Christianity & Gay Marriage

Are we back to this Same Sex Marriage thing again?  Ugh!  I fear that Christians won't win this one politically since so many people pick and choose beliefs from a Christian heritage and mix it with some pop psychology.  Voila! They fashion themselves close followers of Christianity but vote against the Faith.  Cal Thomas has written a fairly good column about this in Obama's Other Gospel but he gets all wrapped up in heresy and orthodoxy and practices of the Catholic Church.  I'd like to do it Protestant-style--straight from the Inspired Word.

Do you believe in Jesus?  Well, here's what my Lord and Savior and Friend said about marriage,
"Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh'?" Matthew 19:4-5 (bold added in case you don't see the point.)  "One flesh" refers to procreation that is one flesh out of two individuals.  When my Boss tells me such things, I tend to accept it. 

The word Jesus uses for "hell" in the gospels is "Gehanna" which refers to the sight of a pagan Canaanite temple in the Kidron valley where Jerusalem dumped their trash.  The City Dump, Gehanna,  burned day and night as trash was added.  The razzed temple was for the pagan god Molech in which Canaanites sacrificed their firstborn children.  The way this was accomplished was through an intensely hot furnace into which the babies were thrown.  Molech's Babylonian name was Bel and that's where Shadrack, Meshack and Abednigo were thrown.  Now if you think that the act of throwing an innocent newborn into a furnace is something no one who is a parent could bring themselves to do, you are exactly right.  All the priests of Molech were homosexual men. 

And yet I hear people say repeatedly that Jesus never said anything about being gay or 'gay marriage'.

In Ephesians 5:25,32 it says, "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that He might sanctify her...This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church."  In those intervening verses, Paul is quoting that famous Genesis passage that Jesus quoted about a man and a woman becoming one flesh and his point is that marriage is a sacred contract, not a loose bond.  And he is admonishing men to love their wives and wives to respect their husbands--a phenomenal understanding of man's and woman's (not 2 gays) neglected virtues you wouldn't expect from an old bachelor like Paul. (Proof number 161 that this Word is Inspired)

In Levitius 18 God tells the nation of Israel not to behave like Egyptians or Canaanites-- no incest, no marrying sisters, no homosexual relations, no child and human sacrifice and several other things He despises.  vs. 28: "lest the land vomit you out when you make  it unclean, as it vomited out the nation [Canaan] that was before you." Pretty strong words! Evidently the Boss doesn't go for such things.

Okay, so the Lord of my life said it is one man and one woman (not two women and a dog and a parakeet), a sacred trust, thinks of Hell's demons and gay priests in the same thought (and He has seen Hell where I haven't) and is strongly against even gay practice, do you expect me to vote for gay marriage? Besides, I don't like being vomited out.

Woody

July 14 is the 100^th birthday of Woody Guthrie and as we go into this Memorial Day-to-July4 time you are likely to hear about this repeatedly in the media.  Moreover, Guthrie is likely to be treated as heroic, which leaves me a bit bemused.  Born in Okemah in Okfuskee county (You’re a true Okie if you can pronounce that quickly and show it on a map.) He died of untreated Huntington’s disease in 1967, which causes dementia and absurd behavior.  An avowed communist, the Communist Party USA wouldn’t accept him since he was a loose cannon.  He became famous as the “Troubadour of the Dustbowl” when he went on a cross-country trip with some Oklahoma farmers trying to relocate in San Joaquin Valley and wrote many songs about it.  Because of his music, the notion was encouraged that Okies fled in mass to California during the dust bowl (an enormous factual error), but with Steinbeck’s book it became ingrained in the national consciousness and if you try to argue the facts people will dispute you like you are a traitor to Well-known Facts About America.  He went on to produce ballads full of blues for the FDR propaganda films that were used to argue that Western Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas  should be made into a national grasslands and the people run off the land.  Such was progressivism.  But I could never understand where progressivism had any progress. Woody also wrote 174 columns for the communist party newspaper, Daily Worker.  Later he sired 8 kids from 3 women and had a terrific wanderlust leaving families behind. He eventually went to New York City where he was heralded as a true down-to-earth American from Oklahoma, unlike most of the other communists there. 

