Las Vegas: Twinkling lights and a memorial for the dead

Vegas Strip remains bright and dazzling despite recent tragedy.

The first surprise when stepping onto the Las Vegas strip in early October is the weather. The blast furnace of summer has clicked off in recent days and been replaced with moderate temps that hover in the low 80s. It's still warm, but not unbearably hot, and crowds of tourists are out and about like bees in search of nectar.

For first-time visitors, getting around can be an unexpected challenge. The massive scale of the hotels and casinos that line Las Vegas Boulevard -- Caesars Palace and Circus Circus; the Luxor and MGM Grand; Bellagio, the Venetian and a dozen or so others -- give the impression that a festive playground is easily within reach. It's not.

The resorts are huge and trekking about is a tiresome and time-consuming affair. The illusion is only magnified when the sun goes down and the Vegas lights come fully alive, offering up a dazzling, multi-colored fantasy land.

Memorial honors 58 people killed by deranged gunman.

It's this twinkling world, filled with dreams of hedonistic delights that adds weight and meaning to the city's marketing slogan, "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!" Tragically, the dream morphed into a nightmare earlier this month when a deranged gunman opened fire from his suite in a high-rise hotel, the Mandalay Bay, raking a nearby concert venue with thousands of rounds of gunfire.

In just a little over 10 minutes, the shooter managed to murder 58 people, injuring hundreds more in the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. Police report that in the midst of one 31-second span, the shooter fired a staggering 280 rounds, roughly nine bullets every second.

I'm in Vegas to meet up with two of my brothers and  nephew, a brief stop and gathering spot for a trip that will take us across southern Utah to Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park. But for the moment I have joined with dozens of other tourists to walk about a temporary memorial resting at the foot of the neon-soaked sign welcoming visitors to "fabulous" Las Vegas, Nevada!

And off in the distance a yuuuge golden blemish.

The space is filled with a jarring mix of balloons and banners, flowers, candles and personal notes and prayers for the victims. A line of wooden crosses, one for each person killed, cuts across the grounds, a sobering remembrance and reminder of this most recent madness.

This isn't the first such memorial I've visited. Last year I was in Orlando only weeks after 49 people were murdered at Pulse, a gay bar on the southern fringes of the downtown area. The Vegas memorial echoes the melancholy vibe found there and, sadly, in another few days, perhaps a week or two, the lawn here will be swept clean and Las Vegas will become yet another painful memory of a place where evil once visited.

The names of the dead and injured in attacks stretching back decades are mostly forgotten in a world moving at the speed of light. Inevitably, the locations are what we recall: Columbine, Blacksburg, Newtown, Aurora, Fort Hood and Charleston; San Bernadino, San Ysidro, Washington, D.C. and Tucson.

City a jarring mixture of hope, greed and really expensive cars.

The full list spans the country. No region is immune to the momentary madness of mostly boys and men directed by hate, fear and a grotesque anger fueled by job and personal issues, teen angst and mental illness.

Our political leaders, starting with the yamster-in-chief in the Oval Office, have offered their thoughts and prayers while, yet again, failing to take any sort of legislative action to deal with the problem. Their tepid response, a predictable show of institutional madness, is simply to ignore the issue. It's a rancid position -- bought and paid for by the NRA -- that will certainly result in additional slaughter, thoughts and prayers!

Some "patriots" argue the lack of gun control, the shootings and mass murder, is the price of freedom. If that's the case then the cost is too high. That becomes clear in the heartbreak that hangs heavily above the Vegas strip this day and the knowledge that other innocent victims will be picking up the check in coming years.

Neo-Nazis a wakeup call for Trump's supporters?

Tiki-Torch toting neo-Nazis, other hate group members in Charlottesville.

There's a notion among many people who aren't Jewish that a Jew is a Jew is a Jew. The thought isn't built around bigotry or racist ideas, but a theological construct that suggests all Jews believe and practice Judaism in the same fashion. Of course Jews know this to be false and that there is a wide spectrum of religious and spiritual beliefs both connecting and dividing "Members of the Tribe"!

