... but WHY?

As I was exercising this morning my mind was wondering on the topic of natural disasters and the question of "Why, if there was a God, would he allow these things to happen. "

I should start by saying I would never presume to know what God is thinking or had in mind at any given moment. It's my opinion that anyone who tells you they can, are probably trying to sell you something.

What I can share is my observations on the ground after another disaster, Hurricane Katrina.

I made several trips to the Mississippi Gulf Coast after that storm. The first, just days after. The scope of that sort of thing can bring on shock to even someone who didn't live there. The loss of property and life that I witnessed didn't cause me to question my faith but it absolutely left me thinking "Why? What could God have possibly been thinking here?"

After a few days though, I began to see a bigger picture taking place.
One day I found myself standing in a food line. I and a 100 others would get a lunch that day because of some people that had driven from Texas and set up a "chuck wagon" in a church parking lot. These people were volunteers. This trip actually cost them money and they would be sleeping on a sleeping bag on someone's floor that night.

 I got to talking with those around me in line. I was standing between a doctor and a convenience store clerk with his family. Their homes had all been destroyed. At that moment, (and for days before and a few after) we were all socio-economically equals. The doctor might have had $100 in his wallet and lots of credit cards but there was no place within a 30 minute drive to buy anything.
At that moment, everyone's net worth was what they could do to help others.
... and they were helping others.

Armies of people (at there own expense) remembered their humanity and descended on that area to help complete strangers. One day my group was helping an elderly couple to remove their destroyed possessions from their home. Word came to us that a neighbor needed help clearing some downed trees from their yard so they could reach the back of their house.

4 of us grabbed chainsaws (we had brought a trailer with every possible tool we thought we might need), went down the street and spent the next 3 hours in 98 degree heat and near 100% humidity cutting pine trees and hauling them out of the way. When we had finished, the homeowner came outside (she had been in her home ripping out moldering drywall) with her checkbook and ask how much she owed us. Baffled, we told her we were just there to help. She shook her head and ask what tree service we were with. When we each told her what we did for a living (we all were white collar professionals who had only just met that week) she got this far-a-way look and said in a deadpan "This is what Christians are."

It was clearly a "moment" for her but the real lesson there was for us because (IMHO) that is what Christians are supposed to be. Not out picketing to make someone's life miserable. Not trying to force others to follow your beliefs through legislation and politics. We're supposed to help each other. Actually physically help.
I was told later by a member of the church we had taken over as a base of operations and were living in, that the presence of all of these volunteers had changed that congregation. It was a very affluent congregation whose members had always been very ready to whip out their checkbooks when a "need" was brought to their attention … but the idea of putting your whole life on hold to just go and do for others in need (more then half the church members had their homes destroyed or flooded) had become foreign to them. Now, they got it. Being a "Christian" wasn't like joining a country club. It was a call to service.

The following spring, 10s of thousands of teens/early 20's traveled to the Gulf Coast on spring break. For the first time in decades, they were there not to immerse themselves in selfish hedonism but to selflessly help strangers.

I go back to my first point.
I have absolutely no idea why God would allow such destruction to rain down on folks. I can say that one of the results from Katrina was 10's of thousands (if not 100's of thousands) of people waking up and realizing the importance of not living just for yourself. It was also a wake up call to Christians who had fallen asleep at the wheel. Who had gotten comfortable and complacent and were willing to overlook a the people around them who could use a little help. Hurricane Katrina made it impossible to overlook the need.

I suspect these devastating fires will have that same effect in those communities. In the coming days and weeks there is going to be a need for a small army of people who realize we're all in this together. It will cause people to come outside the safety and complacency of their own 4 walls to help those who have lost theirs. Caring for what happens to neighbors and strangers NOT because some agency paid them to do so but because they share the same biology, joys and pain.

If it is all a just a lesson it's a pretty harsh on. Generally speaking though, we humans are a pretty stubborn and self absorbed lot. We get really good at ignoring the advice that would spare us from pain in the first place and then repeating the mistakes and folly we could have learned from the easier life lessons.
Some of the most important lessons I learned as a kid were only learned through pain and loss. I suppose that doesn't change just because we grow older.

Some times it just doesn't work out.

So often when you hear of the untimely death of a child it involves drugs or gangs. In this case it was just really poor decision making involving girls.