He is best known for ‘This Land Is Your Land’ a catchy tune and I-love-America lyrics.  The story of how this song came about is an eye-roller of irony.  Woodrow Wilson Guthrie wrote the song in 1940 as an asinine  spoof of “God Bless America”.  A communist atheist, he naturally hated both the lyrics and Kate Smith, the Songbird of the South who later sang it as a patriotic moment during World War II.  So he wrote a sarcastic cynical ballad in which he borrowed the tune from a popular Christian gospel song sung by the Carter Family at the time.  To which he wrote lyrics about how awful capitalist America was and then ended with the refrain “God blessed America for me.” They were lyrics of how common people were routinely exploited and the system was rotten.  Not exactly a good song for the patriotic nation in WW II.  Finally in 1944 he published it and no one noticed.  After protesting the draft, then serving a short stint in the merchant marine, he returned from the war and found his dust bowl fame had disappeared.  His career started going downhill. 

Then in 1951 he got a chance to do a gig on a children’s television program.  Television was a fledgling industry.  And Guthrie wanted to sing God Blessed America for Me.  The producer of the show listened and gagged.  How could he sing lyrics like this for children?

 As I went walking, I saw a sign there,

And on the sign there, It said "Private Property."

But on the other side, it didn't say nothing!

That side was made for you and me.

(You can see how ole’ Woody loved property rights.)

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;

By the relief office, I'd seen my people.

As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,

Is this land made for you and me?

The show director demanded Guthrie change the refrain.  Change it or don’t do the gig.  Woody needed money so he changed it.  In keeping to those verses above he changed it  to “This land is made for you and me” as a postive expression. But the director still choked over the lyrics  continued to press Woody to change verses until, with the above two verses deleted, it sounded like an inane song of love of country.

This land is your land

This land is my land

From California to New York Island

From the Redwood Forests, to the Gulf Stream waters

This Land was made for you and me.

            Guthrie recorded it that way but hated it. It caught on, made him famous, but he hated performing it. For he was a writer of protest songs.  Today it stands as his singular work, a song with lyrics he was forced to write and tune set to a gospel song he plagiarized and detested. 

            I keep thinking irreverently, “maybe that’s what drove him crazy.”    

He's done

I don’t see it.  I've been a campaign manager and I don’t see how Obama can win—aside from a stunning Romney problem like John Edwards.  Barack  won in 2008 by 53-46%.  Hmmm—same margin as my candidate did.  That’s not a comfortable margin.  If you lose 3% you’re tied.  All right, let’s run some numbers.  Afro-Am’s are 10% of the vote and they favored him by 95% last time.  He’s polling at 85% now.  There goes one percent.  Hispanics are just over 10% and they favored him by 75% last time.  They are 55% now.  That’s another 2%.  Young voters under 30 favored him 66% last time and make up an uncertain 10% of votes.  They are now at 48% approval and what if only half of them show up this time through discouragement.  There’s at least another 2%.  He’s down 12% with women who comprise 50% so that’s -6%.  Down 20% with elders over 55 and that’s 30% of the vote so that’s another minus 6%. 

Of course there is a lot of overlap in many categories, but you get the picture that he’s about 10 points down from last time and the yo-yoing between 42 and 48% approval demonstrates this.  Only Rasmussen does polls of likely voters (at this time of the campaign) and they have been showing numbers of about 45-45 all spring.  Those 10% undecideds will go ¾ to the challenger.  All those other polls where they show 49-48% are blue-sky guesses since they just interview people at random.  1 out of 3 of them won’t vote. 

Obummer has made bad strategic decisions in his campaign like his allegation that R’s hate women, refusing to approve Keystone, looking like he doesn’t want to work but golf while his wife travels to 5-star hotels on the taxpayer’s nickel.  The attacks on rich and Wall Street have made the public roll their eyes.  His EPA is, in the eyes of most people, somewhere between a bureaucratic concern and a Gestapo.  No issue he brings up seems to get traction.

Republicans made mistakes too.  They couldn’t find a true and articulate unanimous conservative.  They keep talking as if the recession is still going and it has been over for 3 years.  If they had said the truth, this is only the third jobless recovery in American history, which performs like the sick man of Europe, the charge would be sticking to Oblamer like a tar baby.  But I figure Mitt has the discipline to talk economy all the way to the election and all the diversionary tactics of BHO will not get him flustered.  Obama defends unpopular policies of Obamacare, refusal to drill or mine, and foreign policy appreasement. Stick a fork in him, he’s done.

