Notes from the Cave

We will soon be leaving for the 30-minute drive to Cincinnati for Thanksgiving.  It will be at the house of my wife's aunt, which is where we have generally been celebrating Thanksgiving since my wife's grandparents' died.  My in-laws live two doors down from my wife's aunt, and the grandparents, when they were living, lived across the street.  Small town scenario in a large metropolis.

M has been slaving in the kitchen all morning, and it's about 269 degrees in there.  I helped by washing a pan for her :)

I recently finished a fantastic historical novel set in the 12th century called Lionheart, by Sharon Kay Penman.  As the name implies, it is about the life of Richard I, specifically his exploits on the Third Crusade in the early 1190's.

I'm now on to a Robert McCammon novel called Mister Slaughter.  Over the last year, McCammon has become my new favorite author.  I just LOVE his books.  Sitting down to read a McCammon book is like sitting down with an old friend.  I haven't disregarded my previous favorite, Wilbur Smith, but I've read all of Smith's 35+ books now and he only publishes a new one every couple of years or so.  Over 80 now, his newer books just don't have the spark of the older ones.

Work has been interesting of late.  Our lead tech on 2nd shift has been out for a few weeks, so I have been given the duty of temporary lead tech (with no extra pay of course).  It has been very hard - harder, I suppose, than I would have expected.  In addition to handling departmental calls and crises, as well as a few administrative tasks, I also still have to do my part as a regular old x-ray tech - namely, working in the ER, doing portable exams on the inpatient floors, and running x-ray machines in the OR.  So it's been pretty stressful, but I am adjusting to it now.  Makes me appreciate the work our real lead techs do year 'round.

In my predictions for the presidential election this year, I correctly picked 47 of the 50 states.  Additionally, every state I picked for Obama went to Obama.  The only ones I missed were states where I picked Romney, but Obama ended up winning.  Neither the electoral vote, nor the nationwide popular vote, was as close as I expected.  However, I said at the time that given two possibilities - A large Obama victory, or any Romney victory at all - I thought it was more likely that Obama would win big than Romney would win at all.  Still, I predicted a closer battle.  All political biases aside, I think the Republicans have some real soul-searching to do to figure out how to appeal to Americans across generations, economic backgrounds, and ethnicities.

Time to head to Cincinnati.  M just told me we were supposed to be there at 2 pm.  It's 215.

 

The Virgin Birth

The Virgin Birth: Miracle or Legend is my latest book at Amazon.  It originated as a series here on my blog, but I have updated and revised it for publication as an e-book.  With Christmas upon us, it's a good time to examine this most important of Biblical stories.  

From Amazon.com: 

In this brief volume, writer and historian B. Scott Christmas presents a lucid and compelling account of the Biblical story of Christ's birth. Examining all the key texts, Christmas takes his reader through the story of the nativity, searching for the history behind one of Christianity's most influential beliefs. 

Is the story of the virgin birth literal history, or creative liturgy? 

How can Christians in the 21st century embrace this timeless story in a genuine and authentic way? 

Christmas tackles these questions head-on, presenting a thorough analysis on the creation of the stories, and offering a thought-provoking new way to understand exactly what the writers of the Gospels were trying to portray.

Follow this link to buy it at Amazon.  If you don't have a Kindle, no problemo!  Just download a free Kindle app for your computer, smart phone, whatever!

The ObamaPhone and U.S. Welfare

Living, as I do, in an area that can only be described as "conservative," I have heard a lot of comments the last few days from friends and co-workers who are disappointed with the results of the election.  

It seems, around here at least, that one of the most common issues among conservatives relates to welfare.  So I thought I'd make a few points to clear up some confusion.

THE OBAMAPHONE

Have you heard about this?  According to the stories, the Obama administration has created a program intended to provide high-end cell phones to welfare recipients.  The numbers recited are typically something like 16 million people receiving free cell phones.  At work just this evening, I heard someone comment on this phenomenon and lament the fact that a bunch of people who "refuse to work" have "better phones than I do."  

This story has been passed around so much and so frequently that it appears that the vast majority of people familiar with it don't realize that it's all a hoax.  

It's not real.  

It apparently started as a spam email forward (shocking, I know), and then got to YouTube and went viral.  I can tell you with absolute certainty that a significant number of college-educated people who I work with believe that this story, and this program, is real. 

It's not real.  It's made up.  There is no such thing as an ObamaPhone.