Once upon a time in America, however, the belief that a Jew is a Jew is a Jew was arguably true -- at least in the political arena. For most of the last century Jews were Democrats, a solid part of the coalition that supported the rise of labor unions and the rights of workers; FDR's New Deal and the world's epic, cataclysmic and, ultimately, successful battle against fascism; MLK's dream and the country's ongoing struggle to provide life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all its citizens.

This leaning towards the left was often a matter of self-preservation. After all, Jews, like most other immigrants making their way to America, were not immediately welcomed into the country with open arms. The embrace of Lady Liberty and the Democratic party's message of hope was a refreshing boon for a folk fleeing repressive regimes, intolerance and persecution.

Melting pot takes on yiddishe tang in recent years.

Skip ahead a century or so and assimilation and hard work has stripped away most of the stumbling blocks Jews faced after paying their dues in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and, decades later, across the Levittowns of America. Quota systems were junked, antisemitism crawled underneath a rock and the country's melting pot took on a decidedly yiddishe tang!

In recent years, opportunity and success have had some Members of the Tribe rethinking their political views, moving gently toward the center before testing the conservative waters of the Grand Old Party. A few -- Henry Kissinger, Alan Greenspan, Ari Fleischer, Eric Cantor, Bernie Marcus -- have even managed to drive the Republican message in ways both grand and small.

What the hell must they be thinking today!

Like many other Republicans, Jews on the political right have spent the last couple of years -- yes, it's been over two years since The Donald walked down that escalator in Trump Towers -- shrugging off the odious comments of the man now sitting in the Oval Office. He's not a politician, they argued, he's a businessman; he'll get the economy moving and drain the swamp; don't take him literally, but take him seriously. And the piece de resistance: He's not great, but he's better than Hillary!

The Donald moments before tossing his hat into the ring.

Meanwhile, white nationalists and a legion of other bigots are certain they have found their champion, a man-child who has surrounded himself with a gaggle of sycophants and, worse, a coterie of aides -- Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, Michael Anton and Sebastian Gorka -- offering up a toxic mix of nativist ideology and racist beliefs.

The yamster-in-chief has spent months tilling the soil of hatred and stoking the flames of white supremacy. His bounty could be found in Charlottesville over the weekend, a mixed bag of misfits -- neo-Nazis and klansmen, armed paramilitary footmen and other such haters -- strutting about like preening fools.

Believing that the country's commander-in-chief is their ally, the rabble offered up a disturbing and disgusting message filled with anti-semitic tropes: Jews you lose; Jews will not replace us; the Goyim know; the Jewish media is going down. And they marched, holding aloft tiki torches that lit up the night sky and stretched far back into a darker time when evil was set loose about the globe.

A Jew is a Jew is a Jew. When I write those words it's a statement of identity or an exploration of faith. When a dolt waving a confederate flag and wearing a tee-shirt emblazoned with a swastika offers up that thought the message becomes much darker and more sinister.

So I'm wondering where my Jewish friends on the right are today? I'm wondering if they're still shrugging their shoulders and supporting the man who's paved the way to such mayhem with his winks and whistles and endless lies. I'm wondering exactly what it would take to have them pull their heads out of the sand and, finally, I'm wondering about Edmund Burke and the triumph of evil.

It's time for good men -- good people -- to speak out. It's time!

Pastry, politics and hoping the madness will stop

My mid-morning snack at Sugar Cakes in Marietta.

It being a lovely day in the neighborhood -- thanks and a tip of the hat to Mr. Rogers -- I made a snap decision to get out of the house earlier this week and head over to the Square in Marietta.

It was difficult pulling myself away from cable news and the latest happenings on the campaign trail. It seemed that, yet again, the talk was skirting policy issues -- the economy and jobs, healthcare, education and such -- in favor of a bizarre and misstated position on "the right to life" and nonsense on nukes; arrest warrants, hot wives and all manner of ways to steal delegates from the guy with the golden hair.

I eventually settled in at Sugar Cakes, a patisserie and bistro hidden away on a bustling side street just across from the Square and a squadron of youngsters and their moms enjoying the fresh air while ignoring a yellowish-green wave of seasonal pollen -- can you say ACHOO!

