Folks, this ain’t normal is the eighth book by the self-proclaimed “lunatic farmer” from Swoope, Virginia, Joel Salatin. Salatin, on his Polyface Farms, raises and sells “salad bar beef, pigerator pork, pastured poultry,” turkey, rabbits, eggs and more, has become a living legend in the local/organic food world. His self-published You Can Farm: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Start and Succeed in a Farming Enterprise still sells thousands of copies annually after more than a decade in print.
Less a book Folks is more a bound collection of essays (with a couple of screeds thrown in for good measure). As a result one fair criticism of the book is there are repetitive areas, as if after writing the collection Salatin was too tired to read back through it and the editor was not paid to do so. Nonetheless, there is a wealth of good information here.
Folks, this ain’t normal is the work of a man who is releasing many years worth of pent-up frustration about the foolishness of the American food system from planting and growing through processing and sales. It could easily have been sub-titled, “In Appreciation of the Simple, Agrarian Life.” His harshest words are reserved for the “food police” (the USDA and FDA) and the agri-businesses with whom they are in collusion to foist upon the world cheap, low nutrition–and sometimes deadly–food. All of this happens while making agri-business richer and keeping the small to medium sized farm owners effectively cut out of most large distribution channels.
If you do not think this is so, try and buy a gallon of raw milk at your local grocery store. (You can decide for yourself whether raw milk is good for you and your family; what you cannot decide is to go to Kroger or Publix and buy it.)
To read Salatin is to be bombarded with a wide-ranging case of common sense. Does it really make sense that people can bring untested, ungraded food, cooked in unsanitized home kitchens to a church pot-luck where everyone can eat it, but to sell that same food for a penny is against the law? Does it really make sense that the same milk our grandparents drank as kids (unadulterated, straight from the cow or goat) is more “dangerous” than 20 ounces of soda or a can of Red Bull?
Is it honoring to God for cows to be crammed into industrial feed-lots where close quartered disease is rampant, more and newer anti-biotics are necessary to fight those diseases, and toxic manure lagoons are needed to hold all the urine and excrement? It is not an example of extreme hubris that chickens are raised in such close proximity their beaks need to be removed to keep them from killing and eating each other?
Are food consumers the beneficiaries when the food chain is increasingly controlled by a corrupt, multiple-fined company like Monsanto–the Planned Parenthood of the food industry–whose greed is exceeded only by the shamelessness with which they advance it? Are American citizens the beneficiaries of a farming system where so much corn is grown that the only way most corn farmers can stay in business is thanks to U.S. government subsidies for ever acre of corn they grow?
Salatin peppers Folks, this ain’t normal with a dozen or two recommendations of books (some of which likely for the basis of his essays). The titles read like a veritable library of clean eating and healthy living advice. Though not footnoted the pages are influenced by tomes like Four-Season Harvest, Nourishing Traditions, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Radical Homemakers, Fast Food Nation, Pottenger’s Prophecy, An Agricultural Testament, and, my favorite, Holy Sh*t: Managing Manure to Save Mankind. He is no slouch when it comes to reading, and it shows.
Consumers of Salatin’s previous “how-to” style books will be bereft of 1-2-3s and ABCs here. See this more as a collection of philosophical wisdom as to the “why” undergirding the “how.”
Is it convincing? Yes. Maddening? At times. Enlightening? Beyond belief. Worth your time? Without a doubt.
This 11 minute video by Michael Pollan features his time spent at Polyface and the genius of Salatin on display there. Be sure and check out the books below the video.
Most people who know me are aware that I supported retiring Texas congressman Ron Paul for president. I did so in 2008 and 2012. All except those who have died in the mean time also know that he did not win, unless you count those eleven congressional terms.
Yesterday Ron Paul gave a final speech in the House chamber. Like most of his speeches it was a bit rambling, sounding warning bells on economic concerns, the gold standard of money, an overextended military and liberty. From his remarks:
In many ways, according to conventional wisdom, my off-and-on career in Congress, from 1976 to 2012, accomplished very little. No named legislation, no named federal buildings or highways—thank goodness. In spite of my efforts, the government has grown exponentially, taxes remain excessive, and the prolific increase of incomprehensible regulations continues. Wars are constant and pursued without Congressional declaration, deficits rise to the sky, poverty is rampant and dependency on the federal government is now worse than any time in our history.
All this with minimal concerns for the deficits and unfunded liabilities that common sense tells us cannot go on much longer. A grand, but never mentioned, bipartisan agreement allows for the well-kept secret that keeps the spending going. One side doesn’t give up one penny on military spending, the other side doesn’t give up one penny on welfare spending, while both sides support the bailouts and subsidies for the banking and corporate elite. And the spending continues as the economy weakens and the downward spiral continues. As the government continues fiddling around, our liberties and our wealth burn in the flames of a foreign policy that makes us less safe.