Welfare in the United States is a very, very complicated business with numerous different facets.  The very term "Welfare Program" can be misleading, because there is no one, single, overarching government program that establishes welfare.  Instead, it's a combination of numerous federal, state, and local laws that, when taken together, constitute "welfare," or "government assistance" in America.  And it's not even administrated by the federal government; state governments run welfare programs. 

In 1985, a program was added to existing welfare laws to provide assistance to low-income individuals to help pay for their phone bills - phones being a necessary device in modern life and irreplaceable in an emergency.  It is called the Lifeline program.  

Until 2008, it included only land line phones.  That year, during the Bush administration, assistance was expanded to cell phones, due to the decrease in land line usage.  Other than more companies getting permission from the FCC to provide subsidized phones to low-income individuals, no further changes have occurred during the Obama administration.  

Finally, the money that funds this program comes from fees assessed to telecommunications companies.  In other words, your tax dollars do not pay for these government-subsidized phones.  

The simple fact is, this entire story has gone viral simply because it plays on the misguided suppositions and false assumptions that people already have - that welfare recipients are somehow living like kings while the rest of us work our asses off to stay afloat.  In the hospital where I work, we have a lot of low-income patients.  Many of them, in the Emergency Department in particular, come in with cell phones.  So then you hear a story about the ObamaPhone, and all of a sudden it seems to click.  That must be why all these ratty patients come in with fancy cell phones!  The liberals are giving it to them!   

In fact, the whole thing floats on an undercurrent of racism and especially classism.  How else could a poor black person have a nice cell phone?  It couldn't possibly be that maybe they saved their own money to buy it, or maybe their grandmother bought it for them, or maybe they're just not as poor as they look.  It must be a liberal agenda in Washington.

And this leads into a much broader discussion about welfare in general.  Another co-worker of mine, yesterday, told me that she agrees with Romney's infamous "47%" comment.  She feels, basically, that half the country believe they are victims and won't work and rely on the government to take care of them.  I'm sure if pressed, she might agree that it's not really 47% of Americans, but I bet she thinks it's pretty close to that.

In fact, roughly 4.5 million Americans receive welfare in any given month.  By "welfare," I mean actual cash from the government that is given to poor people to help them pay their bills.  In case you aren't good with numbers, that represents roughly 1.5% of the U.S. population.  One-point-five percent.  Nowhere in the same universe as 47%.  Even if you count people who receive food stamps or other government assistance in any given month, it's only about 15%.  

The notion that half the country, or even anywhere remotely close to half the country, is living on government assistance is ridiculous.  

Welfare laws were overhauled in 1996, during the Clinton administration.  It was a bi-partisan overhaul between Clinton (a Democrat) and a Republican-controlled Congress.  Limits were added for how long you can be on welfare (no more than 2 consecutive years, and a 5-year lifetime limit), and a work requirement was added for those on welfare who are capable of working.  As a result, the number of people getting a welfare check every month has decreased by 67% in the last 15 years - from over 12 million in 1997 to the 4.5 million today.  

THE POVERTY LINE

The most recent numbers I have seen in regards to poverty in the U.S. is that roughly 15% of Americans live at, around, or below the the poverty line.  The "poverty line" varies depending on age and family size (for a family with two adults and three children, the poverty line is about $26,000 per year before taxes; for a single adult under the age of 65, it's about $11,000 per year).  

What happens if you put the welfare numbers together with the poverty numbers?  15% of Americans live in poverty.  Only 1.5% of Americans receive a welfare check.  That means that even among poor people, the vast majority are not "on welfare" at any given time.  

It seems that a lot of folks go through life just assuming that all the poor and homeless and disabled they see around them are "living on welfare" (i.e., "living on my hard-earned money!").  That's simply not true.  Most poor people, if they receive anything at all, are getting non-cash assistance (like telephone subsidies, food stamps, and the like).

Of course there are people who take advantage of government assistance programs.  Is it possible that some welfare con-artist is out there receiving a welfare check for a family of eight that doesn't actually exist, and is living fairly comfortably by doing it?  Sure.  But there is absolutely not one shred of evidence to suggest this sort of major fraud is widespread.  The laws themselves have safeguards built in to both detect and prevent fraud.  This is one of the reasons why the number of people receiving welfare checks has decreased by 67% in the last 15 years.  Fewer people are eligible, and there are fewer ways to take advantage of the system.  This is also why the number of people on assistance programs like food stamps is roughly equivalent to the number of people below the poverty line.  If numerous people above the poverty line were simply defrauding the system, it would show in the statistics.  

