“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” –Helen Keller

Night before last, courageous Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Corker, created a once-in-a-hundred years opportunity to restore America’s auto industry to health by refusing to go along with the House’s bailout unless the UAW and other unions agree to loosen their strangleholds on the big three American car companies. (See Apple-fy the Car Industry? below.)

As this report at Hot Air makes clear, they were on the very edge of succeeding . . . the impossible . . . the unthinkably wonderful was about to happen  . . .

Then the White House cut the legs out from under Senate’s brave conservatives.

President Bush and Paulson signaled that if the Senate measure failed, they would most likely reverse their initial refusal to make TARP funds available to the car companies. As Hot Air points out:

Would the union have agreed to Corker’s plan if they didn’t have Bush waiting in the wings to bail them out with TARP money? (Yup, says Corker.) After all, TARP is a sweeter deal for them than Corker’s bill since, as one White House source noted, the loans come with few strings attached. Thus have the inefficiencies of the initial Wall Street bailout made this bailout more inefficient, too.

Unbelievable.

It grieves me to acknowledge it, but the Bush presidency has been an epic tragedy for conservatism. And it seems that it will continue to be so right up until the last day.

It’s always fun to type to word “boondoggle.”

Courtesy of laborpains.org . . .

A photo of the UAW’s contract with Ford:

The next time you’re wondering why the American car companies can’t seem to make the quick adaptations and adjustments necessary to be competitive,  remember this picture.

Here’s an amazing graphical visualization of data from Vimeo.

Immigration to the US, 1820-2007 v2 from Ian S on Vimeo.

I’m assuming this is counting only legal immigrants because it’s pulling the data from government records. If estimates on illegal immigration were thrown into the mix, the color shift from red to green would be much more pronounced.

Nevertheless, it’s fascinating to watch the flow shift to the southern hemisphere around 1930. There is also a dramatic increase of yellow dots from Asia (hey, I didn’t pick the colors!) throughout the last half of the 20th Century.

I also suspect that, though the red dots from Europe remain fairly constant, they would be heavily weighted toward western European countries in the early part of the last century (Ireland, Germany, Italy); and shift heavily toward eastern europe in the last half of the century (Russia and former Soviet bloc states).

A key provision of the auto maker rescue package (which passed the house last night and is now headed for the Senate) is the requirement that the car companies surrender some of their management control to the government. Yes, who better than federal government legislators and regulators to bring efficiency and accountability to a troubled industry?

Within the last few days, I’ve heard and read a number of people excitedly discussing the idea of the feds putting Apple’s Steve Jobs in charge of GM to straighten the company out.

This origin of this shiny piece of brilliance seems to be Thomas “The World is Flat” Friedman.

Friedman is reputed to be some sort of futurist genius, but I must say, the more I hear and read him, the less I get what all the fuss is about.

But I digress.

Behind Friedman’s and everyone else’s enthusiasm for putting Steve Jobs in charge of GM is a deeply flawed assumption. Namely, that GM’s primary problem is leadership/management.

The accepted wisdom is that the car companies are run by imbeciles with no imagination.

Of course, the real problem for America’s car companies can be summed up in a single word:

Unions.

It is no coincidence that America’s most troubled industries are her most unionized. The airlines and the automakers are hopelessly entangled in miles and miles of innovation and efficiency-stifling contracts, collective bargaining agreements, and pension commitments.

For decades, strikes and strike threats have strong-armed auto makers into agreements that destroy the companies ability to adapt quickly and respond proactively to changing market conditions.

Sure, nationalize the car industry and put Steve Jobs in charge. Nothing will change. It can’t as long as the big three are locked into paying assembly line workers $74/hr on average.

Get rid of the outdated, obsolete, uneccesary unions and their coercive power . . . and I could run GM profitably.

 

Behold . . . The Hierarchy of Beards.

h/t  Jonah

As regular patrons of this happy blog well know, we changed houses a few months ago. We’re settled in and Tracy has worked her usual wonders. Inside we’re fully Christmasized (I can see four Christmas trees from where I’m sitting at this moment).