Through the campaigns Paul supporters (excepting a few flamers and morons) were a thoughtful and cogent–if not an odd–mix. It is safe to say no other single candidate in the last two elections has attracted such a wide variety in his or her base. Only Barack Obama’s supporters could touch Dr. Paul’s for passion.
In an insightful article entitled, “Who Killed Rudy Guiliani?”, W. James Antle III asserts that Ron Paul has restored the soul of conservatism’s future. In my way of thinking this would make Paul the true and better William F. Buckley, Jr. Writes Antle:
When Ron Paul leaves office in January, he will have been more successful than many of the legislators who spent decades maligning him. Paul’s ideas have gradually gone from marginal to mainstream, and his record shows how much even a single determined man of principle can do to change a movement. In foreign policy especially, the Texas congressman leaves behind a new generation of leaders, both libertarian and conservative, who challenge the disastrous bipartisan consensus.
-Why are sick people who use medical marijuana put in prison?
-Why does the federal government restrict the drinking of raw milk?
-Why can’t Americans manufacturer rope and other products from hemp?
-Why are Americans not allowed to use gold and silver as legal tender as mandated by the Constitution?
-Why is Germany concerned enough to consider repatriating their gold held by the FED for her in New York? Is it that the trust in the U.S. and dollar supremacy beginning to wane?
-Why do our political leaders believe it’s unnecessary to thoroughly audit our own gold?
-Why can’t Americans decide which type of light bulbs they can buy?
-Why is the TSA permitted to abuse the rights of any American traveling by air?
-Why should there be mandatory sentences–even up to life for crimes without victims–as our drug laws require?
-Why have we allowed the federal government to regulate commodes in our homes?
-Why is it political suicide for anyone to criticize AIPAC ?
-Why haven’t we given up on the drug war since it’s an obvious failure and violates the people’s rights? Has nobody noticed that the authorities can’t even keep drugs out of the prisons? How can making our entire society a prison solve the problem?
-Why do we sacrifice so much getting needlessly involved in border disputes and civil strife around the world and ignore the root cause of the most deadly border in the world-the one between Mexico and the US?
-Why does Congress willingly give up its prerogatives to the Executive Branch?
-Why does changing the party in power never change policy? Could it be that the views of both parties are essentially the same?
-Why did the big banks, the large corporations, and foreign banks and foreign central banks get bailed out in 2008 and the middle class lost their jobs and their homes?
-Why do so many in the government and the federal officials believe that creating money out of thin air creates wealth?
-Why do so many accept the deeply flawed principle that government bureaucrats and politicians can protect us from ourselves without totally destroying the principle of liberty?
-Why can’t people understand that war always destroys wealth and liberty?
-Why is there so little concern for the Executive Order that gives the President authority to establish a “kill list,” including American citizens, of those targeted for assassination?
-Why is patriotism thought to be blind loyalty to the government and the politicians who run it, rather than loyalty to the principles of liberty and support for the people? Real patriotism is a willingness to challenge the government when it’s wrong.
-Why is it is claimed that if people won’t or can’t take care of their own needs, that people in government can do it for them?
-Why did we ever give the government a safe haven for initiating violence against the people?
-Why do some members defend free markets, but not civil liberties?
-Why do some members defend civil liberties but not free markets? Aren’t they the same?
-Why don’t more defend both economic liberty and personal liberty?
-Why are there not more individuals who seek to intellectually influence others to bring about positive changes than those who seek power to force others to obey their commands?
-Why does the use of religion to support a social gospel and preemptive wars, both of which requires authoritarians to use violence, or the threat of violence, go unchallenged? Aggression and forced redistribution of wealth has nothing to do with the teachings of the world’s great religions.
-Why do we allow the government and the Federal Reserve to disseminate false information dealing with both economic and foreign policy?
-Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority?
-Why should anyone be surprised that Congress has no credibility, since there’s such a disconnect between what politicians say and what they do?
That may well be true. But maybe the problem is the wrong questions were asked over and over while the right ones were ignored.
Ron Paul speaks to a packed house at Texas A&M University
Did I think he could have won? Sure anything is possible. Did I think it probable? I guess I never did.
For me it was never about him winning. Though they are loathe to admit it history has already taught McCain and Romney supporters they were not about winning either. They could win neither the political nor idealogical campaigns.
For me it was about the conversation itself. Nothing is changed until the conversations is changed. McCain did not try to change the conversation unless you want to count from bad to worse. One hundred years in Iraq, an entirely new wing of government to deal with mortgages, and more military intervention. This was not upward movement; this was accelerated depreciation of ideas.
