Publicity trumps results!

Even if it is not fair, if you can get people to watch that is the only thing that matters in modern society.

Major League Baseball is the latest example of this modern fact. I watched the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox play over Memorial Day weekend. I find it odd I would be watching two teams that are tied for second in their division play. That is correct the two "marquee" teams in baseball are, for now, in the Baltimore Orioles rear view mirror. Four games back of Baltimore? The picture gets more bleak when you consider that the Chicago White Sox have the best record in the bigs with 34 wins. (Followed by St. Louis with 33 and San Diego with 32.) The two media darlings have a total of seven teams with more wins and two (Florida and Toronto) that have equaled their mark of 27.

So why are we focused on New York and Boston? I thought the whole "curse" thing had been lifted. Boston had excised its demons and New York was entering the non steroid, aging free agent, completely gutted farm system era. So why do we still focus on them with the intensity of Kenneth Starr investigating President Clinton's love life?

I realize we aren't even to the All Star break and both of these teams can come out on fire. I know that the Orioles could phone in the last half of the season, leaving these two media darlings slugging it out for the divisional title. What I don't understand is why baseball is allowing so many compelling story lines that would broaden the appeal of the game today to take a back seat to Boston/New York.

What about the Twins who just keep winning. What about the Tigers, who signed Pudge Rodriguez two years ago when they were the worst team in ball. Rodriguez had to defend himself against charges that he left the world champions to get a pile of cash in Detroit. They aren't out of the race yet. The Chicago White Sox are a stark contrast to the troubled Chicago Cubs, who labor with indifferent ownership and questionable mangement.

So many stories are out there. What about a comparison of Bobby Cox and Twins skipper Ron Gardenhire? Cox has done a stellar job with a big payroll and then without all those stars from the 90's. Yet Gardenhire's team was on the chopping block but is fielding one of the great defensive teams in the game today. What kind of variety do we get? We will follow the Yankees and Red Sox OR the Red Sox and the Yankees.

Yet we will continue until someone in the media realizes there are more than two stars in the baseball universe. That cannot happen until the viewing public realize there are other teams worth watching.

Observations and Corrections

Well it only took a few days. In politics so much is subject to interpretation. In my article dated May 19, 2005, I sighted Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, and just about every other Republican for the last several months, saying that the filibuster had never been used to block federal appointment to the bench. One reader pointed out that Associate Justice Abe Fortis's elevation to Chief Justice and simultaneous replacement of Fortis with Homer Thornberry to the Associate Justice, was blocked by a threatened filibuster See Link.

So I want to thank David for pointing this out. Integrity and trust are valuable and hard earned commodities. If our leaders would recognize this and admit mistakes, stop shading the truth perhaps some of the modern cynicism would recede.

I find it interesting when partially true information gets passed on time and again. It all starts with a person of notoriety stating as fact some opinion or just plainly misrepresenting the truth but now the statement is out there. Talk radio hosts play the clip and repeat the claim, then a news article quotes the statement and before you know it the statement is fact in the mind of the public whether accurate or not.

Keep returning , I want this to be a place where comments are tested and refined.

SENATORS FRIST AND REID: A TALE OF TWO BAD DECISIONS

Those who have better things to do with their lives are not even aware of the battle going on in the United States Senate. The one and half parties are really having at it. I refer to the Democrats and Republicans. So many opinions are becoming the same, and the results are always the same, so I now refer to them as one and a half parties. Neither wants to stray to far from the middle, so ever so cautiously they reach out, either to the left or the right, trying to convince voters they want to represent their views.

Even within the halls of government, the disappearance of the two parties is evident. Turn to your favorite news channel or pick up the newspaper. Before long you see both parties reaching out to either lure or pacify legislators that are labeled "moderate Republicans" or "conservative Democrats." The practical translation is this: the parties get closer and closer.

The dumbfounding part of this is the fact that the closer Senators Frist and Reid come to the center, the fiercer the combat. More and more these gentleman are not debating ideas, they are simply debating who should wield power.

In the latest version of this struggle hostilities started when the Democrat wing of the one and half parties in the Senate broke with tradition and filibustered President Bush's judicial nominees. The filibuster is a procedural tactic designed to protect minority rights within the Senate. Never in the 200 plus years has this procedure been used to block appointments to the judiciary.

