Don’t Do It! Down with Big Corn!.

Crunchy Con points toward this post on Obama’s potential Secretary of Agriculture:

Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack has emerged as the frontrunner for the post of Agriculture secretary in the Obama administration, according to people close to the presidential transition team.

The power of Iowa’s first-in-the-nation presidential Caucus is used to force candidates to swear fealty to ethanol and corn subsidies. This bit of civically disguised blackmail has become so routine that the West Wing did an episode on it. But it’s one thing to make promises during campaigns. Putting a former governor of Iowa in charge of the Department of Agriculture, however, seems like a solemn oath that the subsidies will continue far into the future.

Worse, elevating Vilsack is a sign that the Obama administration will continue treating agricultural policy as if the relevant constituency is food producers rather than food consumers.

Say it ain’t so.  Who will be the champion of food and culture?

Eight Years Later.

I bet the George W. Bush administration did a lot of their transition to the White House with paperwork and fax machines.  Newspapers were giving us the latest details on what was happening, and the cable channels were finally emerging as important sources of information once the morning paper had been read during breakfast.

Now look where we are: constant blogging, a media swarm, the death of the newspaper, the ubiquity of cable news.  And now, eight years later, this: Change.gov

All the transition information right at your fingertips.  Impressive website.  The Obama team had such good design taste this whole election cycle.  McCain’s was pathetic until the Republican National Convention, and a remarkable improvement was made to put the McCain website on par with Obama’s site.  Yet McCain’s campaign ceded the branding and logo design to the Obama campaign.  People resonated with Obama’s branding because it looked cool.  And now the Change site takes it to a whole new level.  It’s so professional.  Wonder if I can make a Wordpress theme that looks like that…

The Illogic of Obama Fear.

or “If you are truly scared then start acting like it”

I am not going to drum up support for Obama here.  Thomas Turner never endorses anyone, except for one huge exception, to paraphrase Will Ferrell’s George W. Bush and Shane Claiborne (talk about a mashup).

What I do want to do is lay the cards out on the table and say “don’t act angry and scared.”  And if you answer back, “no, I truly am!”  Then I reply, “well, start acting like it.”

It’s illogical to bemoan a socialist “USSA,” modeled after the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, to start calling people comrade and stuff of this nature.  If you were really, truly, and fervently scared of a reincarnation of Stalinist regimes in the USA then you wouldn’t be saying anything.  Not one word.  Not one phrase.  Not one syllable.

Because you know what happened to people that talked bad about Stalin, socialism, and didn’t say comrade?  They were killed.  Massacred.  If lucky, sent off to Siberia.

So if you truly are scared:

A) Don’t say anything bad about Obama on the phone because we already know the NSA and other security organizations have the legal right to listen into America calls.

B) Don’t write anything bad about Obama on the Internet, because once something is on the Internet it is always on the Internet.

C) Don’t say or write anything bad about socialism, good about capitalism, or forget to address people as Comrade because that one will come find you.

Okay, I jest…but seriously, the illogic of Obama fear is that we are using the freedom we have to speak about the freedom we will supposedly lose.  So every time you complain about Obama or cry out in fear remember that in your very utterance you testify against this fact.

Okay, this may appear a bit cynical.  I am tired of Bush hating and Obama hating precisely because the issues are so complex, so intertwined, so large that it is foolish to pass judgment without time to ponder, consider, and articulate.  This is why the movie W is not going to pass historical muster, because there has not been long enough in time to even begin to pass historical judgment on what really went on in the Bush administration.  We barely understand the full ramifications of the Clinton years yet.

So be patient.  Be happy (maybe not about Obama, but that you don’t have to live in fear if you don’t want to).  Celebrate (maybe not about Obama, but that you still live in freedom and without fear).  Play in the leaves.  And be content that it is illogical to fear a future we do not yet know or realize, for we have nothing to fear about fear itself.

Elections and the New Urbanism.

The best thing to come about in this election, as a reflection of greater cultural trends, is the giving of space to food and living and the removal of space from the clutter of consumerism.  Though I am not a Californian I am greatly excited by the passing of Prop 2, which creates a new state statute that prohibits the confinement of farm animals in a manner that does not allow them to turn around freely, lie down, stand up, and fully extend their limbs (Ballotpedia).  Chickens are getting more room, being treated more fairly, and more humanely, which makes happy and health chickens that lay better eggs (just ask Joe Salatin).

In the New York Times today an article on “The Return of the Root Cellar” highlights one of my prospective projects for next year.  I stored some tomato sauce and salsa this year but it’s mostly run out already.  Next year I want to stash vegetables and fruit all over my basement!  Get rid of the clutter of consumerism in your garage or basement and start saving food and eating healthier!

Reflections After Early Morning Voting.