Romney could have changed the conversation several dozen times with only himself doing the talking. But, as the election demonstrated, people were too uncertain which Romney asked for their vote. In the end Romney was too much like Obama-lite to change the conversation. Romney was like Obama in an echo chamber on foreign policy, could not chart a believable path on domestic policy, and found a pretty much deaf ears on social policy.
Think about what we never heard from the top two in 2012 that Ron Paul talked about every chance he got: abuses by the Federal Reserve bank that both destroy the poor and middle class and allow for endless wars and interventions, a failed “War” on Drugs that has created an America with about as many people through prison and probation as the Gulags at their depths of depraved darkness, assassinations of American citizens without due process, abuses of government power through the Patriot Act, abuses of executive power through Executive Orders (aka “presidential directives”), the dangers of indefinite detention, and on and on we could go.
Ron Paul’s insistence that we adhere to the constitution was not only refreshing, for some people it was eye-opening and for others it was an absolute epiphany. Someone running for president acknowledging the power of the president is limited and war should be declared by Congress. Gasp! He showed a person did not have to be a card carrying member of the ACLU to care about civil liberties since civil liberties are constitutional, not preferential. He showed why and how it could and should be so.
Mitt Romney was not able to generate a single idea in his entire campaign that will still be talked about in another month. Ron Paul’s ideas have already spawned two movements, one official (the “Tea Party”) the other not (the Liberty Movement), created a trio of best selling books, contributed to a number of others being elected to congress, and drawn regular crowds of two to ten thousand people of all ages and socio-economic backgrounds.
For one, I’m thankful to have lived in the era when Ron Paul gained a national stage. He will never be elected again, and never be president. But while Barack Obama has found success with, “Ask what your country can do for you,” Ron Paul’s ideas are the ones whose time has come.
And, if those who call themselves conservative would stop merely adopting and modifying the thinking of the Left, they might just find these ideas unstoppable.
The BBC’s Web site said its director of news, Helen Boaden, and her deputy, Stephen Mitchell, had “stepped aside,” the latest moves since a flagship current affairs program, “Newsnight,” wrongly implicated a former Conservative Party politician, Alistair McAlpine, in accusations of sexual abuse at a children’s home in North Wales in the 1970s and 1980s.
A separate internal inquiry is investigating an earlier incident one year ago when “Newsnight” canceled a program concerning allegations of sexual abuse by Jimmy Savile, a longtime BBC television host who died last year at age 84.
Skeptics might conclude that conservatives are only rethinking criminal justice because lockups have become too expensive. But whether prison costs too much depends on what you think of incarceration’s benefits. Change is coming to criminal justice because an alliance of evangelicals and libertarians have put those benefits on trial. Discovering that the nation’s prison growth is morally objectionable by their own, conservative standards, they are beginning to attack it—and may succeed where liberals, working the issue on their own, have, so far, failed.
What he really ran on was refocusing the country on investing in the middle class, and that required higher taxes and fairer taxes on the wealthy. A majority of Americans and clearly a strong majority in the Electoral College voted for that. So I think he has the leverage and the clout to proceed with demanding that the Republicans accept that.
Undeterred by the embarrassment of a failed rocket launch earlier this year, North Korea appears to be pressing ahead with the development of long-range missiles, according to an analysis of satellite images by a U.S. academic website.
Drawing on commercial satellite imagery, the website 38 North suggests that the reclusive North Korean regime has carried out at least two tests of large rocket motors at the Sohae Satellite Launch Station on the country’s west coast since April.
The president of Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., the maker of Subaru cars, said Tuesday its auto sales in China will remain sluggish for some time amid the anti-Japan sentiment.
“The situation (in China) is quite severe. . . . I am sure (sales) will recover in the future, but it’s going to be hard for the time being,” Yasuyuki Yoshinaga told a news conference as the automaker announced the launch in Japan of its fully remodeled Forester sport utility vehicle.
Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf has said that our true face is not being shown to the world which is a peaceful and loving nation.
“In fact‚ we do possess the values of help‚ sympathy and love and we hold on to these values‚” said the PM.
He said that while addressing a collective wedding ceremony, organized by the Ameer Begum Welfare Trust here. The premier lauded the trust for its service to the society. He said “the trust is a beacon for us today.”
The prime minister said “we can remove most of the illnesses that beset us today through our values.”
In the past few weeks the complementarian-egalitarian debate has again featured prominently in the blogosphere. Perhaps it is time for a little context.
Last week, I visited the spot where a young girl was brutally murdered, set on fire and burned to death in the middle of the street in Los Angeles. I have searched to find answers about her plight, but to no avail; this story barely made local news. She was just 17 years old.