Hands across the Convention

The day started and ended well.  It’s just the in-between that made you bite nails.  Steve and I attended the Walk For Life that began in the park.  He was the Send-off speaker and we had a great time visiting with many of the folks.  8 pastors were there for a great fund-raiser.  Salvation Army Chaplain Mike had a wonderful story about a small boy trapped in a high window of a burning house.  No one knew what to do until a man climbed an iron pipe up the side of the wall and rescued him.  But the pipe was so hot he burned his hand.  Moral: Love is costly.  I was reminded of the interconnectedness of Christians by all the fun we had visiting. 

Then we were off to the Republican convention in Norman.  Steve had called the day before and asked if we would still be seated as delegates if we came in late.  The answer was ‘yes’ but when we arrived Pam Pollard told us we would have to raise a point of order in the meeting and the convention would have to let us in.  Political parties have strict rules about attendance and credentials.  Otherwise you could have some outfit flash mob the place and disrupt.  We have enough controversy as it is without Occupy Norman showing up. It was nearly noon and Governor Fallin finished speaking.  The credentials report was next.  Turned out that the convention floor wasn’t in the mood to seat Steve and I and some other latecomers so we shrugged and decided to enjoy the day as spectators.  We always intend to have fun.  So we sat in the back next to Representative Dennis Johnson and Steve Fair of the Stephens county delegation.  Our Kay county folks were across the aisle.  Sitting there in the cheap seats we were continually visited by others like George Faught who is running for a bigger House—the US House seat in Eastern OK— Rep. Jason Murphy and others. 

The Ron Paul folks are very intense about his candidacy and they arrived in force far greater than the Paul vote percentage in OK's primary.  First vote was to change the rules so that the slate of delegates to the national convention would be opposed by an alternate slate drawn up by the Paulistas.  The majority of the convention opposed this by a vote of about 800 to 500.  But there were computer problems with 6 counties, who had more voting delegates than the computer screen at the front of the room showed.  Kay had 23 voters and only 22 delegates.  “Whassa deal?” I asked Lowell.  "Did we pick up a Chicago Democrat who has been out to the graveyard copying names?”  Turned out that someone in registration line had punched the “guest” button instead of  “delegate” so it was all innocent.  But the 2 big counties, Tulsa and Oklahoma had 20 or 30 folks unaccounted for.  It wouldn’t have made a difference in the vote results, but the Paul people had a fit, not willing to go down to defeat so easily.  They had to re-certify the counties by hand and that took eternity.  Steve and I were getting hungry.  We used up my two granola bars and all the candy kisses he could find in his suit coat pockets and down in the lining and what-not.  Of course that wasn’t sufficient for us two fat boys.  Dennis, who also shares this trait, told somebody that if we had a famine he intended to be the last man standing, and Steve would be second to last. 

Pam and Jeff and Matt, our fearless state party folks were trying to do their best to get things rectified, and really held up well under the threats from the floor.  So too did Mark who was the chair and the parliamentarian who really knew the rules front-to-back, but that only aggravated the Ron Paul folks.  One young guy with a full beard and long hair stood up and gave a passionate demand of why voting had to be perfect.  Good Point.  Steve said to me, “Did Jesus show up to tell us how it should be done?” I told him that that the Democrat Convention always mistakes Jesus and his disciples for Robin Hood and his merry men.  The vote was eventually upheld but by now a fist fight had broken out between two guys in the back corner and did that ever get attention of the house!  Every cell phone camera was running.  Don’t tell me Oklahoma doesn’t have cock fights.  Finally at 2:30 we had a lunch recess.  Steve said, “you can see how so many people died on the Titanic—when people get cross and start arguing.”  Fair and Johnson agreed.  I have always heard that the Republicans on  the Titanic saw the fiscal iceberg coming.  The Democrats said there was no iceberg or if there was they bitched and whined about it not being big enough.

Back from lunch at 3, we voted on the state slate.  It was another long vote, same results, and thus OK will now have a state delegation at the National Convention.  But there were all sorts of angry attempts at amendment.  The chair turned many down flat which really got some in the crowd whompin' and stompin' and mad enough to fight snakes.  They were yelling “tyrant” and similar unrepeatable things.  But we had 2 hours until the hotel had to have the rooms for weddings.  The vote on a state chairman was next.  Steve Fair was a candidate and I leaned over and said, “Now if you win, don’t be like Vaughan, here.  He danced around and got all excited at his watch party and his neighbor asked me if I’d ever seen a guy get so excited about a $38,000 a year job?  Fair was kinda biting his nails and he got a huge kick of relief out of that remark.  Well, by golly, he won.  Couldn’t have happened to a better guy, who has built the Republican party almost from nothing down in Stephens County over the last 30 years and given us good ideas to do in Kay and Osage.