Sugar Cakes is a tiny restaurant with big ideas, featuring a gussied up menu for breakfast and lunch. Since it was too late for breakfast -- the sun was high overhead -- and, at least for me, way too early for lunch, I decided on a mid-morning snack.

The choices were lovely and luscious, heavy on caramelized fruits and glazes, whipped cream and sauces. It all looked good to me! But after a moments reflection and jarring thoughts of my ever expanding midsection and finger-wagging physician, I decided to stick with the basics: coffee and pastry.

Okay, truth to tell, the pastry was a hefty blend of sugary stuff, whirled and swirled and topped with peaches; a delicious treat that was probably filled with a ton of calories. It's the sort of thing I would have shared with the lovely Miss Wendy if the lovely Miss Wendy had been around.

But she wasn't and the pastry was! And this sense of guilt, I'm sure, will soon be a fading memory.

Now I'm back in front of the tube, listening to the latest political rhetoric and spin on the blather from the campaign trail, learning -- once more -- how best to make "America Great, Again!" by building a wall and threatening to nuke our enemies.

I'm thinking it might be time to revisit the Square and grab another hit of sugar or, just maybe, go ahead and bury my head in the sand until the madness stops!

Might be helpful if God started a podcast today

At the risk of stating the obvious, it's funny how my mind works. I was listening recently to a cable news station when they played portions of two new political ads. The messages were predictable, but what caught my attention was what I heard playing in the background.

Both used generic bits of music -- quiet, yet expansive, slightly and lightly melancholy -- that triggered something in my thoughts and, after a moment, had me thinking about a film I'd once seen.

I couldn't remember any details -- name of the film, plot line, time and place. I did recall, in a blurry fashion, the male lead, but couldn't put a name with the face. The more it all lingered and swirled about, I was pretty certain that the film was centered in the 1950s, either produced then or evocative of that simpler time.

This all played out in a few minutes, morphing from a vague notion filled with bland street scenes to my muddled mind latching onto an actor who seemed to be puzzled about some sort of existential issue.

For whatever reason -- I have no real idea how my thoughts play out -- an image of God popped up in my mind and it seemed to be that the film, whatever it was, touched on the cosmic and divine in some fashion.

And so it was, still in my pjs and bathrobe and munching my breakfast cereal, I began googling films about the 1950s and God. After tossing aside blockbusters like "Ben Hur" and "The Ten Commandments", both produced in the late '50s, I added "small town USA" to my search.

Bingo!

The actor stored away in my memory bank tuned out to be James Whitmore and the film, released in 1950, was "The Next Voice You'll Hear". BTW, it's worth mentioning that Whitmore's wife in the film was played by Nancy Davis, the woman who would marry Ronald Reagan two years later and eventually become the "First Lady"!

The movie details the impact on a small community when, for no apparent reason, God begins broadcasting messages over the radio. The voice of God is never actually heard, while the film focuses on the reaction -- confusion, disbelief, fear and faith -- the words have on the local citizenry.

The film was produced only five years after the end of World War II. Harry Truman was president, the Korean War was just beginning and the Cold War was just heating up. Relations with China were stretched to the breaking point and Russia, just a few months earlier, had tested its first atomic bomb.

Yikes!

This dark and jarring mix of woes had folks on the home front feeling a little skittish and filmmakers in Hollywood looking for a way to calm nerves while offering up a bit of hope with a tasty bag of cheesy bromides.

Given the sad state of the world today -- terrorist attacks across Europe and a weak economy that has yet to right itself completely following a global recession nearly a decade ago, a presidential election that has all the gravitas, at least on the conservative side, of a SNL skit and at least one scary candidate who seems to be a bizarre mix of Hitler, Mussolini and Bozo the Clown -- and I'm thinking it might be nice and helpful if God decided to make a sudden appearance across the World Wide Web!

"The Next Voice You'll Hear" ended on an ambiguous note while offering up a message of hope and unity -- essentially we're all in this together and everything is going to be okay if we pull together.