[…]
Every single day, girls in Los Angeles are kidnapped and coerced by traffickers and pimps into a life of sexual slavery and violence. The average age of entry into this life is 12 years old — the age of a child in seventh grade. There are hundreds of children affected by this crisis in LA alone. Alarmingly, yet not surprisingly, estimates consistently show over 70 percent of the children victimized through sex trafficking are foster children. Traffickers know that foster kids are an abused and vulnerable population, and that these girls are desperate for the love and attention that they did not receive from their own families. Lacking the necessary relationships and support, coupled with likely sexual and physical abuse at a young age, these girls are particularly at risk for the organized and pre-meditated tactics of traffickers.
Child sex trafficking, though largely unheard of and often misunderstood, is in fact a domestic crisis. It has become one of the most common organized crimes in the country, third only after the sale of illegal drugs and arms. Gangs, which have been entrenched in Los Angeles neighborhoods for many years, are increasingly becoming involved in child sex trafficking. Gang members have learned that, unlike drugs or weaponry, a young girl’s body is a “commodity” that can be sold time after time. An added benefit for traffickers is the decreased risk: when selling girls, the primary risk falls on the child being sold, who is standing alone on the street, not on the trafficker who is safely out of sight. And while a child is not of age to consent to sex, they can be arrested and charged with the crime of prostitution due to legal loopholes. Just last week I observed a court hearing where a 12-year-old was being charged with the crime of prostitution. Likely pre-menstrual, still with a childish look in her eyes, she sat in court in an orange jumpsuit, with tears streaming down her cheeks, while the judge explained the charges.
Do not miss it: a 17 year old girl, set afire and burned to death in the middle of a street in Los Angeles, California, USA.
Do not miss it: a 12-year old girl, likely brutalized and trafficked by a gang, arrested and charged with prostitution by cops and D.A.s who should know better. With tears on her face she sits in front of a judge who may be too uncaring to set aside unjust laws. Or possibly hindered by a legislature too stupid to change them.
[Human Rights Watch] said many of the assaults were in circumstances in which commanding officers knew or should have known the crimes, such as electric shocks to genitalia, were taking place.
In another face-to-face interview a woman from the Karm al-Zeitoun neighborhood of Homs city which was overrun by Assad’s troops said she heard security forces and shabiha militia rape her neighbors while she hid in her apartment in March.
“I could hear one girl fighting with one of (the men)… She pushed him and he shot her in the head,” HRW quoted the woman as saying. She said three girls, the youngest aged 12, were then raped. After the men left the woman went next door.
“The scene on the inside was unreal. The 12-year-old was lying on the ground, blood to her knees… More than one person had raped the 12-year-old… She was torn the length of a forefinger. I will never go back there. It comes to me. I see it in my dreams and I just cry.”
Some interviewees told HRW that victims did not want their families to know about the assault because of fear or shame. In one case, HRW said a female rape victim was willing to be interviewed but her husband forbade it.
Do not miss it: a 12-year old girl gang-raped in an apartment. Brutalized emotionally, psychologically and physically with body ripped as if she had endured a traumatic childbirth.
In fact here’s an entire website dedicated to tragedies being endured by women in Syria: Women Under Siege: Documenting Sexualized Violence in Syria. Recent entries included, “Woman tells Brandeis students Assad soldiers raped her,” “Man reports Republican Guards raped woman, killed men, in Douma apartment building,” “Former officer describes being ordered to rape in Homs,” and more.
Note to parents: Go check your kid’s cellphone. Or Facebook. Just check. Just … check.
Back in April 2010, one mother did just that. Her daughter was 14 at the time, right in the thick of middle school. Should be texting about cute boys or Hannah Montana or pre-algebra problems.
Instead, here’s what showed up in her sent texts.
“Cud u use a condom this time. I’m still not on birth control pills yet.”
You’d freak, right? Ready to wring the neck of some punk seventh-grader? Mom found more texts, all involving a caller known as “Greg.” Police traced the texts back to a cellphone number. Turned out Greg hadn’t been in middle school since the 1970s.
He’s Greg Austin, a 46-year-old Ooltewah father of three and former president of CTC Technologies in Chattanooga.
Earlier this year, he pleaded guilty to two charges of statutory rape: having sex with two middle-schoolers in a $45-per-night motel.
Want to know where he is today?
Not in jail.
Thanks to sentencing reform and the fact Austin had no prior record, he received six months of jail, followed by 18 months’ probation and registration as a sex offender.
Even though he pleaded guilty to statutory rape of two girls barely old enough to see a PG-13 movie.