On the outside, however, we’re sending mixed messages. Sure, we have wreaths and garland hanging from gates, walls and arches. But it’s sunny and 65 outside right now. And because we havent had a good, honest-to-Jack-Frost freeze yet this year, much of the flora around the house doesn’t know it’s December.

For example, the “Encore Azalea” by the waterfall in front is still taking a bow.

Like an actress on the last night of a theatrical production, she’s milking Autumn’s curtain call for all she can. Meanwhile, in the backyard, Mrs. Blather’s geraniums are still in fine form and the dwarf Meyer lemon tree’s production for 2008 has finally ripened.

Tracy picked the first one of the year the other night and used it in a chicken recipe that called for a lemon. It was wonderful. Meyer lemons are not true lemons. They are a hybrid that crosses a lemon with a certain type of orange — resulting in a large lemon which is a little sweeter than usual.

The Farmer’s Almanac says we should get an ice storm or two between now and Christmas. That may be so. But for now, tomorrow’s forecast is calling for showers and 71.

When life hands you lemons. Make rosemary chicken. That’s what we say.

Well, that was some Thanksgiving feast.

I don’t usually eat a lot of sweets or desserts. Thus, it seems the prodigious amounts of delicious coconut cream pie I consumed a week ago Thursday stunned my immune system into a catatonic state of surrender.

Woke up Friday morning with a hint of a sore throat and immediately started a regimen of in-the-bud nipping involving zinc lozenges, Zicam, Airborne, Vitamin C, and robust rebukage.

Alas, by that evening I felt like Abe Vigoda looks. It was downhill from there. Left for Richmond on a business trip Sunday evening feeling like I was walking around with my head in a bucket of misery-flavored jello. Formidable levels of prayer and Dayquil got me through.

Watched my first Christmas movie of the year the other night . . . one of my favorites . . . “A Christmas Story,” which is marking its 25th anniversary this year. A late bloomer, that one. In its honor, I decided to finally order the book from which the movie was adapted–In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd.

Shepherd also wrote the brilliant screenplay, narrated the film, and played the cranky man who sends Ralphie to the back of the Santa line at the department store. I’ll let you know, dear reader, if the book equals the genius of the movie script.

Meanwhile, I’m back to 85% of feeling great and avoiding holiday sweets (mostly). Blogging frequency should increase.

I’ll be staying home for the Thanksgiving holiday this year so on Saturday I took a quick trip up to southeastern Oklahoma to spend a few days with my folks. Everyone else in my clan had stuff to do so I made the trip alone.

As a recluse by temperament, I always look forward to the prospect of a three-and-a-half hour drive with only AM talk radio and small-town FM stations for company. Though my bride can’t comprehend it, and takes it on faith that it is so, a long lonely drive is actually my idea of a good time.

There is one non-commercial FM station that I can only pick up for about 45 minutes once I enter the foothills of the Winding Stair Mountains. I know I’m in range of the signal when, just north of Atoka, I cross Muddy Boggy Creek.

Yes, with a flair for redundancy, the namers who settled the area 100 years ago named a waterway, Muddy Boggy Creek. That must have been some seriously murky water. “Muddy on the palate, yet with prominent notes of bogginess lingering on the finish.”

Or perhaps it was a compromise solution brokered by an unsung Henry Clay figure, stemming from a heated conflict between the faction insisting on the name Muddy Creek and those equally passionate for the cause of Boggy Creek. This solution also eliminated the possibility of confusion with another “Boggy Creek” about 40 miles to the east, just across Arkansas border. The one that was featured in a movie that gave me serious creeps when I was a 13.

It didn’t help that the setting for the “true story,” the titular Boggy Creek lay about 40 miles from where I slept every night . . . out in our rural home . . . with the creek back behind the house. Yes, my happy, simple country childhood was complicated somewhat by an dark undercurrent of Sasquatch dread.

Oh yes, that radio station . . .