Sadly, I'm not at all certain if an entire pantheon of gods could right our woes today. As one notable blowhard with an awful comb over might say, "It's simply too yuuuuuuge of a job!"

Dealing with yet another yuuuuge win!

Like a few other folks, I've been caught up in the political train wreck that has been playing out the last few months as establishment politicians and a trio of outsiders on the right have offered up a dandy circus of promises and insults filled with xenophobic, misogynistic and racist taunts and tirades.

Their supporters say they're simply telling it like it is, political correctness be damned!

So taking a few ideas from a playbook that was last used successfully in Germany in the 1930s, a few of the candidates and their handlers seemed to quickly understand that the best political strategy in this brave new world is to make stuff up. In political and practical terms that means lying. To make it all believable, simply keep repeating the lie as often and as loudly as possible.

That's what the guy with the orange hair and yuuuge ego did for months, yakking away with the attention span of a toddler. He spent his time in front of yuuuuge crowds, making absurd promises -- Mexico is going to pay to build a wall to keep out all the murderers and rapists they're sending our way -- and tossing out meaningless rhetoric that he was the best, the brightest, the richest, smartest and most likable candidate hanging out near the fringes of the Grand Old Party! 

Oh, and he made sure to mention at every opportunity that he was a winner, a yuuuuge winner; winning all the polls with big numbers, winning really, really big.

Spoiler alert! The Donald didn't win in Iowa. He lost really, really big. In fact, he just managed to hold onto the second spot and, ironically, was beaten by the one person, Ted Cruz, who is loathed even more then Trump by establishment Republicans and members of the rank and file falling anywhere at all to the left of Attila the Hun.

Predictably, Trump managed to spin his second-place finish into yet another yuuuuge win, telling just about anyone willing to listen that beating out eight, 10, 12 or so other candidates was a mighty accomplishment. In fact, it was a decent showing, except for the fact he had been promising and expecting nothing less then total victory.

Which brings us to New Hampshire, the first state to hold a presidential primary this election season. Trump is leading in the polls and made it clear in last Saturday's GOP debate that he -- and all of us --  will win; win and win and win until we're tired of winning.

Given such high hopes, filled with bombast and hot air, I fear he's probably right, at least for himself and his legion of supporters. He's likely going to walk away with the most votes on Tuesday. Which means the rest of us will be walking away from New Hampshire, at least metaphorically, with a mighty headache and a yuuuuge case of  indigestion.

Stay tuned!

Aylan offers a glimpse into a world gone mad

On a long journey in search of freedom.

I was out and about recently with my granddaughter Bailey, helping keep her busy as her Mom and Bubbe did a little shopping.

We were passing a new store in a strip shopping center in our neighborhood when she noticed one of those wiggling promotional thingies that's animated with a fan, and shimmies about to attract attention.

Bailey, who will be two next month, is at that stage in her young life when she takes notice of everything. Her favorite phrase these days is "What's that?" So it wasn't at all surprising when she pointed at the rubberized thingy and quizzed me about it.

What did surprise me, however, is after a moment or so of watching it dance about, she lowered her head, covered her eyes and said, "I don't like!" She was frightened, a feeling I didn't know was yet even part of her emotional life.

I told her something soothing, lifted her up and turned her around; and in another moment or so she was smiling and giggling and asking me about a truck that was pulling into the parking lot to make a delivery at a nearby market.

I mention this little vignette, because it's what came to mind when I saw a photo of Aylan Kurdi on the web this morning. He's the youngster, only 3-years-old, who washed ashore on a beach in Turkey earlier this week, one of a dozen refugees, including his older brother and mother, who drowned after fleeing Syria and attempting to reach the Greek Aegean island of Kos.

Aylan was spotted by a soldier who was photographed cradling his lifeless body, a stunning image of loss that had me wondering just how puzzled, desperate and frightened the toddler was after being tossed into the sea.

There was no one about to pick him up and speak soothing words of comfort, no one to lift him up and save his precious life. It's an image that tugs at my heart.

It gets worse.

