Easter at the Vatican

Love the moment -- could do without the incense, though

Luke 24

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest.

Templates

Yeah, I've changed the template around again. Part of it is boredom, but much of the (ahem) experimentation stems from a larger issue, which is my growing dissatisfaction with what this blog has been over the past year or so. I enjoy blogging far too much to walk away, but I don't want to be just another macaw in the birdhouse, merely a repackager of bromides.

After 7-1/2 years of blogging, I find that I'm less interested in writing about politics than ever, especially in an era where politics are as comprehensively wrongheaded as they are now. So I need to start doing less of it and start writing about other things more. So I will. The politics won't go away entirely, because silence in the face of lunacy isn't acceptable. Yet, yet. . . this feature needs to be about more than that.

Messaging

The year: 1970.

My old man 
He's a singer in the park 
He's a walker in the rain 
He's a dancer in the dark 
We don't need no piece of paper 
From the city hall 
Keeping us tied and true 
My old man 
Keeping away my blues

-- Joni Mitchell, "My Old Man"

Well there's a rose in the fisted glove
And the eagle flies with the dove
And if you can't be with the one you love honey
Love the one you're with, Love the one you're with,
Love the one you're with, Love the one you're with.

-- Stephen Stills, "Love the One You're With"

One year later, in 1971:

My friends from college they're all married now;
They have their houses and their lawns.
They have their silent noons,
Tearful nights, angry dawns.
Their children hate them for the things they're not;
They hate themselves for what they are-
And yet they drink, they laugh,
Close the wound, hide the scar.

But you say it's time we moved in together
And raised a family of our own, you and me -
Well, that's the way I've always heard it should be:
You want to marry me, we'll marry.

-- Carly Simon, "That's the Way I Always Heard It Should Be"

Contrast the messaging from 1966:

Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true
Baby then there wouldn't be a single thing we couldn't do
We could be married
And then we'd be happy

Wouldn't it be nice

-- Brian Wilson (The Beach Boys), "Wouldn't It Be Nice"

And a reminder from one of our greatest living moral philosophers:

I support every person's right to fall short of the expectations of an other, and that 'other's right to be feel let down and to nag accordingly.

Marriage ain't 'all that'.

Get 'that', and it's an easy conclusion...

No matter what happens as a result of the minuet that took place in Washington this week, we aren't getting 1966 back. Nor are we about to bestow it on anyone else.

Quotes of the day

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
-- Eric Hoffer

You are like children in the marketplace/shouting to your playmates.
-- The Meat Puppets, "Reward"

The awful thing about life is this: everyone has their reasons.
-- "Rules of the Game," Jean Renoir

Spitballing Part Two -- History Lesson

Another manufactured symbol of solidarity, from my youth:

That didn't work so well. Ten years later, I saw some of these:

You'd be surprised how many people who wore shirts like that in the 80s now are sporting the red equal sign on their Facebook pages. Or maybe you wouldn't be.

Spitballing

So I was on the ol' Facebook yesterday and noticed that at least a dozen of my Facebook friends were sporting this image, or variations thereof:

Signs, signs, everywhere signs

Apparently this was to show solidarity for gay marriage, or something, because apparently the matter has become urgent now, or something.

I've long since grown tired of the whole debate, because (a) it really doesn't affect many people at all and (b) like most such urgent moral campaigns, the long term ramifications, for good or ill, will only become evident many years into the future. So why the urgency? Presented for your discussion, my theory:

I think the gay marriage debate is really a crisis of faith, but not Christian faith. I think it's really about the last 4+ years, in which we've had the Platonic ideal of a Secular Left leader at the helm of the country, a time in which most things have sputtered economically and otherwise.