This particular station’s format is hardcore “Southern Gospel”–a style of music I enjoy (in small, targeted doses.) As a boy, we always had the TV on on Sunday mornings as we got ready for Sunday School. We would see the end of Oral Roberts pioneering show, (“Somthing GOOD is going to happen to YOU!”), and then the beginning of “Jubilee.”

Jubilee, as you know if you recall it, was a gospel singing and quartet music show that usually featured The Florida Boys, The Happy Goodman Family, The Blackwood Brothers, The Cathedrals, et. al.. This radio station takes me back to those days. It also reminds me of one of my first jobs in radio–doing news and traffic reports for a station in Oklahoma City owned by Jimmy Swaggart (years before all that motel-related unseemliness.) That station played preaching programs 9a to 4p but Southern Gospel music the rest of the time. Oh, and a Jimmy Swaggart song at 25 minutes after the hour every hour.

Since I discovered this station, I play a little game every time I listen to it. I keep track of how many songs deal with either the theme of heaven or the rapture.  By my estimate, the average weighting is around 80%. In other words, four out of five songs played on this station are saying “Sure life is hard, bitter, painful and grim now, but hang on ’cause we get to go to Heaven someday,” OR ” Sure life is hard, bitter, painful and grim now, but hang on ’cause the Rapture’s gonna happen any minute now and get us out of this mess.”

Don’t misunderstand. I’m not mocking. This is “roots music” in the purest sense of the term. And these roots run back to the Great Depression. This style of music was born in subcultures and in times in which the hope of heaven by-and-by seemed to be the only prospect of relief.

Another thing that sticks out as you begin to analyze the lyrical themes is that an astonishing number of the “Heaven” songs center on “crossing over Jordon,” “chilly Jordan,” “muddy Jordon,” (but oddly enough, never “Muddy Boggy Jordan,”). The metaphor of crossing the River Jordan into the Promised Land seems to make an appearance in roughly half of all Southern Gospel songs.

A classic of this genre was actually written by the father of an old buddy of mine. Years ago, Bud Chambers (father of my friend, Danny Chambers, who is now a pastor and widely-known worship music artist) wrote a song called “One More River to Cross.” Indeed, there are about a dozen Southern Gospel and Black Gospel songs titled “One More River,” but this is the best, in my opinion. Jimmy Swaggart recorded it and it was my favorite of all the Swaggart songs my station was required to play at :25 after.

Here is Bill Gaither and his posse giving Bud’s song a go:

Swaggart’s arrangement was much more toe-tappy-er.

There is just one teeny theological problem with all these songs, and there are thousands of them . . . The crossing of the Jordon by the Israelites into the land of promise is not a type or shadow of the believer’s passage into Heaven. It is an Old Testament type of the believer’s passage into a good, new life via salvation. Passing through the river is a metaphor for baptism.

You see, for the Israelites there were battles to fight and ground to take on the other side of that river. There were giants to slay and cities to conquer and occupy.  That’s not the case in Heaven. But it is the case for the Christian. “Occupy until I return,” Jesus told his followers right before he left Earth. (Luke 19:13)

Don’t take my word for it. Hebrews 3:16-19 makes this clear. You enter into the promised land at salvation. Oh, and while I’m being Mr. Southern Gospel Song Buzz Kill . . . Jesus never said there were “mansions” in Heaven . . . , but rather “. . . in my Father’s house are many dwelling places.” (John 14:2)

Look, I’m all for looking forward to Heaven, but the fact is, a theology that moves the land of promise to the sweet-by-and-by is a prescription for defeat, passivity and surrender in the gritty here-and-now. And that’s precisely what we’ve gotten.

And the visit with the folks? Thanks for asking!

Mom and Dad are doing pretty well considering the mileage (77 and 79 respectively) and the lack of proper, routine maintenance in their younger years (little or no exercise, all the wrong foods, etc.).

Even so, I believe they’re going to be around a good while longer (if the sasquatches don’t get them.) And when they do go to Heaven, it won’t be by way of a chilly, muddy river. They crossed it long ago.

And for that, I’m truly thankful.