like being silenced, censored and marginalized. I don't like my movements being tracked, my conversations being recorded, and my transactions being catalogued.

I don't like how the presidency has developed into a neo-monarchy replete with all the luxury and lasciviousness of the feudal lords of old.

I don't like politicians who spend most of their time running for office, fundraising and enjoying being feted by lobbyists and corporations alike. I don't like being kept at a distance from my elected representatives, including the president (a.k.a. the Emperor). I don't like free speech zones, roving bubble zones and trespass laws that restrict Americans' First Amendment rights.

I don't like laws that criminalize Americans for otherwise lawful activities such as holding religious studies at home, growing vegetables in their yard, and collecting rainwater. I don't like the NDAA, which allows the president and the military to arrest and detain American citizens indefinitely. I don't like the Patriot Act, which opened the door to all manner of government abuses and intrusions on our privacy.

I don't like the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which has become America's standing army in direct opposition to the dire warnings of those who founded our country. I don't like military weapons such as armored vehicles, sound cannons and the like being used against the American citizens. I don't like government agencies such as the DHS, Post Office, Social Security Administration and Wildlife stocking up on hollow-point bullets. And I definitely don't like the implications of detention centers being built that could house American citizens.

I don't like the fact that since President Obama took office, police departments across the country "have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft."

I don't like America's infatuation with locking people up for life for non-violent crimes. There are over 3,000 people in America serving life sentences for non-violent crimes, including theft of a jacket, siphoning gasoline from a truck, stealing tools, and attempting to cash a stolen check. I don't like paying roughly $29,000 a year per inmate just to keep these nonviolent offenders in prison.

I don't like having my hard-earned taxpayer dollars used against me.

I don't like the partisan nature of politics today, which has so polarized Americans that they are incapable of standing in unity against the government's abuses. I don't like the entertainment drivel that passes for news coverage today.

I don't like the fact that those within a 25-mile range of the border are getting a front row seat to the American police state, as Border Patrol agents are now allowed to search people's homes, intimately probe their bodies, and rifle through their belongings, all without a warrant.

I don't like public schools that treat students as if they were prison inmates. I don't like zero tolerance laws that criminalize childish behavior. I don't like a public educational system that emphasizes rote memorization and test-taking over learning, synthesizing and critical thinking.  

I don't like police precincts whose primary purpose—whether through the use of asset forfeiture laws, speed traps, or red light cameras—is making a profit at the expense of those they have sworn to protect. I don't like militarized police and their onerous SWAT team raids.

I don't like Department of Defense and DHS programs that transfer surplus military hardware to local and state police. I don't like government programs that reward cops for raiding homes and terrorizing homeowners. I don't like local police dressing and acting as if they were the military while viewing me as an enemy combatant.

I don't like being treated as if I have no rights.

I don't like cash-strapped states cutting deals with private corporations to run the prisons in exchange for maintaining 90% occupancy rates for at least 20 years. I don't like the fact that American prisons have become the source of cheap labor for Corporate America.

I don't like feeling as if we've come full circle back to a pre-Revolutionary era.  I don't like answering to an imperial president, who operates above the law. I don't like the injustice that passes for justice in the courts. I don't like prosecutors so hell bent on winning that they allow innocent people to suffer for crimes they didn't commit. 

I don't like the double standards that allow government officials to break laws with immunity, while average Americans get the book thrown at them. I don't like cops who shoot first and ask questions later. I don't like police dogs being treated with more respect and afforded more rights than American citizens. 

I don't like living in a suspect society. I don't like Americans being assumed guilty until they prove their innocence. I don't like the fact that 38 states require that a property owner prove his innocence when police have laid claim to it in a civil forfeiture proceeding, whether or not that individual has done anything wrong. 

I don't like technology being used as a double-edged sword against us. I don't like agencies like DARPA developing weapons for the battlefield that get used against Americans back at home. I don't like the fact that drones will be deployed domestically in 2015, yet the government has yet to establish any civil liberties protocols to prevent them from being used against the citizenry.

Most of all, I don't like feeling as if there's no hope for turning things around.  Now there are those who would suggest that if I don't like things about this country, I should leave and go elsewhere. And there are certainly those among my fellow citizens who are leaving for friendlier shores. However, I happen to come from a long line of people who believe in the virtue of hard work and perseverance and in the principle that nothing worthwhile comes without effort. 

So I'm not giving up, at least not anytime soon. But I'm also not waiting around for the government to clean up its act. I'm not making any deals with politicians who care nothing about me and mine. To quote Number Six, the character in the British television series The Prisoner: "I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My life is my own!"

I plan to keep fighting, writing, speaking up, speaking out, shouting if necessary, filing lawsuits, challenging the status quo, writing letters to the editor, holding my representatives accountable, thinking nationally but acting locally, and generally raising a ruckus anytime the government attempts to undermine the Constitution and ride roughshod over the rights of the citizenry.

As I make clear in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, we're at a crisis point in American history. If we don't get up off our duffs and get involved in the fight for freedom, then up ahead the graveyard beckons. As Martin Luther King Jr. warned, "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality."