The story takes a turn from bad to worse with Senator Frist's response, eliminate the filibuster. What a wonderful example of duplicity. Senator Frist takes one bad decision by Reid and raises the stakes with an even worse idea. If the Democrats break one tradition, then the Republicans will break yet another. Is this what has become of what was once called the greatest deliberative body in the world?

The truth that underlies this problem is not one that pits liberals against conservatives. This is not a struggle to uphold Senate tradition or improve senatorial procedure. This most certainly is not about principled people deliberating whether or not President Bush has appointed qualified jurists to the bench. This is a struggle for power.

Neither party cares for what is right, they care about who will hold power. None of these leaders are evil or diabolical in there intent. Each side has been blinded by the allure of power. Until enough principled people stand up to lead all are endangered, “were there is no vision the people perish.” Neither of the one and a half parties have any clear vision of what these two leader’s bad decisions will do to our nation. Until clear and decisive leadership choices emerge the battle for power will be intense.

THE FOLLOWING WAS TAKEN FROM AN ARTICLE ON CNN.COM

A meeting of centrist senators lasted late into the night Thursday, with no agreement and talks are to resume by phone Friday. 05-20-2005

The merger of the Democrats and the Republicans continues!

Hypersensitive Conservatism

Let me begin by making it clear, I am a Star Wars fan. I am not one of those people that camp out to get tickets, or come dressed as a Storm Trooper. I just like the movies and will have seen them all, in a theater, after I see third chapter. (Which is the sixth and final installment in the George Lucas space opus. If that confuses you, welcome to the club.)

Secondly, I am a very conservative person, not a Republican, a conservative.

I am amazed these two interests have intersected. I speak of the pro-administration hyperactive reaction to the new the Revenge of the Sith.

If you are clueless to what I am discussing, be happy, and consider not reading this article. Many conservatives are up in arms over what they see as an anti-war, anti-Bush, message in some of the dialogue of the new film, according to today's issue of USA TODAY. I warned you, there is no going back now, I apologize for introducing this topic into your life.

The pseudo-controversy underscores the problem of being the dominant political power in an era. Power, or at least the allure of power, produces a blind following, with a petty preoccupation with defending the leader, in this case President Bush.

What do these people think? That the Bush inner circle has pushed nation building in Iraq to the back burner? That peace in the Arab world, nukes in Iran and Korea, Russia's struggle to keep democratic institutions functioning are all taking a secondary position to a sci-fi flick?

Or you could ponder a more frightening thought: how did Lucas, in the late seventies know, that the Iraqi war would happen? At the time he started his space opera, Lucas points out, "We were just starting to arm Saddam Hussein." How did he know all this? Could the force be real? Is he a latter day prophet who decried a generation ago that we would be in Iraq?

Let's rejoin reality, shall we?

One of the correctly used mantras of the right was the liberal obsession with political correctness. Starting in the sixties and seventies the left's hyperactive obsession with non-offensive labels and a non-offending society drove them closer and finally off of the deep end. The Republican Party should take a lesson from the Democrats departure from the main stream. Don't involve yourself in pettiness, it drives you toward irrelevance.

I have to go. It's my turn to hold our place in line at the movie theater.

Restoring First Century Christianity

It is a mantra with which those of us interested in the Restoration Movement are very familiar. It sounds, and to a large part is, a fairly simple thing as well. The other Restoration "buzz phrases" such as, "speak where the Bible speaks, and be silent where the Bible is silent," or the requirement of many for "book, chapter, and verse" for what we do in the worship of God are also familiar oft repeated phrases.

This begs the question, if we have restored what they did, why then do we not have their results? Carefully looking at those results reveal to me two things: 1. We do not face the same persecution as these early Christians and 2. The church is not experiencing the same sort of exponential growth that was experienced in the first and second century after the death of Christ.

In reality I believe that both of these points are caused by one reality, Christians and by implication Christianity is not viewed as a threat to the world as it was in the days immediately following the apostolic age.

The Romans feared the cultural change that was taking place around them, today we see Christians conforming to and making arguments for the social standards of the world. Many Christians make argument after argument for a more lenient view towards divorce, drugs and alcohol, and any number of other issues while casting a disparaging look toward the backward thinking of past generations of Christians.

The reality is this, a Christians reserve and refuge as he tries to deal with the trials and temptations of the world aught to be the culture and support he finds within the community of believers. Christians are to have an impact on the surrounding society while keeping themselves out of the very culture they are seeking to influence. We are to be "a peculiar people" who are viewed as different from the world.