We’re concerned about Iran and North Korea developing nuclear missiles. Meanwhile, we have thousands of nuclear missiles aimed all over the world — including at Iran and North Korea. HELLO AMERICA! During an interview in northwestern Ohio, I posed this question to an ABC News reporter from Toledo: “What if we let the weapons inspectors into Montana?” Note: A friend of ours in Cleveland, Fr. Ben Jimenez, said recently: “Nuclear disarmament begins at home.”
3/7/09
The New York Times reported today that President Obama will be reversing Bush administration limits on federal financing for embryonic stem cell research at a ceremony on Monday. According to the article, Obama said this signals a general return to “sound science.” And one proponent sited in the article said that this will return us to an era of “scientists making scientific decisions.” …The article calls these “human embryos.” The word “human” should be, oh, a big hint to us. Who out there hasn’t initially been: a human embryo? Translated: We’re killing people at the earliest stage of their life. I mean, it wouldn’t take an ethics professor, a scientists or even a president who went to Harvard to figure this one out. Note: The national news carried a story today about a man in Cleveland who killed his new wife, her sister and three young children with a semi-automatic weapon. It happened on W. 89th St. just two miles west of us. Today I took our kids to a Recreation Center halfway between W. 89th St. and our place. While playing basketball, I noticed a 10-year-old kid standing nearby. He had a pronounced scar that ran from the corner of his eye all the way down to his chin. I asked what happened. He, rather matter of factedly, said someone knifed him when he was five. America’s big cities are becoming such war zones.
3/4/09
A New York Times story this week noted President Barack Obama sent a secret letter to Russia’s president last month suggesting that he would back off deploying a new missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Moscow would help stop Iran from developing long-range nuclear weapons… As president, I would nix all plans to build missile defense systems, anywhere, I told the Gainsville (TX) Daily Register during a campaign tour. I mean, how does this square with the Gospel message? Thousands are dying of hunger everyday worldwide and millions of people don’t have clean drinking water. Yet we’re willing to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into even more protection for us in the face of so much potentially relievable human suffering. C’mmon. Note: I saw the following two bumper stickers on the same car yesterday: 1) I think. Therefore I am. 2) I have no idea where I’m going. Apparently this person’s not ‘thinking’ enough. Just like some of us might not be ‘thinking’ enough on this missile defense system thing.
3/2/09
The March 2009 edition of National Geographic had a piece about saving energy in the face of advancing global warming. It was noted that Tim Flannery, author of The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth, notes that to stay below the threshold of critical global warming tipping points America alone must cut back it’s CO2 emissions by 80%. The following figures represent pounds of CO2 emitted per item per year in an average U.S. household: washer: 153; electric dryer: 1,521; television: 548; desk top PC: 321; dishwasher: 599; central air conditioner: 4,067… So how do we cut this by 80%? Simple. Sacrifice. Our family has. We don’t use air conditioning. We hang the clothes on a line outside or in the basement. We decided not to have a television. I use the computer at the library on average about a half an hour a day. We don’t have an electric dishwasher, we got kids… I’m tired of hearing how people are slowly easing into this conservation thing. The crisis is immediate! Our response should be immediate!
2/26/09
We had the Republicans weigh in after Mr. Obama’s speech to Congress Tuesday. Now it’s the “average Joe” response: Mr. Obama ended his speech with: “God bless America.” Do we think God is going to bless a nation that is dismembering 4,000 babies in their mothers’ wombs every day? Do we think God is going to bless a nation where a significant number of people are living in suburban comfort, while billions of people worldwide are either homeless or living in Third World slums? Do we think God is going to bless a nation where 66% of it’s occupants are overweight (33% obese), while billions of people are tremendously malnourished and 25,000 people starve to death daily? Who are we kidding, but ourselves? This is what should have been said Tuesday night to that room full of people dressed in their $300 suits. Incidentally, $300 could feed a small Third World village for a month. Note: The road to heaven is narrow and definitely not paved with opinion polls.