Another photo, snapped moments earlier, is a stark and melancholy portrait of innocence and death, a somber reminder that we live in a world that has gone slightly mad in recent years. At first glance the youngster seems to be napping on the beach, a slight figure at peace. The truth, unfortunately, is much darker, a bleak essay on life and loss.

And I think yet again: There was no one about to pick Aylan up and speak soothing words of comfort, no one to lift him up and save his precious life. It's an image that tugs at my heart.

We live in a country that is filled with gifts, freedoms and riches that make us the envy of millions around the world. So, at least for the moment, with Aylan weighing heavily on my mind, I find the constant static offered up by politicians and the talking bags of hot air on cable TV to be, at best, small and petty. Truth to tell, I think all the sturm und drang is morally reprehensible.

But I digress.

A little boy drowned this week, searching for what most of us already have. He was found on a beach and gently carried away. There are thousands more, just like Aylan, getting ready to hop aboard a dingy in search of a dream. Here's hoping there's someone around to help them all safely on their journey to freedom.

Obama and Romney: Let the games begin

All is quiet it would appear in the political world – at least for the moment. Perhaps we’re treading water in the calm before the storm; but it seems the candidates and their high-profile surrogates are mostly on holiday or quietly going about the business of reinforcing their political foundations.

For months the Republicans spent their time ripping into one another, doing all sorts of harm to their cause and hopes of regaining the White House in November. Romney, the guy with the really nice hair, seems to have the Republican nomination sewed up, even though two other candidates have yet to call it quits.

A rich menagerie of bloviators, meanwhile, continues ranting about this and that, mostly thumbing their noses at both Romney and the President. But their rants seem to be on auto-pilot, just more of the drivel they’ve been spewing out across the cable landscape for months – Romney can’t attract the Conservative base and Obama is the devil; Romney is too rich and Obama is the devil; Romney needs to get in touch with his inner dude and Obama is the devil.

If you grow bored, all you need do is tweak the remote and you can find a whole new set of commentators – and I use that word oh-so-loosely. The game is the same but the venom is tossed about by a fresh and different cast of characters. Many on-air personalities doing the ranting are toady broadcasters who’ll do anything for a buck, others are political ideologues who are just plain nuts.

What I don’t understand is where do all the low-level surrogates come from and who decides that they’re qualified to speak for the candidates? Do they have to go to some sort of political indoctrination center for surrogates and do they carry sophisticated high-tech gizmos that provide them with special political powers of persuasion?

Given the insatiable appetite of 24-hour news channels, major networks, cable and web programs and podcasts, I get the need for warm bodies to defend and promote the party line. Out of such need comes much hackery, quackery – and big-league problems!

Recall what the veteran surrogate Hilary Rosen had to say about Ann Romney? If not, google Romney and “never worked a day in her life”. Then, just to be fair, search for Eric Fehrnstrom and Etch-A-Sketch. Rosen and Fehrnstrom are both still attempting to remove their feet from their mouths.

I’m guessing there will be more such gaffes along the trail once the presidential campaigns put the pedal to the metal. We can only hope! 

Freedom of religion: Obama, God and politics

Blogger’s note: I got an e-mail from a friend in New Zealand recently who had received a document blasting President Obama and his administration’s attack on Christianity. She readily admits she knows little about Obama and American politics, then asked my opinion. I responded that I generally follow the old adage that it’s a really good idea not to discuss politics and religion with friends, then spent several hours framing my response. Here’s what I wrote.

Barbara: I could write pages on the issue of Obama, religion, Separation of Church and State, and attacks by Obama’s enemies on the political and religious right. The polemic you forwarded, pulled together by David Barton, is filled with misinformation; half-truths and flat-out lies.

Barak Obama is a U.S. citizen. He was born in Hawaii; he’s a Christian and he’s a firm believer in The U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment that details, among other points, the Separation of Church and State. It’s a concept that became the law of the land when the U.S. Constitution was adopted in 1787.

Much of what Barton details in his step-by-step look at Obama and his administration (the full document can be found here) go to the heart of what’s found in the First Amendment and the U.S. Bill of Rights. I’ll grant that the origins and intent of church and state separation is open to debate; it’s a heated issue that often serves as a Rorschach test that is supported or abused depending on one’s political and religious beliefs.