I get that he seems mad, but if you haven't looked around, he is right throughout.  As ordinary Americans we have abdicated our responsibility to keep our government, ours.  The center of power needs to be restored to those governed.

I WIll Love And Honor You All The Days...

Crazy song for a crazy day - crazy weather anyway.  I guess this song was picked for me by Providence as I look around and see everything else upside down.

A commercial airliner is shot out of the sky with at least one American on board.  The American President mentions it, jokes about other issues, and continues on his fundraising schedule.

Israel is attacked by militants in Gaza after they picked up from Gaza ten years ago and donated infrastructure and supplies for a peaceful two state co-existence.  They respond and they get blamed for inciting warfare.

You turn on the radio and song after song seems to be about a quick hook up, getting over the last meaningless hook up, or dancing through relationships.  Or...you can find Randy Travis talking about finding the one...you know, forever and ever?

So for all those thinking about the one who they hold dear forever and ever, or at least as long as old men talk about the weather and old women talk about old men...enjoy your Friday night.
D
RAFT

** All Point Bulletin -- All Points Bulletin: For Safety's Sake...

I apologize.  I am truly sorry to interrupt my regularly scheduled blogging, but I have to raise awareness on a serious issue affecting those who take selfies.

Okay, granted it might be argued that those who take selfies may have a body image mental health issue I think we may have missed the point.  In Spain, authorities are seeking a man for taking a selfie - while he participated in the Running Of The Bulls.

Their concern is that by taking photos or videos, he is creating a danger.  Let me say that....by taking photos and/or video while running with bulls is dangerous.  The running of the bulls they are not too worried about, but you shouldn't take a photo while doing it.  What?

Somehow I think the point will be missed and personally I hope this guy gets away with it, but the authorities desperately need to re-think the strategy on this one as it isn't the picture taking which is all that bad.

Granted I realize there is all kinds of danger in engaging in a dangerous activity, such as bull running, but the San Fermin Festival rakes in the cash I am sure as thousands of people descend upon Pampalona entirely for the purpose of running with the bulls.  As for those around him, they exposed themselves to a similar danger by running with the bulls and are in no greater danger from them than they were before.  This is I suspect the experience of a lifetime and I hope to do it myself before I can not play along with the younger crowd.

I hope that those who have no issue allowing people to endanger themselves for sport will not endanger their wallets too simply because they want to record it.  Ahem.

Once Again I Belong To The Stupid Party

Part of me wishes there was an IQ test for Members of Congress.  Once again, the GOP has missed the point and is acting as poorly as the opposition.

Instead of handling an issue head on, the House led GOP has chosen to reduce funding to the IRS instead of the intelligent thing...ending it.  Angered by targeting of conservative and Tea Party groups by the IRS bureaucrats, the House has decided to attempt a 25% reduction in the enforcement division.  The headline: GOP Wants To Make It Easier To Cheat On Taxes.

You can't control the media, but that should have been considered beforehand and it reeks of the same behavior as Republicans want to accuse the administration of...i.e. playing favorites.  The problem with the tax code now is it is entirely impossible for the average citizen to understand and is filled with packages of tax breaks for this favorite person or that.  (99% of Republicans are okay with this because now and then they are a favorite.  That doesn't make it right though.)

The IRS Scandal should have been the perfect reason to say no more and pass a flat tax, but still the number of Republicans who will scream about the scandal, but are happy with the system is entirely too high.  This should have been the time when Republicans said we will have a flat tax and eliminate 95% of the IRS.  Instead, the House GOP is showing once again that I belong to the stupid party.

Focus

Again I must beg your forgiveness.  For some reason I thought we had the freedom to speak our minds in this country - even when it is offensive to someone else.

Apparently the right to speak only extends to certain people who are allowed to say what they like and that right also seems to extend to those who don't wish to speak - but only certain folks.

The Department of Justice has recently send out a team to investigate a Nebraska parade float.  They meanwhile do not apparently have enough agents to deal with an IRS crisis that demonstrates that employees used the IRS for political purposes.

Again and again, the warning signs are apparent as the US government is using the NSA to spy on ordinary Americans, the DOJ attacks reporters who question their motives, and will use the full force of the federal government against a man with a beat down blue pick up who poked fun at the President, yet they do not police themselves when it comes to the political use of government agencies against its citizens.

This President seems to believe his own press.  I know it sounds crazy President Obama, but you are not God.  You may wish to think you are and send out your jackals to stifle dissent, but while you enjoy a vacation in Martha's Vineyard - children are washing up on to the shore of the Rio Grande.  You worry about people criticizing you, but not the criticism.  You are a poor excise for a leader and you needn't worry about the criticism of today because it is the history books that will bring you the most shame.  A President who could not focus on anything, but the mirror.

Church Suicide And Coming Home

This weekend the Church of England starts its General Synod and will determine whether or not they will ordain women bishops.  I see multiple news stories and lots of concern.  What happens, what
happens, what happens when this occurs from concerned conservatives in the church.

The answer is simple.  The Church of England continues to cut its own throat.