Know how many days in jail he has served for that crime?
“Zero,” said his attorney, Bryan Hoss.
Two middle school girls manipulated into sex–raped–by a man old enough to be their Dad. Probably, he was fantasizing that he was.
Or consider these statistics from Forbes:
–One in every four women have experienced severe physical violence by a current or former spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend.
–Stalkers victimize approximately 5.2 million women each year in the U.S, with domestic violence-related stalking the most common type of stalking and often the most dangerous.
–One in ten 9th-12th grade students (mail and female) were physically hurt on purpose by a boyfriend or girlfriend in 2009 alone.
–One in five women have been raped in their lifetimes, and nearly 1.3 million women in the U.S. are raped every year.
–The statistics are sobering – even more so with our understanding that these types of crimes are often the most underreported. Many victims suffer in silence without confiding in family and friends, much less reaching out for help from hospitals, rape crisis centers, shelters, or even the police.
According to the newly released documentary, The Invisible War, which gathered its statistics from the United States government, a female soldier in combat zones is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire; over 20% of female veterans have been sexually assaulted while serving in the US army; of 3,192 sexual-assault reports in 2011 only 191 members of the military were convicted at courts martial. Further, as reported by ABC News,
As terrible as the rape was, the repercussions were almost as horrendous — [single] women were accused of adultery (if the perpetrator happened to be married) or “conduct unbecoming an officer.”
Cori Cioca, formerly of the United States Coast Guard, alleges assault and rape by a superior officer [Image credit]
They lost rank, they were accused of having “set up the men.” When one of the women reported a rape — the third that week in one particular unit — she was asked, “You girls think this is a game; are you all in cahoots?”
[…]
A Navy study conducted anonymously reported that 15 percent of incoming recruits had attempted or committed rape before entering the military, twice the percentage of an equivalent civilian population. Women who’ve been raped in the military have a higher PTSD rate than men in combat. In 2010, there were 2,617 military victims (women and men), but that represented only about 14% of the estimated number of victims; 86% did not report they had been sexually assaulted.
Until early 2012 military regulations required rapes be reported to one’s supervising officer. It was all to common, in cases where the victim was female, for that officer to be her rapist.
If you have not seen The Invisible War check out iTunes, Amazon.com, Vudu.com or the website above.
The official number is bad enough: One in three American Indian women have experienced rape or attempted rape, a rate more than twice the national average. But it gets worse: One survey finds that in some rural villages, the rate of sexual violence is as much as 12 times the national rate, and interviews by the New York Times found that sexual assault is so common that few, if any, Native American women living on tribal reservations escape it.
The Times article relays wrenching stories (the 19-year-old rape victim who never received a return phone call from tribal police), offers more heartbreaking statistics (just 10% of sex assaults on reservations are reported, and arrests are made in just 13% of those cases), and details the myriad problems contributing to the tragic situation: isolated villages; alcohol abuse and a breakdown of the family structure; a lack of sexual assault training.
Look at this picture of Tarana Akbari, a young Afghani girl. She survived a suicide bomber’s attack that claimed seven members of her family and injured nine of her other relatives. This is anger. This is hurt. This is the face of one suffering inexplicable injustice. This is real; not manufactured. Complementarian vs egalitarian? It does not even get into the ballpark.
An egalitarian friend of mine read this yesterday to provide feedback. She wrote back:
Feminist and womanist theologians in the Third World have long accused white Western feminists of focusing on semantics and meaningless symbols (like female language for God) instead of doing real things to help real women suffering all over the world.
Now, go ahead and tell me how wrong it was that you did not get to teach that Sunday School class because there were men in it. Tell me how some couple is in sin because she cuts the grass and he vacuums the house rather than holding traditional gender roles. Tell me how debates about semantics and theology even come close to the tragedies endured by women–from those born to those unborn–on whom Satanic war has been waged since the Garden of Eden.
I wonder if these victims of inhuman barbarity wake up each day frustrated because they were not allowed to speak at a panel discussion, did not have their CV considered by a pastor search team, or thinking their dad was too patriarchal. Think about these stories when you are trying to decide whether a women testifying in church can speak behind the pulpit or must stand on the floor so as not to be confused with the preacher.
Tell me instead how unborn girls have a right to live. Tell me 12 year olds have a right to not be sexually brutalized 70 or more times a week. Tell me how women have a right not to be raped by soldiers or law enforcement officers. Tell me teenage girls should not be shot for wanting an education. Tell me seventeen year olds should not be burned to death in the street.
Tell me the gospel matters for more than discussion, debate and division. Tell me these women matter more than the luxury we have for endless disagreements.
If they do matter then why do we not redeem the time in a way reflecting it?