Let’s be clear on one point. Christianity is alive, well and thriving in the U.S. Christians can practice their religion today openly and freely. It is not under attack. None of my neighbors are worried about soldiers carrying them away because they are Christians. They can pray in their churches and, despite what some political opportunists would have you believe, Christians can pray in schools, at meetings, sporting events, private gatherings – and in the White House!

There is, however, no national religion or national prayers. Prayer meetings cannot be sanctioned by the state, nor should they be. Why? Once upon a time, back in the 1950s when I was just a little lad attending elementary school in small-town Georgia, we would begin the day with a morning devotional. Each day a different child was expected to read a line or two of scripture from the New Testament. There were no exceptions. So I was essentially forced to read from the New Testament, lines of scripture I didn’t believe in or understand. We finished up each morning by reciting the Lord’s Prayer – a Christian prayer.

Barbara, I’m not a Christian. I was and remain an observant Jew. What I was forced to do by the state was simply wrong. To this day, I wince whenever I hear the Lord’s Prayer; I refuse to bow my head when attending a public meeting when a prayer – even a non-denominational prayer – is offered. God is very personal to me and I certainly don’t want my government telling me that one religion is better – or truer – than any other or sanctioning any form of public prayer. That’s a very slippery slope in my opinion. If I want to pray, I’ll attend a prayer session at my synagogue or simply find a quiet spot in my house, along the river in my neighborhood or, when traveling, at the airport. Prayer, for me, is both an inward journey and a process that connects me with my faith community.

But I digress. I have absolutely no desire to spend much time with The Rev. Barton’s nonsense. Just about all that he includes in part 4 of his article, poorly labeled and painfully spelled out as “Acts of preferentialism for Islam” is simply false. Let me repeat that point. Everything dealing with Obama and Islam is false! Much of the rest of Barton’s 50-point note is open to interpretation and argument.

One example. Under the heading, “Acts of hostility toward people of Biblical faith”, Barton reports that “The Obama administration (released) new health care rules that override religious conscience protections for medical workers in the areas of abortion and contraception.” Although I’m not exactly sure what all Barton is referencing here, one contentious area that falls in this area has to do with pharmacists refusing to honor prescriptions for birth control and “morning after” meds. So, for instance, Barton is bothered that a pharmacist who opposes any form of contraception as a matter of “conscience” has lost the right to ignore legal prescriptions. I don’t consider this a “hostile” act, but a hearty and welcome defense of the Separation of Church and State.

Much the same argument could be used when exploring all the Sturm und Drang surrounding the Obama Administration’s recent proposals to have religious-based institutions – specifically, the Catholic Church – through their insurance providers, offer coverage for contraceptive meds and devices. Barton, and others like him, sees this proposal as an attack on Christianity and religious freedom. I see it as an issue of women’s healthcare and reproductive rights and, yet again, a defense of the U.S. Constitution and the Separation of Church and State.

A final note. Barton, if handed a magic wand and told he now has the power to create a “perfect” government and country, would most certainly trash the Constitution and immediately go about setting up a Christian theocracy. Children once again would be reading New Testament scripture and reciting the Lord’s Prayer in schools. Jews, Muslims, gays, socialists and commies would be prosecuted and persecuted. The religion police would be running the country and within a generation the United States would start to look a whole lot like Saudi Arabia.

I’m thinking George Washington got it right when he said that "Every man, conducting himself as a good citizen, and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshiping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience." I’m also thinking that Thomas Jefferson was right when he declared “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and state."

Super Tuesday means booze on Sunday – finally

It was Super Tuesday here in the Land of Cotton today, but there was nothing super about the turnout at my polling place. There were at least a dozen or so vacant voting machines and only one other person waiting to vote when I showed up around noon.

I’m thinking the hardest thing to do for the half-dozen poll workers at my precinct was simply staying awake – so much for all the excitement being generated by the mushy field of GOP candidates. You’d think if there was much fire in the belly of the conservative base, they’d be showing it off in my little corner of the world – one of the most conservative regions in the country.