2/18/09
President Obama was in Arizona yesterday announcing his new plan to curb home foreclosures. He said there are currently some 6 million homes in foreclosure or at risk of foreclosure. (Many of these are your average size, or bigger, suburban homes.) This wave of foreclosure, the president said, is putting the “American Dream” in jeapordy for many. Maybe it should be the other way around… That is, instead of families scrambling to stay in these places — maybe they should look to home sharing with another family and cut expenses (mortgage, utililites, furniture, appliances…) in half. At this, all of these American families would still be living way better than billions of people who live in the Third World often without just the basics in adequate shelter, food, medicine… So if we connect the dots here: If some of this home-sharing savings in America starts going to more help for people in these Third World countries — doesn’t the “American Dream” get realigned a bit better with, oh I don’t know, maybe the Gospel message? Note: I was just reading the kids a story today in the Bible about a farmer who has a good crop and fills his barn up. But instead of giving the rest of the crop away to the poor, the “fool” (Jesus’s word) decides to build another barn and store it for himself. Are we doing the same by hoarding all this home space for ourselves in America, while billions live worldwide in tiny slum dwellings? Sure we are.
2/11/09
Ok, the Obama administration bail out is on the table. While multi-dimensional, the crux is to help many banks gain bouyancy again and inspire renewed consumer trust. New York Times columnist David Leonhardt best summed up the primary dynamic that got us here: “It’s your fault. Part of it is, anyway. You, the American consumer, spent too much money. You bought too much house, took on too much debt and generally lived beyond your means. Your free-spending ways helped cause the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. And now you’re going to have to do your part to end the crisis. How? By spending.” Wouldn’t this be akin to asking an alcoholic in the process of hitting bottom — to drink more? Well, sure.
2/10/09
I am currently working on a book about the somewhat hardscrabble urban neighborhood we live in. The other night I was writing about coaching a Rec. Center soccer team. Driving one of the boys home after a game, he pointed to some toughs hanging out on a street corner near his house. “Them’s the drug dealers. They always trying to get me to try some…” he said. The boy is eight-years-old. I recently told the Wooster Daily News that in a saner world, no child would be continually trying to dodge hunger, drugs and bullets growing up, anywhere.
2/4/09
Just finished an article about “Hip Hop” music. It ran in National Geographic. Writer James McBride categorizes some of Hip Hop as “social commentary.” And he went to Dakar, Senegal, to search for the African roots of this music. Upon arriving in Dakar, he notes: “The stench of poverty in my nostrils was so strong it pulled me to earth like a hundred-pound ring in my nose.” Just like the slaves in the South invented “the Blues” out of their pain, true Hip Hop eminates from the “quiet rage and desperate fury” of the Senegalese, McBride continues. And he adds that desperation has indeed gone global: “Today, two percent of the Earth’s adult population owns more than 50 percent of it’s household wealth, and indegenous cultures are swallowed with the rapidity of a teenager gobbling a bag of potato chips…” And to spin off from this metaphore, therein lies the problem. In the market at Senegal, McBride met a teenage beggar whose body was malformed by polio. He crawled on his hands and knees like a spider, begging for scraps of food. And meanwhile, people in our culture will think nothing of buying ‘bag after bag’ of non-nutritional junk food like potato chips — while this youth in Senegal (Biafra, Uganda, Burundi…) is in such tremendous pain and desperation. Note: As president, I would do everything possible to try to mobilize more people in America (and throughout the First World) to help that kid in Senegal.
2/3/09
Went to a “Transition Town” meeting in Ohio City here last night. Transition Town is a worldwide movement of people trying to move their towns toward a ‘fossel fuel free’ environment. The people at last night’s meeting would be considered, for the most part, strong environmentalists. The thrust of the meeting was that society has become “addicted to oil.” Then, looking inward, these people talked about what they could each do to break even more of their own addiction to oil. People talked about wanting to bicycle more, take public transportation more. Someone else talked about cutting down on using lights in various ways. Yet another said they were “addicted to warmth” and wanted to cut back more on the heating this winter. This part of the meeting turned out to be, in effect, quite similar to a support group. I couldn’t help but think (in all seriousness) how affective Oil Addicts Anonymous groups would be nationwide. “We admitted we were powerless over oil and our lives have become unmanageable…”