This nephew was one of the sweetest kids you'd meet. A clever, sci-fi loving, shoe gazer who played in the marching band in high school, was super intelligent (made great grades) and had the really funny sense of humor, that is when he decided to speak up. His parents had divorced when he was maybe 6 and that probably had something to do with shy insecurity that left him to loose himself in what ever girl was giving him attention.

He barely left his home town after High School because he had a steady older girl friend. In the end, pressure from his mom to accept a scholarship he had been given, forced him to cut the girlfriend cord. He went a 2 days drive away from home and was studying to be a fire, forensic scientist.
There he met a girl.

The summer after that first year at school, he chose to follow the new girl friend back to her home town and get a summer job.
She then decided not to go back to the University but to enroll in the local community college ... so he did as well.
Then she broke up with him.

So now he was 20 and with out the financial assistance of the previous Universities scholarship he had to take a job to pay for his apartment and schooling. Which meant he wasn't in school full time anymore.

Then he met another girl. Only this one proved to be his final undoing.
He met her with a group of college kids. I never met her but apparently she was quite attractive and all over him. Unfortunately, when your 20 and at a party you don't tend to card anyone who comes up and starts talking to you. Especially when you are a shy, geeky guy with a need to cling and the girl is clearly hot for you. Apparently you should.

I really don't know how long they dated. Maybe 2 or 3 months before her parents found out and confronted him with the news she was 15.
Did he ever really wonder about why she didn't want to him to meet her parents? I don't know. She told him stories about them being abusive though in hind site one has to think there should have been other signs that things weren't quite right.
He was a smart kid but he was also a 20 year old guy with a girl who wanted him.

Pretty clearly, if he did have suspicions he let the wrong head do the thinking.
So when the parents found out they threatened to have him arrested but having had a history of trouble with their daughter, they told him that if he left the county they wouldn't press charges. So he did.

Then a few weeks later she called him up late one stormy night. She was hysterical and said she had had a big fight with her parents and they had thrown her out of the house. She was calling from a pay-phone at a convenience store and had no money and didn't know who else to call. So, being the sweet, stupid kid he was - he drove 1 and a half hours through the rain and picked her up.
It was now the middle of the night so he decided to take her to a local motel room.
(Is anyone else screaming "Noooooooooo" at this point?)

What he didn't know was that the girl HAD in fact run away. She had gone to a local theater early in the evening and when her parents came to pick her up, no one could find her. After my nephew had left town, she had apparently continued to fight with her parents about seeing him ... so the parents naturally assumed that the two had run off together ... and they called the police.

Cut to the next morning. Some how the parents had gotten hold of the phone number for my nephew's dad (whom he was now living with) and explained that they were looking for her and had a warrant out for the son's arrest.

The dad then called my nephew's cell phone and explained the predicament. He suggested that my nephew go by the police station, drop the girl on the steps and get out of town. That wasn't my nephew though. That seemed cruel to him so he took the girl to the police station and walked her inside. Somehow he thought when he explained what had happened it would clear everything up. He was promptly arrested.

When the parents arrived and heard his side of the story, they didn't question it for a moment. They knew their daughter too well. So they dropped all charges.
Unfortunately, my nephew had just turned 21 and the D.A. decided they were going to make an example of him. When he couldn't pressure the parents into pressing charges ... the D.A. went ahead and pressed charges on behalf of the state, charging him with 6 counts of Statutory rape and one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Perhaps the first brake he got was that the judge was able to take a rational look at the situation and gave him the very minimum sentence possible, a few months and then probation.

That was a year and a half ago.

Of course, he had his picture posted in the paper next to the headline "MAN charged with statutory rape of local teen". The story itself of course gave no back story to indicate this wasn't some perp hiding in the bushes and assaulting little kids. Not that anyone cares what is said after the headlines. All of the corresponding, self-rightous blog-commentors couldn't wait to jump in with their outrage, not knowing him or ANYTHING about the actual situation, they piled on with posts saying horrible things about this "SEXUAL PREDATOR" and "people like him".
My nephew's younger sister was a freshman in High school at the time and it was no time at all until she found those posts. She was so traumatized at how so many complete strangers could be so vicious towards someone she personally knew to be a good person, she had a break down and had to have counseling.

He also gots to carry the "sexual offender" label with him anywhere he lived and has to list his "criminal offenses" on any application he fills out. It seems no one ever wants to know the details about those sort of things, they just see the label and grab their pitchforks.