Truth to tell, the primary reason I showed up for this primary was to help bring my county into the new century – finally! I have little interest in the political warfare being waged by the loons on the political right but have a great deal of interest in being able to buy booze on Sundays.

The state legislature last year agreed that counties across the Land of Cotton should have the right to decide if retailers can sell alcohol on Sunday. Much of the state has already OK’d the Sunday sell of alcohol – beer, wine and liquor – and I’m thinking that once the vote is counted in my home county we’ll be joining the rest of the state, nation and most of the civilized world in finally putting the kibosh on the last of the blue laws. Can I get an Amen?

Meanwhile, the nutty right will probably continue to implode no matter which candidate manages to grab the majority of victories and delegates today. In fact, I don’t think I’m going very far out on a limb to suggest we’ll have the same guy in the White House following the general election in November. Here are 10 reasons why I’m willing to make such a wild and crazy prediction.

Santorum, Gingrich, Boehner, Cantor, Limbaugh, Limbaugh, Limbaugh, Limbaugh, Limbaugh, and, ah, Rush Limbaugh. ’Nuff said!

Back to the future: Politics, the economy, faith

Blogger’s note: Listening to the current crop of presidential candidates reaching for the golden ring, raising issues of religion and faith, reminded me of another presidential race a few years ago. Once upon a time when I worked for that place with a printing press, I wrote a column about presidential politics and religion. The year was 1996 and Bill Clinton and Bob Dole were hot on the campaign trail.

A funny thing happened on the way to electing a President this year. All the talk about the candidates catering to the cares and concerns of the religious right never materialized.

It’s been months since anyone has spent much time debating the religiously-infused topics of abortion, prayer or family values. God has remained an impartial spectator to this point.

Both President Clinton and Sen. Dole have allowed the deity to remain on the sideline, resisting the urge to attach their campaign bandwagons to cosmic coattails. That the economy remains the most pressing concern to many Americans may be one factor the religious card remains on the bottom of the deck.

Worry about the future economic health of the country means most voters are more interested in debate over taxes and the budget, than family values and prayer.

And both men realize that talk of Christian ethics and values might elicit a chorus of amens, but talk of balancing the budget while lowering the deficit will mean votes in November. It could have been different.

Clinton and Dole could have easily spent the last several weeks lacing their speeches with talk of faith and the need for a return to a nation based on Christian ethics and values. They are both men of faith who are comfortable sharing their religious views. Both have quietly called upon such beliefs for strength and guidance during moments of doubt in the past.

The importance of God and country rests easily in the heart of Dole. The same can be said of Clinton.

One story holds that Dole goes nowhere without a prayer tucked away in his shirt pocket. Once asked how he was doing in the campaign, he pointed to his pocket and joked all he had was a prayer. Insiders say the story is true.

That much of his life has been a struggle, that without faith he might still be battling the demons of war and the horrific wounds he suffered in World War II, makes it all the more remarkable that he holds tight and keeps quiet about his religious beliefs. And yet perhaps such reasons are exactly why he refuses to mix religion and politics. Some things are just too important and too personal to share.

Clinton’s angst and spiritual beliefs are linked with his personal and political life, failures and sins that are all a matter of public record. He, too, jokes when asked about such faith. His religion, he says, gives him a second chance. He smiles. But then his eyes begin to water and you realize he’s not really joking, that he
really means what he says.

It takes little effort to see the Methodist in Dole, the Baptist in Clinton. Their lives and personalities are the product of their religious upbringing – Dole, forever the pragmatist, quiet and straightforward, a man who believes deeply in himself, his country and in God; Clinton, fiery and passionate, different personality, different political philosophy and agenda, same religious convictions.

And perhaps that, as much as anything, is why God remains on the sideline. Dole is a conservative republican. Clinton is a liberal Democrat. But both men recognize God is neither.

At a glance: The 411 on Herman Cain’s 9-9-9

Herman Cain seems to be the flavor of the week as the Grand Old Party goes about its tortured efforts to select a presidential candidate. The election is still way off in the distant future, but the political battle has already shifted into high gear. In another few months, I imagine the candidates and their strategists will be in overdrive mode.