Below is a brief TED Talk called, “Every 15 Seconds.” It was presented by Matt Friedman at TEDxSanJoaquin. The title refers to the frequency people around the globe are sold into some kind of human slavery. Women, girls, men, and boys.
Listen to him talk about professional rapists. Do not even try to hold your anger.
I have never been on food stamps. Sonya, my wife, was raised in a family that has never been on food stamps.
A while back I was underemployed for a period of almost two years. My income was drastically reduced. Twice during that time we strongly considered at least applying for food stamps (now called SNAP–Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). The second time I had already found the office address for making the trip to apply. Both times we decided not to apply. We do not have the experience of being looked at with disdain by other shoppers who wonder if we are lazy, criminal, or “just poor.” Or those other shoppers who examine the groceries of such folks for any non-generic items.
We did enough research to know the stamps have been traded for reloadable cards. Rather than a book of tear off sheets, recipients pay just like using a debit card. Folks around the check-out line who are not paying attention may not even realize the difference.
Which brings me to a story of Sonya yesterday at our local Aldi grocery store (a story she did not want to to relate, but here we are).
The lady in front of Sonya, whose groceries were being scanned, was old enough to be in the social security range. Sonya watched as they removed item after item from her order, rerunning her card to no avail. Soon it became clear the woman did not have any money on her card.
It was about this time Sonya realized she was trying to pay with her SNAP card. She heard the customer and cashier discussing what day of the month and that the card should already have been refilled for use. It dawned on the lady trying to buy the groceries that no matter how many groceries were removed she could not pay for what was left.
As Sonya watched these events unfold the Holy Spirit prompted her to include the lady’s purchase in our own. So she said to the cashier, “I’ll get hers. Just include it with my groceries.”
After the expected quizzical looks from customer and cashier, the customer expressed her profound appreciation. After the transaction was completed she and Sonya hugged several times, near tears. Sonya said, “God will meet your needs and He’ll meet ours.” About then the cashier let loose with “That’s right! Amen!” and a small revival was had in the grocery story.
As they were getting ready to leave the lady then asked, “Where do you go to church?” After Sonya told her, she said, “Well, I was about to invite you to mine.”
I relate this story primarily to highlight generosity and the blessing of following God. But there is another component.
When talking about the poor we often hear the argument, “It is not the responsibility of the government to help the poor. It is the responsibility of the church.” It sounds good, right? It sounds right, right?
But is not the church (or churches) made up of people? Of we who claim the name of Jesus? How much helping of the poor do we really do? If all income taxes were to fall away overnight, would Christ followers increase their offerings or increase their possessions? Would we buy pants, shirts, gloves, and food for those in need, or empty our own closets of perfectly good threads to make room for armloads from our favorite clothier?
Would we feed the hungry and homeless? [Image credit]
In a conversation with a homeless person yesterday, Sonya found out his greatest need is for thermal underwear (as he stands in the cold selling newspapers). If we fill that need it may mean that one of us does without something we would like to have. Just how long would we live like that?
Would churches reallocate their budgetary funds away from buildings and property that house the faithful once or twice a week to construct, fund, and staff shelters for the long-term and transitional homeless? Organize and provide job training or job opportunities? You know, the stuff some say the government should be doing?
If churches were suddenly awash in cash from generous members would they join together with other churches to supplement the food needs in their community, or just hire additional staff to do the ministry the members should already be doing?
In short, would we “do justice,” or merely do business as usual?
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“It is well that war is so terrible otherwise we would grow too fond of it.”
Robert E. Lee
“I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower
My son Timothy alerted me last week to this blog, the LiveJournal of Ilya Plekhanov, editor of military and literary almanac, The Art of War. These sites are in Russian some of which Chrome will translate into English. (See also Plekhanov on the Russian edition of Forbes.) All of the photos below are from the collection on the LiveJournal blog.
While viewing the photos I was reminded of the hell of war. I also question why so many who follow Christ seem given over to it, at times with virtual bloodlust. For people who follow the Prince of Peace, who often made fun of the “peace-niks” of the 60s, we should be reminded yet again that Jesus words, “There will be wars and rumors of wars,” was not intended to be a foreign policy statement.
What questions should Kingdom residents ask? Is the violence in Syria merely a civil war? How are we involved behind the scenes? Is this all about installing a democracy friendly to U.S. interests? Passive toward Israel?
How many of the people in the pictures below do not or did not know Christ? How many have never or had never heard a clear presentation of the gospel? How many are now or soon will be in a Christ-less eternity?
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING PHOTOS INCLUDE SCENES OF INDIVIDUAL VIOLENCE, BLOOD AND SOME GORE
Two men with guns accost an apparently unarmed man.