It wasn't supposed to be this way, of course. We heard it ourselves, from the leader himself, right here in St. Paul, Minnesota:

The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment — this was the time — when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals. Thank you, God Bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

We're now about 5 years on from when those words were spoken, in St. Paul, Minnesota, and it hasn't quite turned out that way. So many people look to find a reason to believe, to see that Progress really is being made. I think the marriage debate is a way to affirm a secular faith that hasn't been delivering the goods. And in that sense, the debate is perfect. If the Supremes strike down Prop 8 and DOMA, the morality play reaches a satisfactory conclusion. If the decision goes the other way, the crusade continues with renewed fervor. We all need our heroes and villains.

AlteredScale 3 is up

The third edition of the online journal Altered Scale is now up. I'm fortunate enough to have a couple of my poems included in this edition, but there's more, a lot more, for you, all just a click away. Check it out!

Life in A Better Minnesota

You might recall that the primary arm of the Mark Dayton propaganda machine was an organization called "Alliance for a Better Minnesota," which assured us that A Better Minnesota would be possible if only we'd be willing to give the keys to Mark Dayton.

And now we understand how A Better Minnesota operates:

Gov. Mark Dayton’s administration said Monday that state gambling regulators should have been clearer from the outset that they relied heavily on gambling companies themselves to estimate revenues from electronic pulltabs that would help pay for a new Minnesota Vikings stadium.

“There should have been more transparency in this part of the process,” said Katharine Tinucci, a Dayton spokeswoman. The governor, she said, “was not aware of the particulars of where the information was coming from.”

It's long been evident that Mark Dayton isn't aware of many things, so perhaps we shouldn't be surprised at this admission, but, seriously? Considering all the people at the governor's employ, he couldn't be bothered to vet a proposal for a billion dollar project? Due diligence is for suckers, I guess, in A Better Minnesota.

Fortunately, the deliberations surrounding the Viking stadium were documented. And yes, the final bit of wisdom in the clip is pretty spot-on:

Early reported potential replacements for Tubby Smith

1. Zombie Bill Musselman
2. Zombie Cotton Fitzsimmons
3. Steve Yoder
4. Bill Fitch (back after 40+ years!)
5. Lou Henson (hairpiece only)
6. Cheryl Littlejohn
7. Gene Hackman (playing the role of Norman Dale)
8. Ken Howard (of "The White Shadow" fame)
9. Bruce Pearl (but only if he promises to wear his orange Vols jacket)
10. Zombie Minnie Pearl
11. The gopher from “Caddyshack”
12. Jerry Burns
13. A Van Gundy to be named later
14. Basketball Jones (Cheech & Chong song, played as a continuous loop throughout practices)

Cleanup on Aisle Six

I wrote a somewhat groggy and intemperate post last night concerning the problems with charitable gambling, the oxymoronic and morally problematic funding mechanism that our benevolent government has chosen for the Vaseline Dome. On reflection, I think something else needs to be said. Fortunately, the estimable First Ringer cuts to the chase:

All the finger-pointing in the world doesn’t help hide the reality that the responsibility for flawed legislation needs to rest with the political leadership that authored it....

Yes, Mark Dayton owns it. But so does Julie Rosen. And John Kriesel. And Morrie Lanning. It was a truly bipartisan thing and now we have the results. Back to you, FR:

For a funding mechanism that was originally billed to deliver $35 million in revenue per year, and continuously revised down to $17 million and then $1.7, the process of assigning blame should have been viewed as inevitable.

Enjoy the inevitability. But don't forget these folks:

My Harvin jersey needs to be subsidized, too

One last thing -- in my post last night, I said that we were getting about 10 cents on the dollar from the original estimate. That's not right. It's actually less than five cents on the dollar.

"Easy Mark" Dayton

Mark Dayton wanted a stadium. They saw him a mile away:

The botched projections showing that electronic pulltab sales would explode in Minnesota and immediately start paying for a new Minnesota Vikings stadium were based largely on estimates made by gambling businesses with a vested interest in the new but untested form of charitable gaming, the Star Tribune has found.

Sales estimates were based on different kinds of gambling devices played in other states, made by national gambling equipment managers and vendors, according to e-mails obtained by the Star Tribune. Express Games MN, the first e-game vendor approved by the Minnesota Gambling Control Board, reviewed and analyzed the sales estimates that were part of the final stadium legislation.

