F.O.B. Ted (Friend of Blather) directs my attention to this George Barna report about how born-again folks have begun to wander off the Republican farm
titled “Born Again Voters No Longer Favor Republican Candidates.”

In the opening paragraph we find:

One of the most reliable constituencies of the Republican Party in recent years has been born again Christians. A new national survey of likely voters conducted by The Barna Group, however, shows that the Republicans have lost the allegiance of many born again voters. The November election is truly up for grabs – and if the election were held today, most born again voters would select the Democratic Party nominee for president, whoever that might be.

To understand what is going on, you first have to understand why, for several decades, evangelicals (and a lot of catholics for that matter) came to feel more at home in the GOP in the first place. Two seismic events drove it.

Continue reading →

Unless he has a change of heart come November, it looks like James Dobson is going to sit the election out if McCain is the nominee. Have a listen:

btw…I’ll be posting some deep thoughts about this question later.

Update: I failed to mention—not that it was necessary—that what Rush and others have been saying for several days is absolutely true. That is: A vote for Huckabee today is a vote for McCain to be the nominee. If you’re okay with that, off you go. 

. . .it tends to get a lot more of. Well, Britain has just decided to reward immigrants who have multiple wives.

Husbands with multiple wives have been given the go-ahead to claim extra welfare benefits following a year-long Government review, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal. 

Even though bigamy is a crime in Britain, the decision by ministers means that polygamous marriages can now be recognised formally by the state, so long as the weddings took place in countries where the arrangement is legal. 

There is a time for every purpose under heaven. A time for planting chili pepper seeds. A time to for harvesting chili peppers. Or so I vaguely remember from The Byrd’s adaptation of Ecclesiastes. 

According the tables in the David Crosby Almanac, today was either a time to cast away stones or a time to plant chilis. I opted for the latter if only for the sake of improving relations with the neighbors.

When we bought this old house almost 7 years ago, one of the things I was excited about the was the little greenhouse out back. Oh, the grand horticultural ambitions I had. “If I ever had a greenhouse,” I’d told myself for years, “I would have a dwarf lemon tree, save tons of money by growing my own Annual flowers from seeds, and be lousy with tomatoes for big chunks of the year.

The reality has been. . .um, different.

My hot house flower plants have the tendency to grow vigorously without ever producing any actual, you know, flowers. In five years my lemon tree has produced precisely two small lemons. And my annual efforts with tomato plants and other veggies, whether in beds or in pots, have consistently yielded enough food to constitute a small salad—one time.

The one exception to this sad legacy of agronomic failure are the chili peppers I grew last year. In fact, the plants continued to yield all winter and are still going strong.

 

So I’m “all in” on peppers this year. I just planted a whole seed packet each of Serranos, Jalapenos, and Cayenne.

If we finally have that complete collapse of Western Civilization and general breakdown of social order that some have been predicting for decades, my family won’t be self-sufficient, food-wise. But we will have one heck of a post-apocalyptic salsa with which we can barter for potatoes, Spam, flour and bullets.

Lemons. . .? Well, hope springs eternal, and Spring is eternally filled with hope.

. . .I stepped out my back door onto our covered patio. As I did, I started hearing what I thought was a very long, low rumble of thunder. It just seemed to go on and on. It was puzzling because the little bits of sky I could around me through the trees were all bright blue.

About 20 minutes later I turned on the television and saw something that reminded me that the Space Shuttle Columbia was scheduled to return to earth that day. I watched a bit longer and learned that things had gone quite wrong.

If had ventured out from under that covered patio.  I would have seen the Columbia in hundreds of pieces, a few moments before they rained down upon the piney forests and rolling fields of East Texas.

The Mission Commander was Rick Husband, orginally from Amarillo. A Christian. And fine example of manhood. You can read about him here.

 Disney, circa 1958, looks to the highways we should be driving on right now.

I’ve emerged from the fortress of solitude. In other words, the deadline pressure eased, returning to its default setting  -  “Bone-crushing.”

“Yes, Dave, you’re clearly free to whine and bellyache at your customary annoying levels once more. yeehaw.”

I know. Truth be told, I unconsciously create this state of affairs and apparently wouldn’t have it any other way. I have a bad case of what Steven Covey, in his book First Things First, calls “the urgency addiction.” (And no that doesn’t have anything to do with needing to use the restroom.)

Writing. Meet Mr. Wall. Wall. Say hello to The Writing.

 The question I’m pondering this morning is this: “In what meaningful ways would a McCain presidency differ from a Hillary administration?”

I’m not being pedantic or ironic. It’s a question I’m processing in my mind.

Between a Hillary pulled right by events and a McCain drawn left by reflexive deference to the New York Times editorial board—how much space would there be in between? Really? (Current answer? Probably enough to make it “important” that Hillary not win.)

Now, if it’s Obama for the Dems. . . well, that’s a very different calculus. He lands well to the left of HRC.

There is a long fascinating interview up over at CBSNews.com (Yes. CBS!) with the FBI interrogator assigned to Saddam Hussein.

Toward the end of the interview, the interrogator, George Piro, is asked whether Saddam had ever indicated his plans to crank up his WMD program again when the heat was off:

In fact, Piro says Saddam intended to produce weapons of mass destruction again, some day. “The folks that he needed to reconstitute his program are still there,” Piro says.

“And that was his intention?” Pelley asks.

“Yes,” Piro says.

“What weapons of mass destruction did he intend to pursue again once he had the opportunity?” Pelley asks.

“He wanted to pursue all of WMD. So he wanted to reconstitute his entire WMD program,” says Piro.

“Chemical, biological, even nuclear,” Pelley asks.

“Yes,” Piro says.

 Well, what do you know about that?

But did you know that John McCain’s “Hispanic Outreach Director” is a UT professor with dual citizenship in the U.S. and Mexico? And was formerly on El Presidente Vincente Fox’s cabinet? Now you do. Read all about it.