I cast my ballot at 6:15am this morning. I was groggy enough to not even realize that there were two ballot questions on the New Jersey ballot. Oh well.
I spread the wealth this morning and voted for potential officials in three different parties.
There were no lines, no fuss, no worries. Just a bunch of cranky old women in the morning, a happy Hispanic woman who guided me to my booth, and a lonely man who had been assigned the task of counting emergency ballots at the behest of the crank-in-charge.
My voting place is at the 3rd St. Volunteer Fire Department and I live on 2nd St. so it takes about two minutes to walk between my house and the polls. I didn’t notice much on my way to the voting booth, no one was outside yet, but on my way back I noticed ome McCain and Obama signs. That’s when it hit me how we propogate and sometimes overwhelmingly support people we really know little about. We convince ourselves voting records and biographical sketches supply us with enough information to make a good decision but in that moment of seeing signs in the lawns of people who have only seen a candidate on TV, or at best at a rally, it hit me that we don’t really know these people. Knowing incompasses actually meeting, conversing, living in fellowship with a person. Unless you have enough money or clout to hang with the likes of McCain or Obama you end up making a decision based on the information the media and the respective campaigns give you.

For both theological (explained here) and philosophical reasons I think we need to reflect on voting as a best guess, a vote that in reality will do little to influence the political climate of the coming four to eight years.  George W. Bush campaigned eight years ago as a compassionate conservative and through dramatic political events over eight years his administration has been characterized by big-government, debt, big spending, and incompetency.  No one would have guessed that.

We like to make politicians static and stamp them in history as unchanging persons.  They are people, just like you and me, who change their views and ideas about politics as well as sports, food, cars, and movies.  In normal life it everyone is encouraged to have an open mind and make decisions after careful thought and be open to changing one’s mind.  Being open to change is an important part of a person’s mature character, so say pastors, counselors, and psychologists.  Yet when we speak about politicians changing their minds we call them flip-floppers and crucify them.

Whoever wins today will not be carrying out their complete plans for government.  No president ever gets that opportunity.  They may even change their views on government.  They may have held on to those views all along but had their message massaged by dozens of aides, staff, and media-folk.  We don’t know.

We don’t know because we don’t know them.

So relax.  It’ll be alright.  Paul tells us to not worry about tomorrow.  So don’t!  Live for today, becuase we never know what will happen tomorrow in our own lives

Fun With Political Cartoons.

Someone at work sent me this cartoon and I created the other version below it.  Must be bipartisan about these sorts of things!

Does Evangelicalism Deny Metaphor?.

Daniel Radosh said the following in his recent piece “The Red Hot Christian Blockbuster“:

But in making evangelism—and acceptability to the most insular Christian audiences—a priority, Christianese films all but guarantee artistic failure. Art demands an honesty that the evangelical bubble would find intolerable. (Emphasis mine)

This is something that I have been thinking about as I work on my paper discussing the influence of the Oxford Movement on Gerard Manley Hopkins‘ poetry (if that last phrase made no sense to you, just keep reading, because it doesn’t quite make sense to me yet either, that’s why I am writing a paper on it).  Anyway, this thought has kept popping up in my mind:

Does evangelicalism deny metaphor?

At the center of Art is the Metaphor: Symbol, Signifier, Signified.  In Christianity this is called sacrament.  In denying the sacramental nature of life, living, and worship, does evangelicalism deny itself art.  I think this is the root cause of contemporary evangelical music, movies, and fiction being B-grade at best: metaphor is denied, therefore art is denied.  Those who invoke the metaphor, and therefor enter the mode of art, are being truly honest in using symbols.  Most evangelicals think truth is declared in the denial of signifier and symbol, that if metaphor does not exist only the literal is left.  This is untrue.  Only the opposite is truly honest, truly art: if there is only literal there is no art and no honesty.

I Love Baseball So Much.

I will congratulate the Phillies for whipping the Dodgers around and out of the playoffs.

Good luck against the Tampa Bay Rays.

My prediction: The Rays will win 4-1, with Hamels getting the lone Phillies win.

Can One But Hope?.

My hope for the end of the Dodgers vs. Phillies series:

Déjà vu would be sweet this time of year.

My Thoughts On the 2nd Debate.

Not much here because not a whole lot was said.

It’s October, and I am afraid debate has simply flew out the window.  What was aired last night was a mixture of vague puffed-up rhetoric, relentless talking points, answers that didn’t correspond to the questions, and policy that was conveyed in such general ways that it’s hard for any of it to sound bad.

I don’t think there was any substance to the debates last night.  That being said, Obama definitely trounced McCain.  Why?  Because when their is no substance we must fall back on secondary criteria to judge, and the next criteria that is evident is performance and rhetoric.  I think Obama comes off as being far more persuasive, deliberate, and personal than McCain does.  Tonight I think they were pretty even on deliberateness, even though they were being deliberate about sound bytes and generalities.  What really seperated the candidates tonight, and what will clearly make Obama the winner of last night’s debate, is meanness and anger.  McCain is angry and mean.  He is contemptuous and a blow-hard.  He has disdain for Obama that you can see and that turns people off, methinks.