The unarmed man appears to be attempting evasive action.
The unarmed man lies dead from a bullet to the head.
A man appears to be running for cover.
Apparently the man has been wounded.
As someone extends help to the man in the street, I wondered if the man laying wounded or dead on the sidewalk is the man who was in the foreground in the first picture of this series.
People are people. Nobody wants their child to die.
Before the election much hubbub was made about the numbers of people being added as recipients to the SNAP (food stamp) program. Some wondered at the possibility of those being bought votes. In the form of a question, did the Obama administration recruit people to the assistance program to ensure a re-election victory? In the mean time, people wondered, were we being bled dry be a bunch of lazy, shiftless, good for nothings who are just taking advantage of the governmental teat?
According to the Wall Street Journal the average food stamp family in 2010 had $731 per month in gross income. They received just $287 per month from SNAP. The Journal also reported
Nearly 21% of households on food stamps also received Supplemental Security Income, assistance for the aged and blind. Some 21.4% received Social Security benefits. Just 8% of households also received Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the cash welfare program.
But some 20% of households had no cash income of any kind last year, up from 15% in 2007, the year the recession began, and up from 7% in 1990.
That’s partly because most household heads who were receiving food stamps were also out of work. Just 21.8% of them had jobs in 2010, while 19.8% were jobless and looking for work.
More than half of household heads who received food stamps, 51.1%, weren’t in the labor force and weren’t searching for work. Labor-force dropouts have been a particular concern for economists, who worry their lost potential damages economic output. Those who drop out of the work force often turn to other government programs, such as Social Security disability, which is costly.
[…]
Just 6.7% of households who received food stamps were getting jobless benefits.
Nearly half of all food-stamp recipients, 47%, were children under the age of 18. Another 8% of recipients were age 60 or older.
Whites made up the largest share of food stamp households, 35.7%. Some 22% of households receiving food stamps were counted as African American and 10% were Hispanic.
U.S. born citizens made up the majority, 94%, of food stamp households.
While it is true SNAP users have increased dramatically under the Obama administration a substantial increase had already begun under the Bush 43 administration. The extent of the economic downturn between the fall of 2007 and 2011 would likely have seen a continued increase if there had been a third Bush term. (Only Clinton at -8.2% and Reagan at -2.4% have overseen declines in the last eight presidencies.)
So what about the votes? Below are four national county maps. The first is voting by county for the 2008 election. Then the amount of county-by-county increase in food stamps recipients between 2007-2009. Beneath that is the percentage of residents on food stamps in each county nationally in 2009. Finally, a county-by-county voting map of the 2012 election.
I am neither a cartographer, a politician nor the son of either. However, it looks like an awful lot of counties with high concentrations of food stamp recipients voted Red (ie, GOP). It is true that the highest numbers of recipients are in Blue (Dem) areas, but I think it is too strong a suggestion to say all food stamp recipients voted Democratic. It is also too strong to say Obama carried the day because of that vote. Since 18M people been added since Obama took office and he won by less than 3M votes, and since he garnered 9M more votes in 2008, it seems hard to argue that SNAP recipients contributed meaningfully to his victory.
It looks and sounds fantastic. The primaries appear to be amazing–save Russell Crowe singing–and I am guessing the casting of Sacha Baron Cohen will prove a stroke of genius.
Conservative radio theater host, Rush Limbaugh [Image credit]
Over the last few weeks I have come to appreciate the writings of Conor Friedersdorf, columnist for The Atlantic. Following last night’s election results he addressed the failure of the conservative media to see the big pre-election stories, opting instead for conspiracy theories, and faux news.
The losers, according to Friedersdorf, were the “rank-and-file” conservatives who took Limbaugh, Hannity, et al, as authoritative and truthful casting a wary eye at all other outlets.
Barack Obama just trounced a Republican opponent for the second time. But unlike 4 years ago, when most conservatives saw it coming, Tuesday’s result was, for them, an unpleasant surprise. So many on the right had predicted a Mitt Romney victory, or even a blowout — Dick Morris, George Will, and Michael Barone all predicted the GOP would break 300 electoral votes. Joe Scarborough scoffed at the notion that the election was anything other than a toss-up. Peggy Noonan insisted that those predicting an Obama victory were ignoring the world around them. Even Karl Rove, supposed political genius, missed the bulls-eye. These voices drove the coverage on Fox News, talk radio, the Drudge Report, and conservative blogs.
Those audiences were misinformed.