With those two drop-dead necessities done, we were free to consider platform items and the Paulistas were loaded and ready.  Trouble was, we were out of time and the hotel staff was ready to set up walls for their weddings.  Platform items can be taken up at State Party meetings later, but the Ron Paul people were fit to be tied.  So the movement to adjorn was passed over a pandemonium of protests.  They poured out into the parking lot to try to convene their own “convention in exile”, vowing to elect their own slate of delegates and a platform.  Ugh. I have seen this happen with churches too.  A church is an organization with doctrines and beliefs where people disagree and sometimes vehemently.  But it is held together by a glue of shared relationships with God which spawns relationships with each other.  Same for a political party.  We have issues we believe passionately.  But we also have relationships.  If you don’t have both, you fail.  That’s why a chaotic convention is bad.  Relationships break down temporarily.  And yet we have a common goal of getting rid of Benito Obama.  I'll save my passion for that.  

So Mr. Steve got hungry and while I was watching the bedlam, he was on his iphone finding a good place to eat.  Crackerbarrel at 122^nd exit.   The word was passed and we rendezvoused there for dinner.  There we became family again, thinking about the re-election, planning our strategy and not mentioning the convention.  Things get fun again when you are with family. We don't all agree but are willing to work toward a common goal and we trust one another.

Sorry, didn’t finish the story.  The little boy was the sole survivor of the fire, and the town was trying to decide who could take him in.  Perhaps they could send him to a boys ranch where he would be free to run and play.  Or maybe to a good boarding school where he could learn.  Then suddenly at the door a man appeared, dropped to one knee and held out his arms.  The boy immediately knew who it was because the man had scars on his hands from the burning pipe.  He ran into the waiting arms.  Which is the story of us.  “But Zion said, ‘the Lord has forgotten me.’… Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the firstborn of her womb?  Yes, even these may forget, but I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands.” Isaiah 49:14-16

Mean Mitt

How does that Monty Python thing go?  “Help, help!  I’m being repressed!” (when the peasant digging peat gets pounded by Arthur who can’t afford a horse) There’s a believer in democracy everywhere you go. 

Don’t tell me Obama isn’t shrewd politically.  He made an announcement about supporting gay marriage and it fell flat.  So immediately his crew sent out a half-bogus story about Mitt bullying a gay student in high school.  If your original strategy doesn’t work, change the subject. 

A few thoughts about picking on candidates for what they did as minors:  Women have ¼ the muscle mass of men and talk 4 times as many words per day.  Thus they usually flee violence since it ruins relationships and they would be on the losing end of a physical contest.  Teenage girls hurl insults right and left if they get in a fight, but usually don’t swing.  The same behavior can be observed in nature.  Females of a species often flee, then send out verbal warnings, and then when they do have to fight, fight with no-holds-barred, to-the-death to protect their young. 

Males on the other hand fight physically all the time.  Practically every high school guy picked on someone at some time and was picked on himself.  Fights erupted and somebody got beat up or at least slugged. It's kind of a sport, that guarantees to draw a crowd.  The constant fighting helps develop competitiveness and to understand their own power. Men are supposed to be dangerous but controlled.  But guys practice aggression under strict rules of engagement. It starts young with boys arguing about rules of wrestling or football that last longer than the actual fights last themselves.  Physical fighting teaches men something.  It teaches that there must be boundaries or there will be bad consequences.  But mostly it teaches you to resort to violence at last resort.  Else you might get beat up.  Thus it is that men ardently write the laws and the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. 

And so most of us are a bit bemused at the allegation that mild-mannered Mitt was a toughie.  “If that’s true,” I can hear one of my friends who was a big tough guy in high school say, “then he sure has reformed.”  And that is said with admiration of character in mind.  Now realistically, it sounds like the story of Mitt as Aggressor has been embellished with politics in mind.  Likely he wasn’t so mean.  But whatever he did as a kid was likely a good lesson that changed his character.  The only guys we note for their meanness are the adults who never learned to be measured and stable.  Those are the guys with mug shots on the nightly news. That's Khruschev pounding the table with his shoe. 