Suggesting that welfare should be de-funded or in some other way "gutted" by Congress, simply because there are a few people taking advantage of the system, would be akin to suggesting alcohol should be banned because so many people drive drunk.  

The simple fact is that there are not nearly as many people are on welfare as a lot of folks suppose, not nearly as many people "depend on the government" to take care of them as a lot of folks suppose, and the entire welfare system is not nearly as much of a black hole in the federal budget as many folks suppose.  

One final note: In 2010, the amount of federal money spent on welfare checks to poor people amounted to less than 1% of the total federal expenditures - something like 0.7%.  Even if you add in the cost of food stamps and other assistance programs, it's only about 3% of the total federal budget.  

If we can't live in a country where three government dollars out of every one hundred go to help the poor and needy, then we have a serious ethical dilemma on our hands.  

The 2012 Presidential Election: My Prediction

There are exactly two weeks to go before the polls open in the 2012 presidential election.  The primaries are history, the conventions are long since over, the debates are done, and there's nothing left to do but go vote.

Presidential elections are not decided by a popular vote.  Instead, they are decided by an electoral college vote.  Each state gets a set number of electoral votes, based on its population.  In all but two states, electoral votes are given in a "winner-take-all" system; in other words, all the electoral votes in the state go to the candidate who wins the most popular votes in the state.  Maine and Nebraska apportion their electoral votes into districts, with the popular vote in each district determining who wins that district's electoral vote.

In this year's election, most of the states are already more or less decided.  It's not that those states have already voted, or that those states don't still have individual undecided voters, it's just that the polls in those states show one candidate leading by such a significant margin that the chances of that state going to the other person are slim to none.

These states, then, are basically already locked up for one candidate or the other.  There are 40 of them, and when you add up their electoral votes, you find that Romney currently has 206 probable electoral votes, and Obama has 201 (270 are needed to win.)

That leaves 10 states remaining, where the polls are still very close (within 5 percentage points) and which neither candidate has yet "locked up."  These are the states, then, that will ultimately decide the election.

Those states are: Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Michigan, Wisconsin, Virginia, Florida, and Nevada.

Let's look at each of those states individually:

Wisconsin: Obama currently has an average lead of 2.8 points.  That's an average of all state polls taken over the last few weeks.  However, Romney has not led in a single Wisconsin poll since mid-August, when he had a 1-point lead in two polls.  Prior to that, you have to go back to June before you find another Wisconsin poll Romney led in.  So despite the average lead being relatively small, Wisconsin has consistently been in Obama's corner throughout the election season.  Advantage: Obama.

Virginia: When you average all the Virginia polls over the last few weeks, the candidates are in a dead heat.  However, in all the polls taken since Romney's prominent victory in the first debate, Romney has led (albeit by small amounts).  Obama had a comfortable lead in Virginia throughout September, showing as much as an 8-point lead in two different polls during that month.  But clearly the momentum in Virginia is on Romney's side now.  Advantage: Unclear, but leaning Romney.

Florida: Romney currently has an average lead of 1.8 points.  More than a dozen polls have been taken in Florida this month alone, and Romney has led in all but three.  Like Virginia, Obama had a consistent lead throughout September, but Romney has the momentum there now.  Advantage: Romney.

Nevada: Obama has an average lead of 3 points.  Like Wisconsin, Romney's surge in the national polls has not been enough to overcome the comfortable margin Obama has enjoyed there throughout the campaign.  Not as many polls are taken in Nevada as some of the other states, but you have to go all the way back to April to find a Nevada poll won by Romney.  Advantage: Obama.

Colorado: Obama had a consistent lead in Colorado in September, but it has wilted in October.  This month, the candidates have gone back and forth, with Romney currently holding a fractional edge (0.2%) over the last three weeks.  Advantage: Unclear.

Iowa: Obama has tended to lead in Iowa throughout the campaign season, and currently has an average lead of 2 points in the polls of the past week.  As recently as last Wednesday a poll showed him with an 8-point lead.  But other polls have showed the candidates tied.  Even with Romney's post-debate surge, he has won only one of six polls taken since that time - and that was by just 1 point.  Advantage: Obama.