The only reason I dabble my metaphorical toe in this political stream is to take note of a report I heard on CNN earlier this morning while running errands here in the Land of Cotton. The reporter / commentator was gushing on about Cain and why he has managed to momentarily leap to the head of the pack. For months he had been stuck back with all the other single-digit wonders as Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts with the really good hair, held tightly to the lead among GOP contenders.

Then Cain revealed his three-number plan to fix all that ails the country’s economy by updating the nation’s outdated tax code. Overnight, 9-9-9 turned Cain into a frontrunner. The plain – a 9 percent business flat tax, 9 percent individual flat tax and 9 percent national sales tax – is easily understood and seems to make sense.

It’s also a really catchy, memorable phrase; the sort of easily digestible name thingy you might expect from a guy who made a fortune selling pizzas. It certainly has helped Cain stand out among a field of politicians who collectively fade into the background among an electorate with the attention span of your average toddler.

The problem is once commentators, economists and other politicians started ripping away at the details of the plan, Cain has been forced to rethink many of the bits and pieces of the proposal. At least one alternative, the 9-0-9 iteration, is aimed at aiding the working poor – they would be exempt from the individual flat tax portion of the proposal. I’m guessing in another few weeks that 9-9-9 will be a fading memory.

Of course, sounds bites and catchy phrases have been the meat and potatoes of politicians selling themselves and programs to voters since the days of Washington – First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen. In the middle decades of the 20th century there was Roosevelt’s New Deal, Kennedy’s New Frontier and Johnson’s Great Society. More recently there have been the less grand, more amorphous concepts and selling points of Reagan’s Morning in America, Bush’s Shock and Awe and Obama’s Dare to Dream.

I fear 9-9-9 might not have the heft and staying power of Tippecanoe and Tyler Too or Remember the Maine. Then again, our grandchildren might be writing essays on their iPads – or whatever high-tech gizmos are the hot and new thing a generation down the road – about Cain and how he managed to salvage the nation’s economy with a cute phrase and a few simple ideas. Stay tuned!

The good, the bad and the okay

Just about everything in my world can be broken into three categories – good, bad and okay. When I say everything, that’s exactly what I mean. There are good, bad and okay movies, meals, vacations and jobs; schools, teachers and workshops; doctors, lawyers and Indian chiefs. I think you get the idea.

In this rule of threes, it’s been my experience that 10 percent of everything falls into the bad category, 10 percent in the good category and just about everything else – the other 80 percent – is basically okay.

So those meals I had with the lovely Miss Wendy at JCT, Seasons 52 and the Vortex were good – actually, incredibly good; the meals at many fast food joints were bad, and almost all my other dining out experiences have been mostly okay.

I mention all this to detail how I feel about this week’s mid-term elections here in the "Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave". Normally, I don’t waste much time on the “P” word – politics. There’s really little reason to enter that arena of ideas. We’ve reached the point in our national conversation where we no longer talk. Now members of the red and blue camps hold tightly to their positions and yell at one another.

This time around the Grand Old Party has taken hold of the national agenda and once again promises are being made that the will of the people – that would be you and me – has been heard loud and clear and change is in the air.

Change, you'll recall, was also in the air two years ago; ditto four years earlier and, well, four years before that. Meanwhile, Congress has been gridlocked for years, our leaders unwilling to budge outside their comfort zones, playing to their ideological bases.

Once upon a time there were good, bad and okay politicians. The good were men and women of vision, ideas and ideals; the bad were unethical crooks in search of power and money; and the rest were okay, honest citizens willing to work with one another – to compromise – to make better this idea we call the United States of America.

All of that pretty much remains the same, except the proportions detailed above have fallen apart. Today, I’d say 1 percent of our public servants are good, 10 percent are okay and 89 percent are ideological nuts.

Here’s hoping the 1 percent have the vision to pull us out of the mess we find ourselves in these days, the 10 percent are willing to listen and lead, and the rest simply stay out of the way and do no additional harm.