So here’s my prediction.  When the story has played itself out, Mitt will gain support among men.  We understand what’s going on and who among us would like our own childhood dissected by the media.  Whether Mitt gains support among women depends on how he comes across, as a nerdy but lovable guy who can put us back on the right track or the evil demon the Dems make him out to be. 

Half breed

Two weeks ago B. Hussein Obama said that he was not going to question his opponent’s patriotism.  And then this week he did just that with his ad about how Romney wouldn’t have gone after Osama.  It surely reminded me of how he wasn’t going to make abortion or reproductive rights part of the campaign and then a couple days later he started the baiting of the Catholic church by making it plain to them that they would have to pay for birth control and abortafaciants, Fluke and all.  Does this not show what kind of a campaign this is going to be?  Making such ‘high road’ statements and then dropping a bomb doesn’t just show hypocrisy.  It shows a real eagerness for mudslinging.  Disclaimer: when I suggested that, due to his penchant for taking over the auto companies, and all my friends saying he was really a Muslim, that his nickname could be Carbama, I did not realize what a bomb-thrower he was going to be.  So I am not responsible.

Listening to Rush on Friday, I think he was getting pretty edgy with his fun again.  He was laughing about Elizabeth Warren’s gaffe about being Indian because she was 1/32 and using her minority status to get a dinner invite when she was at Haw-vud. He selected an old Cher favorite,Halfbreed, as a theme song.  I haven’t heard that song in about 40 years, remembered the words and began laughing not only at his skewering of Diversity, but laughing at myself for having liked that song.  The Indians said I was white by law.  The white men always called me, Indian Squaw.  I guess that song captured the angst and anger of youth which pre-emptively blames an adult world for failure on Unfairness and Racism. I suppose I was more liberal in those days. Half Breed! ‘She’s no good’ they warned. Too bad we still have one party that uses Unfairness and Racism and teenage thinking to get voters.  The songwriter eventually blames her love life and all else on being mixed race.  But you get older and realize things never were as you imagined.  America is a pretty mixed race place.  I read a series of papers that were meeting notes of the Nazis and Japanese at the beginning of WW II.  The thing both agreed upon was that if America entered the war, it was a nation of “mongrels and mixed races” that naturally fought with each other.  Thus USA would be easy to defeat.  Then came the windtalkers.  Then came the patrician general Patton who asked a bunch of Texas farmers to make suggestions about the Sherman tank.  They gave him a host of critiques about where grease zerks needed to be and certain parts needed to be redesigned “else you’d wait forever for parts’.  That done, the Sherman became a rapid-manufacture tank that “any farm kid could fix and any city kid could drive.”  The mongrels found no trouble allying with every nation against the Axis powers and Ike held them together like determined brothers.  Instead of a patsy, the Nazis found a juggernaut. 

We always moved around from town to town/ When you’re not wanted, you don’t hang around. Perhaps the Halfbreed songwriter really did experience such prejudice, but I doubt it was long-lasting or in Oklahoma.  I was doing research on Indian numbers for one of the elderhostel classes I taught for OU.  I came across evidence that totally destroys the racist narrative.  The US Army has kept very thorough notes on frontier incidents since colonial times.  The sum of all Native Americans killed in all skirmishes, ambushes, disagreements, and wars totals about 79,000.  But the census of 1900 for the first time asked about ethnic background and found 200,000 full bloods and over a million people were “partial Indian”.  Now if you are ‘partial’ that means you had a mixed marriage in your ancestry.  Thus there were at least 10 times as many romances going on as killings. (roughly 1/3 of Oklahomans are part native American.)  So I asked my blonde housekeeping assistant at the hotel (who was on the Ponca Tribal Council) if she knew anybody with a romance story about Cowboys and Indians.  She gave a grin as wide as the Salt Fork River and sat down to tell me the stories of her grandparents on both sides.  Gee, that didn’t take long!  Boy meets girl at trading post stuff. 