His dad got him a manual labor sort of job that allowed him to get an apartment . No longer in school and with a job instead of a career.

At some point along here he was diagnosed with depression and put on medication.

About Christmas time he got very ill. Flu then Strep Throat and bronchitis. For a month he was terribly ill.
So last Monday night he just gave up hope. He took all his anti-depresants and a full bottle of Tylenol. Sometime in the middle of the night he had a change of heart and called his dad for help ... but he didn't tell him what he had done. So when his dad picked him up he just thought he was still sick and took him home. It wasn't till 9am the next morning, when he found my nephew bleeding from the mouth on the bathroom floor that he realized the extent of the problem.

By then his liver was pretty much gone. He however, took another 2 days to fade away.

I just look at this and shake my head. My nephew wasn't a creep, a bully, a predator, or a druggie. He didn't hang with gangs or criminals. He really didn't do anything most of the rest of us didn't do as teens/early twenties. The rest of us though were lucky enough to never have to be accountable for our bad judgement.

He simply wasn't a bad guy.
He was just a stupid, sweet, insecure geek with an over active need to be in a relationship. For him though, life just didn't work out.

Egypt. Déjà vu ?

For those who may not be old enough to know that ... there was a time when Iran was NOT an Islamic fundamentalist state.

Iran was an Authoritarian Regime in the middle-East whose ruler (The Shaw) was kept in power by the U.S. It was a place of great wealth but that wealth was held in the hands of the very very few. Most of it's people lived in poverty. Though the Shaw ruled with ruthlessness, the U.S. supported him because he was VERY friendly to the west and policy experts saw him as a stabilizing force in the middle east who was actively trying to modernize his country.

In 1976, President Jimmy Carter put Human Rights foremost on the U.S. agenda and began pressuring the Shaw to improve his Human Rights record. Buoyed by this, Iranian students began demonstrating against the Shaw, demanding freedoms and even Democracy. Many of these initial demonstrations were met with violence and the shootings of hundreds if not thousands of protesters. This however, only incited more students to rise up and then be joined by more of the general populace. Eventually there were country wide work stop-ages. Many outsiders cheered the brave Iranians and their fight for freedom and democracy.

In the end the Shaw fled the country.

Happy ending?
No. Not really.

It turns out that radical fundamentalist Islamists were not only waiting in the wings to take control, they had actually infiltrated the students and had been orchestrating many of the marches and protests.

These savvy militants knew that there were not nearly enough of them to overthrow the government AND they would never have the popular support of the people. 10's of thousands of emboldened, passionate students though, represented an army just waiting to be used to achieve their own goals. The protesters became the unwitting pawns doing the work for a greater evil.

The Shaw was thrown out, the fundamentalists moved in. They went from Authoritarian to Totalitarian. 30 years later the people of Iran have far less freedoms then under the Shaw and Iran is now a Destabilizing force for the entire world.

So now we have Egypt.
An Authoritarian Regime in the middle-East whom the U.S. helps to keep in power. It was a place of great wealth but that wealth was held in the hands of the very very few. Most lived in poverty. Though their "president" of 30 years rules with an iron fist, the U.S. supported him because he is VERY friendly to the west and policy experts see him as a stabilizing force in the middle east who was actively trying to suppress the spread of radical Islam. In fact Egypt's president is known to have zero tolerance for Islamists in politics, whether they are militants or moderates.

Protests that started with well intentioned students wanting freedoms and economic opportunity have now spread to the populace. So far, they cry out not for true elections or for another leader to be put in place but simply for the current ruler to be thrown out. A power vacuum.

Whose waiting to rush in and fill that void?
Currently, Egypt's largest opposition movement is the outlawed "Muslim Brotherhood".
Its support base comes in large part from its elaborate network of social, medical and education services. It made a surprisingly strong showing in parliamentary elections in 2005, winning 20 percent of the legislature's seats, but it failed to win a single seat in elections held late last year. Those elections were widely thought to have been rigged in favor of the president's ruling party.

The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood has said that freedom from the current President would enable them to push effectively for more proper Islamic education and training, so Egyptians would be able to "stand up to the American-Zionist project."

So be careful Egypt. Work for human rights and democracy ... but before you throw out your government, have a plan.
Look to Iran. History has a nasty habit of repeating itself.