Outside the conservative media, the narrative was completely different. Its driving force was Nate Silver, whose performance forecasting Election ’08 gave him credibility as he daily explained why his model showed President Obama enjoyed a very good chance of being reelected. Other experts echoed his findings. Readers of The New York Times, The Atlantic, and other “mainstream media” sites besides knew the expert predictions, which have been largely born out. The conclusions of experts are not sacrosanct. But Silver’s expertise was always a better bet than relying on ideological hacks like Morris or the anecdotal impressions of Noonan. Sure, Silver could’ve wound up wrong, but people who rejected the possibility of his being right?
They were operating at a self-imposed information disadvantage.
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You haven’t just been misinformed about the horse race. Since the very beginning of the election cycle, conservative media has been failing you. With a few exceptions, they haven’t tried to rigorously tell you the truth, or even to bring you intellectually honest opinion. What they’ve done instead helps to explain why the right failed to triumph in a very winnable election.
Why do you keep putting up with it?
Conservatives were at a disadvantage because Romney supporters like Jennifer Rubin and Hugh Hewitt saw it as their duty to spin constantly for their favored candidate rather than being frank about his strengths and weaknesses. What conservative Washington Post readers got, when they traded in Dave Weigel for Rubin, was a lot more hackery and a lot less informed about the presidential election.
Conservatives were at an information disadvantage because so many right-leaning outlets wasted time on stories the rest of America dismissed as nonsense. World Net Daily brought you Birtherism. Forbes brought you Kenyan anti-colonialism. National Review obsessed about an imaginary rejection of American exceptionalism, misrepresenting an Obama quote in the process, and Andy McCarthy was interviewed widely about his theory that Obama, aka Drone Warrior in Chief, allied himself with our Islamist enemy in a “Grand Jihad” against America. Seriously?
Conservatives were at a disadvantage because their information elites pander in the most cynical, self-defeating ways, treating would-be candidates like Sarah Palin and Herman Cain as if they’re plausible presidents, rather than national jokes who’d lose worse than George McGovern.
I encourage you to read the entire piece.
I’m sure some will say, “But what about Benghazi? What about Fast and Furious? What about socialism? What about Obamacare?”
To which I answer, “What about the boy who cried wolf?” As conservative media beats the birther drum, the Obama 2016 drum, and every other drum of suspiciousness, why should conservatives be surprised to find the wolf soundly dismissed even when loudly announced?
Conservative media, like liberal media, does not exist to tell the truth. It exists to relate a narrative. Each narrative fulfills–they hope–two functions: to sell ads and to make money. I really do not see this as cynicism. This is just reality.
The air inside any bubble eventually becomes toxic.
As long as Americans–conservative and liberal, Right and Left–eat pablum like it is a 5-star breakfast and drink muddy water like Italian roast, media sources will be content to serve it up as a never ending feast.
Before you start down that path, understand I am not defending, promoting or worshiping Malcolm X. From his bio on Wikipedia:
Malcolm X ( /ˈmælkəm ˈɛks/; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965), born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz[1] (Arabic: الحاجّ مالك الشباز), was an African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers, he was a courageous advocate for the rights of blacks, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans. Detractors accused him of preaching racism, black supremacy, and violence. He has been called one of the greatest and most influential African Americans in history.
Malcom X in 1964
Malcolm X’s father died—killed by white supremacists, it was rumored—when he was young, and at least one of his uncles was lynched. When he was thirteen, his mother was placed in a mental hospital, and he was placed in a series of foster homes. In 1946, at age 20, he went to prison for breaking and entering.
In prison Malcolm X became a member of the Nation of Islam and after his parole in 1952 he quickly rose to become one of its leaders. For a dozen years Malcolm X was the public face of the controversial group, but disillusionment with Nation of Islam head Elijah Muhammad led him to leave the Nation in March 1964. After a period of travel in Africa and the Middle East, he returned to the United States, where he founded Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. In February 1965, less than a year after leaving the Nation of Islam, he was assassinated by three members of the group.
Malcolm X’s expressed beliefs changed substantially over time. As a spokesman for the Nation of Islam he taught black supremacy and advocated separation of black and white Americans—in contrast to the civil rights movement’s emphasis on integration. After breaking with the Nation of Islam in 1964—saying of his association with it, “I was a zombie then … pointed in a certain direction and told to march”—and becoming a Sunni Muslim, he disavowed racism and expressed willingness to work with civil rights leaders, though still emphasizing black self-determination and self-defense.
Below is the audio from a speech to a group of African Americans. Though Malcolm X is deriding them unceasingly for their support of the Democratic party, his observations about party loyalty are true across the board. The last build-up and closing sentence are the stuff of a speaker’s dreams.
If you are heading to the polls today, I encourage you to give a listen to this four minutes and think about how these words apply to what we as a nation continue to experience as a result of blind party loyalty.