One story was humorous.  Some Indian fathers were eager to marry their daughters to settlers since the cowboys treated the girls well (that Western notion called “romance”) and the family got a heads-up on new ways of the white people with a son-in-law.  Ah, so Carolyn’s grandmother’s cowboy asked Papa for her hand and secured a dowry and the girl was so darned mad she wouldn’t talk to anyone.  This dismayed both her father and her fiancé.  Finally they figured it out.  A good woman was worth 3 horses in Ponca dowry, but the poor cowboy had only two.  Bride was insulted.  But the poor cowboy sat her down and told her he really loved her and was terribly disappointed because he wanted her to wear his sister’s wedding dress and get married in the Methodist church.  Suddenly she flew into his arms and all was forgiven.  Because Indian girls used to hide behind trees from a distance and envy the white girls getting married in the gown, and the cake, and the dance—well, you understand. Now in their 80’s, health of the old farm couple was getting bad and so Carolyn had come home to take care of them. 

The genius of America is that you can be what you want to be.  The genius of Oklahoma is that they poured a whole bunch of mixed people together and it still works, maybe works better.  So when this campaign gets nasty with the race allegations from the left, just roll your eyes and laugh.

Uncle Sucker

I guess the Obama campaign is promoting a video that shows a composite character “Julia” who starts getting government programs from age 3 to retirement.  It’s backfired.  It merely serves to remind most of us how crazy cradle-to-grave security is. 

Here’s to hoping that Julia is not like the woman that Obama put in his autobiography.   Now he says she wasn’t real, just a “composite girlfriend”.  Mom and I  looked at one another quizzically.  She finally responded, “What does that tell you about a guy who writes an autobiography and puts fabrications in it?” Well, I don’t know.  Maybe that is why the real girlfriend finally surfaced and said he was cold and aloof and guarded.  When she told him she loved him he said, “Thank you.” And then followed with something about how he could understand why she did.  That’s either cold as ice or dumb statement.  Dumb like when the weatherman Sunday night was following that tornado cell nearing Ponca City.  You know how they do it--showing radar maps, talking to some insane spotter trying to get closer to the twister, giving grave warnings about seeking shelter.  Then the tornado began to dissipate and he pronounced, “Now I wouldn’t get too relieved just yet since there is still persistent circulation.  Stay in your shelter for a while longer.”  I guess that statement was for the guy who really likes a comfortable tornado shelter complete with television service so he is watching the TV weatherman.  You know, big Lazy Boy, Slurpie in one hand and Big Mac in the other—so if you get blown away, they’ll say how you really enjoyed life.

Where was I?  Ah, Julia.  Julia gets all the state has to offer from little on.  It didn’t remind me of anything admirable.   It reminded me of the kids in our local group home and how growing up a system kid affected them.  Orphan kids had all they needed to eat and could constantly watch TV (the babysitter).  The state would take them on day trips to Frontier City and the Warren Center Ice rink.  They even had Slurpies and big Macs. 

They just didn’t have Mom and Dad.  And there was nothing on the face of this planet they wanted worse.  One kid grieved that he had blown a placement with a family that sounded downright like hillbillies.  Didn’t matter.  He wanted what the state didn’t have: Love, Encouragement, Someone to follow around, Somebody to eagerly get involved in his future. The absolute favorite TV channel at the group home was Disney.  17 year olds watched Disney.  Why?  It is the station that shows family life.  We took Amy as a foster kid.   I watched Amy spend her entire life savings of $42, earned at her job at Sonic, on Mothers Day.  It took me 3 hours following her around Walmart as she debated with herself over every gift. I remember Marcus, whose West African ancestry didn’t exactly match my German/Dutch. He latched onto us, calling us Mom and Dad while riding his bike down the hill every day he could. For what?  So he could run around with me fixing screen doors the renters had kicked out.  I remember cleaning a trashed-out house with Hayna.  He found a soiled magazine picture of a dog.  Stared at it a long time and asked if he could keep it.  Because it reminded him of a dog he had when he was 3, before his dad died and his mom got on drugs.  Warning: These are not composite characters!

The government cannot hold your hand when you walk down the aisle on wedding day.  The state won’t teach you how to measure up and be a man.  It’s not that the state is bad, they are just a safety net.  They are Uncle Sucker when they get suckered by welfare cheats and Uncle Sucker when they suck the taxes out of free people.  And they are Uncle Sucker when they encumber themselves with so many rules they don’t even know the rules themselves. 

If Julia was real, I’d ask her, “You want a real Mom and Dad?  Friends, Family and a Future?  Or do you  want Uncle Sucker?”  I know what Julia would say.