Obama - Economically? All the right moves.

As someone who spends way to much time studying the stock market and following the financial world I can say that, Economically speaking - This President has so far made all the right moves.

His first daunting task was to stop the U.S. economic freefall.
We were sliding toward the edge of a bottomless pit and picking up speed. The course of action he chose stopped that fall and now things are improving. If you have any real idea of just how grim things were, stopping the decline and loss of jobs would be enough in itself. What is more amazing though, is that he managed to do this while enduring some of the most contentious political conditions of any President.
President Obama has managed to navigate Washington politics while being one of the most productive Presidents in history, taking care of many of the little, unglamorous, "housekeeping" items that have been ignored by past White Houses and building up for decades on the national "to do" list.

He has gotten laws passed to reform the predatory credit card industry ... laws that congress has been simply passing the buck on for over 25 years!
He is the ONLY President to finally get a Health Care reform law passed. Now it is up to congress to make it the best bill it can possibly be. Will they work for America and make it better? Or will they just play politics and try to repeal millions of Americans' Health Care and cost us ANOTHER 350 billion dollars?
While both sides of the isle were too busy playing politics to effectively govern, this President has made unpopular compromises to keep things moving forward. After years of "out of touch millionaires", playboys, and idiot cowboys ... it's nice to finally have an intelligent adult in the Whitehouse.

Economically speaking though ... try to imagine the horror of where we would be without this President's leadership.
Even with the Republican's publically sworn effort to block EVERY bit of recovery and economic stimulus effort that the President tried to bring to the American people, even with the Republican's vowing to try and "shut down" the government this last year while our economy hung at the very brink ... this President has managed to stabilize the economy (keeping us from sliding into a "double dip recession") and engineered a recovery.

For the last two years though, the Republican machine has tried it's best to make the public believe(with some success) that there is some secret button somewhere that someone could press to put the economy right back where it was before the Great Bush Recession. However, all of the thinking, rational adults in the room(an ever decreasing number) realize that even under the BEST of circumstances (not where we are) undoing an economic crash is a long slow process.
You just don't expect the cancer ridden, crash victim to leap up out of bed and start dancing the highland fling simply because they no longer need life support.

This might also be the time to point out that the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq Composite are all at multi-year highs, lifted by a bullish outlook for financials and the recent Federal Reserve's beige book report showed that the economy was growing at a moderate pace, with some areas such as consumer spending and manufacturing showing actual signs of STRENGTH. That's "growth" that was occurring while the Republicans have been crying that the sky was falling.

As for unemployment, it is a huge entity that behaves not unlike a mile long freight train. It takes it a long long time to get up to speed and once moving it is very difficult to stop. Dubya Bush had been accelerating unemployment for 4 years and with it still accelerating he handed the controls to President Obama. Obama has managed to stop that train in less then two years and has begun to get some movement in the right direction. Who ever our next President will be, they will be reaping the rewards of this Presidents efforts with the economy as all signs indicate it will have steady forward momentum by 2012.

All in all, it really is quite amazing that with the Republican's putting forth their full effort to sabotage the recovery and the Democrats inability to form a cohesive, focused direction on ... well, anything - that this President has STILL managed to steer us out of the rocks and has us headed back to recovery.
Spectacular really.

Good behavior doesn't sell ad space

My Pastor gave a wonderful sermon last Sunday ... I only wish it was getting as much publicity as the guy who is threatening to burn the Koran.

In reference to the debate on the "controversial" community center in NYC - he said the following (and I am paraphrasing here)-

1) When discussing this topic, as Christians, he would remind us (remember, I'm paraphrasing) DON'T BE A DOUCHE!
He then recited biblical quotes from Jesus, where he directed his followers (Christians) to be humble and polite and respectful and NOT to be prideful, boastful, ARROGANT and basically "Holier-than-thou"! The idea is to make people interested in his teachings and NOT to turn them away by being asshats.

2) DON'T PREJUDGE. If you wanted to see horrific acts carried out by people claiming to be doing them for their religion, Christians have certainly done quite a few of these throughout history. The Pastor went on to say he personally knew many Muslims and they are wonderful human beings just like you or me. They work hard and just want a good life for their families and themselves.
When we are prejudice against people we have NEVER met ... we are following the will of something but it ain't Jesus.