Botched, they tell us. No, I don't think that's the right term. Botched would assume good faith and maybe ignorance. This was different, though. Ignorance is one thing, willful ignorance is quite another. And that's what we have here. Even David Schultz can see it:

The sales estimates were developed in the rush to find a funding formula for a new football stadium, and records show they were not challenged by the Department of Revenue or other fiscal analysts.

The Vikings lease at the Metrodome had expired, the team was threatening to move, and Gov. Mark Dayton and many legislators were committed to keeping the team in Minnesota.

Those estimates became the foundation for the state Department of Revenue’s projection that the new games would rake in $35 million for stadium funding by the end of this year.

In November, that figure was sliced to $17 million. In February, it was slashed to $1.7 million.

“There was a willful blindness ... driven by pressure politics,” charged David Schultz, a Hamline University political analyst and a professor of nonprofit law.

‘How do I build a model?’

No need, actually. The model has always been the same. Make a promise you can't keep and try to push the ramifications to the "out years." Well, boy howdy, we're at the out years already, before the first spade has entered the ground. The technical term for such modeling is "garbage in, garbage out." And the mounting pile has such an aroma that even Schultz, who has been one of the premier ratifiers of DFL conventional wisdom around these parts for a generation, has to acknowledge what everyone should have acknowledged a year ago:

Schultz believes the sales estimates went unchallenged because of their high stakes.

“This was a deal that was going to happen no matter what,” Schultz said. “The governor wanted a stadium. The money couldn’t come from the general fund. The charities had been asking for electronic games.”

With funding projections for the Vikings stadium now slashed by $33 million for this year alone, future estimates will be more accurate, Barrett and Massman said.

“Now they’re starting to be based on actual activity,” said Massman.

It's pretty much axiomatic -- the lies you tell other people can hurt, but the ones that really cost in the long run are the ones you tell yourself. "Actual activity" in charitable gaming was never going to get the Vaseline Dome funded. At about 10 cents on the dollar, you almost got a better rate of return from Solyndra. But I don't suppose that the lies Mark Dayton told himself will hurt very much, as long as he has Alida Messinger's attack machine available. But the lies we told ourselves -- at least the lies that those of us who wear the purple face paint and the Helga Braids told ourselves -- are going to be hitting our wallets. Because this stadium will go through and we will be paying for it. Count on it.

I suppose it's churlish to remind people that we should have known that the whole thing was crap a long time ago. Okay, I'm a churl.

Damage Control

Al Franken's got an election to win. Can't have people think he had anything to do with Obamacare:

The Senate voted for the first time Thursday to make it a priority to repeal a newly implemented tax on medical devices. The 79-20 vote was only a sense-of-the-Senate measure; it contained no details and set no policy except to say that repealing the tax could not add to the federal deficit.

A separate bill will be required to actually put the repeal in motion. That bill must find a way to replace the $20 billion to $30 billion the tax is expected to raise over the next decade.

Nevertheless, supporters of the repeal, including Minnesota Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, said they believe Thursday night’s vote was a major symbolic victory.

Symbolic victories are the same as moral victories in sports. They aren't really victories. Al Franken owns Obamacare. And the medical device tax isn't all that he owns:

As this start date draws near, evidence is piling up that ObamaCare will:

Boost insurance costs. Officially the "Affordable Care Act," ObamaCare promised to lower premiums for families. But regulators decided to impose a 3.5% surcharge on insurance plans sold through federally run exchanges. There's also a $63 fee for every person covered by employers. And the law adds a "premium tax" that will require insurers to pay more than $100 billion over the next decade. The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation expects insurers to simply pass this tax onto individuals and small businesses, boosting premiums another 2.5%.

Push millions off employer coverage. In February, the Congressional Budget Office said that 7 million will likely lose their employer coverage thanks to ObamaCare — nearly twice its previous estimate. That number could be as high as 20 million, the CBO says.