While the Church of England claims 1.7M members per month, their own internal reports show that attendance is half what is was forty years ago for adult church goers.  I do not need to belabor the obvious point that the population has grown significantly in the same time.  That's right.  While the Church of England, and its American counterpart, have chased after every societal fad to make it popular, its popularity has continued to dwindle.

It reminds me of politicians like Mitt Romney and Eric Cantor whose nicknames should be waffle.  They will stand for almost anything as long as they continue to be prominent, but the faithful know this to be false as do voters.

It is critical to remember that the Church of England was formed because of a spat with Rome where King Henry VIII was not granted the divorce he sought from Catherine of Aragon.  The church has great resemblance to the Roman Catholic faith - because it continued to use most of her traditions and liturgy - except perhaps the most important, obedience.

I realize obedience is a dirty word in modern America, but the hundred years divorce had laid the framework for today's crisis.  The Church of England believes - as Henry did - that they can continue to morph into whatever they want, whenever they want - without concern for God's Will.  Naysayers will tell you the Holy Bible is wrong on the issue of ordaining women. They will say that Jesus only ordained men beause that was the custom of the day, but this is nonsense pure and simple.

Christ who overturned the money changers tables and preached forgiveness could have ordained women.  If you believe Christ is in fact God and that the miracles he performed are true, do you actually believe he would have had any trouble ordaining women?  Christ - the all powerful Son of God - who took on the high priests directly would fear them over the ordination of women?  This is folly.

Regardless of the arguments though, the facts are the Church of England and Episcopal Church of the United States is in decline.  Moreover, given the generous offer of Saint Pope John Paul II by providing the Anglican Use form of worship, disaffected episcopalians can come to the Roman Catholic Church much more easily than they might know.

I fought the idea for years, telling a very good friend who pressed me on the matter at Sunday Baltimore Orioles games I would never be Catholic.  He had all the reasons I could provide, ut it was when Episcopal Bishop Jeffrey Steenson left to become a Catholic priest that it started to make sense.  His argument to conservatives in ECUSA was that we were going in the wrong direction.  Rather than trying to stem the tide of another ECUSA reform or branching off the branch that came from the Roman Catholic trunk, we would be better served by returning to the trunk itself - the Roman Catholic church.

For me, it took some consideration, but my conversion was much easier than I could have ever imagined.  It was a coming home of a prodigal son so to speak.  I suspect as the Church of England continues its march towards whatever its marketing gurus suggest it will find a great deal of its membership finding solace in the Roman Catholic Church...solace they do not find in their own walls now.

So...while I do not support the ordination of women priests, much less bishops, proceed with all haste Church of England.  As Joe Clark is said to have mentioned in the movie Lean On Me, "...if you want to kill yourself, go on and be expeditious about it."  If indeed the Church of England intends to cut its own throat, please hurry so that those souls in need of refreshment might find it in the Roman Catholic Church as I have.

My boys...

Perhaps a bit late, but today's song is Elvis Costello's "My Three Sons."

I can identify finding my son's pillow and sending them to bed shortly before I find myself in slumber.  I never thought I would get to enjoy being the father of three boys though.

With the recent addition of Wyatt to the family, it is an entirely new experience managing the age difference (eleven years to eleven days) all with siblings mixed in between.

While I have noidea how many children I will ultimately be blessed with I know I am enjoying these five and my three sons in particular.  Sorry for the short comment, but diapers to change.  Enjoy the live version from Mr. Costello.

Ground Zero Victory

Forgive me that I do not understand atheists and the offense they take at other people's religion.  If you believe there is no God, why are you offended that I have one?  If you are sure that you are right, really you must simply look at me as childish.  If I am accused of having a child like faith in my Lord and savior, so be it.

Well, a similar message was given earlier to the atheists who are "offended" by the Ground Zero Cross.  What about the Cross violates your rights the federal appeals court asks as it should.

If indeed, atheists believe there is no God then the two steel beams should be regarded as just that.  Together they are certainly no worse than some of the other "art work" eyesores that seem to populate downtown neighborhoods across the United States.

If on the other hand, they are admitting that they have a deeper issue, one that requires reflection, and that the Ground Zero Cross represents something more.  Well, that is something else entirely.  It is at that moment that the atheists who brought the suit should consider their own issues of morality and life.  Perhaps their suit is an admission that the Cross does represent something more than downtown art work and if that is the case, can they truly call themselves atheist anymore?

In any case, if my choice is being on the side of God or believing Earth is the creation of gas, I will take God's side as I remember the movie Oh God and suspect George Burn's lines about finding the theory offensive to be true.  In any case, score a victory for the cross it looks like on this one.

God Bless The USA

The Fourth of July is always an easy one when I think of patriotic music or popular music.  I always think of Lee Greenwood and "God Bless The USA,:  The video is a little bit older with an introduction from a very young Martin Sheen, of all people.

Most people think of Martin Sheen as a huge liberal and perhaps that is true, but that is also what makes this land great that we can have differing opinions on whether to fight wars, on taxation, on other issues, but hopefully we still come together as a nation.

For me that is one of the lessons from this song that God has blessed this nation and hopefully will continue to do so.