3) Christian's should always be looking for the truth.
We are now surrounded by people whose full time job it is, to deceive us for political and financial gain. The spend all day writing internet posts and news articles with deliberate misinformation and spiteful rhetoric, all designed to make us fear, hate and strike out against people we have never met. THAT, is a good definition of evil.
Christians shouldn't react to stories that make them mad but should instead try to spend some time looking for what the truth behind that story is.
++++++
IMHO, I believe that the above is who Christian really are.
Problem is that "faith" is a personal experience and when it comes to personal feelings and beliefs - "one size does not fit all".

just sayin'

Anatomy of a curfluffle

I have a friend who had taken an interest in the new iPhone.
She isn't particularly an Apple fan (she uses a PC) or even "into" gadgets really but because her company was changing data plans and she was going to have to turn in her old data phone. One of her choices is the new iPhone4.

Two days after she got this news, the storm about the iPhone's dropped call problem hit the press.

Being an engineer, she researched the issue and a few days later told me that she had never seen so much made over, for what most people, would actually be a non-issue. Apparently, if you are using the iPhone with any kind of protective cover on it the "antenna issue" goes away. As my friend said, "Who in the world has a phone this expensive and doesn't put a protective case on it?"

Now let's be frank, having the caseless phone hang-up because you have held it "wrong", is a flaw. My cell phone is like that. Put a careless finger on the wrong button and it hangs up. My cordless phone at home has a similar flaw. The button to disconnect is located such that if you get lazy and hold it to close to your head ... your jawbone hits it and the call is over (I've had several users besides myself do this with the phone). I've had to train myself not to use these devices in that manor and that "solves" the problem but it still doesn't make it less a flaw.

It's also true, that Apple should have immediately updated their instructions for the phone to say ... don't touch the phone "there" during a call. Also, providing any old, cheep-o case would have also have been a nice touch.

None of this though, would seem to warrant the world wide media attention that this has received. My friend was remarking on this and having given it some thought I was able to explain it to her as follows.

- The people who write the tech and gadget review articles are, of course, "Super Users". If you are going to get a guy to review a computer product, you just naturally hire the most knowledgeable computer geek you can lay your hands on. Usually, these are the people who not only write their own software but can field strip a PC in an airport waiting terminal and rebuild it with mail order parts to make it 17 times faster then it was when it came from the factory!

... and this is exactly why these people have never, ever, EVER "gotten" the Mac.
Macs were designed to give complete tech-tards the ability to use a computer to do their work, communicate over the internet and yes, even create passable music/video/photos.
Apple cleverly realized that there is a huge segment of the consumer public who (like with the automobile) don't want to have to know how it works ... they just want to use it!

So here you have these reviewers who simply can't wrap their giant brains around why there is any demand for the Mac in the first place and when you add in the way Apple has done a phenomenal marketing job of making their products THE THING for pop culture to want to own as a status symbol, it simply enrages the "experts".

They become like sharks, constantly circling, looking for any opportunity to strike. They want desperately to prove to the general public that they are wrong to like the i(whatever) and this dropped call flaw was like blood in the water to them. They rapidly spun out articles and blog posts proclaiming what a complete failure the iPhone and Apple and Steve jobs were and this finally once and for all proved it.

Of course, with that kind of buzz going on it wasn't anytime at all until the "mainstream media" began covering the issue, usually just reprinting or quoting from the articles that had already been posted by "the experts".

From there it is just the snowball effect and THAT is how a fairly unremarkable flaw turns into world wide media frenzy.

For my friend's part, she told me this morning that three of her coworker's have now had their iPhones for the last week. Keeping in mind that these people are not IT or computer geeks, they report that even with AT&T's service issues ... they don't know how they ever did their job before they had their iPhones.

The Bush burns on.

Oh WHEN will people stop blaming Bush for all of the things he has done to us!

+++++++++++++

CHART OF THE DAY: Reminder, The Deficit You're Freaking Out About Is Bush's Fault.

Gregory White and Kamelia Angelova | The Business Insider

President Obama's administration has been blamed for reckless spending that has put America into its debt hole. But in reality, much of that spending emanates from policies of President Bush, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

They argue that Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Bush tax cuts (along with the economic downturn) are what is driving the U.S. deficit, not stimulus spending.

The chart presents the ugly truth.

The Business Insider covers new media, venture capital, entrepreneurship and the digital landscape. You can find the original version of this story here.