Investor's Business Daily has more examples at the link. And as for simplification, consider this:

The administration is caught in a bit of a bind here. On the one hand, Obamacare is tricky business. In order to figure out how much Americans will pay, the federal government needs to collect lots of information, everything from the size of the family to its income to whether any family members are Alaska Natives (which would make them eligible for additional services through the Indian Health Service). It’s hard to collect all that data in a way that isn’t a bit complex.

At the same time, the whole goal of the Affordable Care Act is to maximize health insurance enrollment. That puts a premium on making the applications simple and easy to use—not the kind of documents that you’d get half way through and give up on.

But the Post, ever hopeful, reminds us of this comforting notion concerning the 21-page proctology exam of an application:

Most Americans will never see this form. Most who access health insurance through the exchange are expected to do so online, not in paper.

Well, that's very different. Everything is better online.

College Road Trip

We're back from a few days on the road. The Benster is beginning his college selection process and we went traveling through the largely frozen Midwest to check out a few possible landing spots.

The value of higher education is questionable these days. Most of the places we looked at are going to net out at about $50K/year, which would be far more than we could ever pay. Financial aid will likely cover a large part of the bill, but the key will be to find a way to foot the bill without saddling the family with crushing debt. Also key is finding a job that is better that doesn't involve a tip jar.

One thing becomes evident on these trips -- colleges have been devoting significant coin to feather their nests in recent years. My alma mater, Beloit College, has been buying up buildings and renovating them for a number of years now; they bought the old city public library and have turned it into a performing arts center, a multi-million dollar renovation. Now, the college is pursuing the purchase of an old power plant, a massive space that would be turned into a student activities Taj Mahal.

It's easy to see why this is happening. One of the schools we visited on our trip, St. Olaf, has conference facilities that compare favorably to the spaces in a modern office tower. Another school we visited, Cornell College in tiny Mount Vernon, Iowa, is awash with construction and renovation projects all over campus. I'm not clear how these projects will improve the quality of a Cornell education, but it surely will look pretty.

I'm a believer in the value of a liberal arts education, mostly because it took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. It's not certain that prospective employers place similar value on such an education. It's one of many things that we'll have to weigh as we go through this process.

Reading is Fundamental, But. . . .

Many years ago, when Benster and Fearless Maria were in elementary school, the last weekly newsletter of the year always encouraged the students to keep reading during the summer because it would help the students academically next year.  The newsletter also joked that it is almost impossible to read too much.

I have been reading another blog for the last couple of years.  The blogger posts her goals once a week.  Under her Family/Marriage/Mothering Goals category, she routinely writes about the books that she will read individually with her children.  A separate goal in this category is to read to her children during lunch and dinner.  These reading goals are always in this category and in fact, often are the only goals that she posts in this category.

Is it possible to read too much?

Are you reading too much if your main or only goals for your family and your marriage are reading?  Are you reading too much if you inhale your own meal in order to spend the rest of the mealtime reading to your children?  Are you reading too much if you read to your children at mealtime instead of conversing with them?

What do you think?

Respect

It's not a lot of fun driving from Minnesota to Illinois in a blizzard. But I will say this -- MnDOT and the Iowa equivalent thereof did a hell of a good job clearing the roads.

Programming Note

Posting is going to be light for the next few days. Places to go and people to see, all that rot. Updates as warranted.

1000 Words

The headline is perfect:

Obama flies a 747 to Chicago to tout his fuel-saving plan

But the picture (and caption) are even better:

Sometimes I think the guy is impervious to irony.

Time to change things up

Got tired of the Minneapolis skyline, so we changed the look of the blog a bit. I may do a bit more of that from time to time. Trust that you'll still get the same semi-competent content, however.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

As a proud Cheesehead in Minnesota, at times I've found it difficult to follow the activities of individual members of the Green Bay Packers. Of course, they all seem to cross the St. Croix eventually, which makes it easier.

Housekeeping Followup

Putting the dreaded captcha back into the comment section has stopped the spambots cold, so we're going to stay with it for now. I'll continue to investigate workarounds, though.