Michigan: Obama's current average lead in Michigan is 5 points, making Michigan just barely a toss-up state at this point.  Romney has not won any polls in Michigan since mid-August.  Advantage: Obama.

Ohio: Over the last ten days, Obama's average lead in Ohio polls is 1.9 points.  Since the first week of September, 31 polls have been taken in Ohio.  Obama has won, or been tied, in all but three of them.  The only three polls he lost were in the first few days after Romney's debate victory in early October, and Romney had only a 1-point lead in each of those three polls.  In the last week alone, Obama has had a lead as high as 5 points in one poll.  Advantage: Obama.

New Hampshire: In the last two weeks, Obama has an average lead of 1 point.  The last poll taken, however was just released today and it shows Obama with a 9-point lead.  However, as recently as just ten days ago, another poll had Romney leading by 4 points.  Obama has tended to lead in New Hampshire throughout the campaign season, but the polls have been unsteady since the debate.  Advantage: Unclear, but leaning Obama.

Pennsylvania: Like Michigan, Pennsylvania is only barely a toss-up at this point, with Obama leading on average by 4.8 points.  His lead in Pennsylvania was simply too large for Romney's post-debate surge to have completely erased.  Romney has not won a single poll in Pennsylvania since February, before the primaries were even finished.  Advantage: Obama.

So what does all this mean?  Well, it means that Obama appears to have weathered Romney's surge since the first debate, and seems on pace to win the election.  Of the ten states left whose electoral votes are still up in the air, the only one that seems very likely to go to Romney is Florida.  We saw that Virginia, Colorado, and New Hampshire are "unclear."  Let's give them all to Romney.  Even then, Obama still has 277 electoral votes and wins the election.  In fact, we could even throw in Nevada or Iowa, and Obama would still have 271!  So Romney could take 6 of the 10 remaining states, and it would still not be enough to give him the election.  And remember, of the 10 toss-up states, only one is leaning heavily towards Romney.

I see only one way for Romney to win at this point, and that would be if he could manage to steal Ohio. Ohio has polled almost exclusively in favor of Obama all season long, but it has become very close there over the last month.  Obama has maintained a lead, but only just barely.  If Romney won Ohio, plus Virginia and Florida, he would need to win only one more of the remaining seven states - even tiny New Hampshire would be enough to tip him over 270 in that case.  However, it is notable that even if Romney won the windfall states of Ohio, Virginia, and Florida, Obama could still win if he took the remaining 7 toss-ups.

My prediction: Romney will win Florida, Virginia, and Colorado, but lose the rest, giving Obama a 281-257 electoral college victory.  As an alternative, New Hampshire might go to Romney, and Virginia might go to Obama, which would make the final tally 290-248 in favor of Obama.

Romney's only hope lies in winning Ohio, Virginia, and Florida, plus one more of the toss-ups.  I think this is an extremely unlikely scenario, based on the polling evidence.    

10 Fun Facts About William Howard Taft

William Howard Taft, the 27th President of the United States

1. William Howard Taft was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1857.  His father, Alphonso Taft, was a prominent lawyer who later served as both Attorney General and Secretary of War under Ulysses S. Grant.

2. Like his father before him, Taft attended Yale, graduating second in his class, then returned to Cincinnati in 1878 to study law.  He met Nellie Herron the following year, and they were married in 1886.  Nellie's father was a law partner of president Rutherford B. Hayes.  Nellie suffered a stroke just a few months after her husband became president and she never fully recovered.

3. Taft rose in prominence very quickly after being admitted to the Ohio bar in 1880.  He served first as an Assistant Prosecutor in Cincinnati, and by 1887, at only 30 years of age, he was elected as a judge to the Ohio Superior Court in Cincinnati.  Three years later, Benjamin Harrison appointed him as Solicitor General of the United States, arguing cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

4. Following his term as Solicitor General, Taft was appointed in 1892 as a judge to the Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals.  During his time as a circuit judge, his old law school was merged with the University of Cincinnati to become UC's College of Law, and Taft served as its first dean and taught Constitutional Law there.

5. Taft's lifelong ambition had been to serve as a justice for the U.S. Supreme Court, and everything he had done in his career up to that time had been in preparation for this goal.  However, in 1900, William McKinley asked him to take part in organizing a government for the Philippines, which had just been ceded to the United States as a result of the Spanish-American war.  Taft reluctantly agreed, becoming Governor-General of the new territory in 1901.

6. Following McKinley's death in 1901, Theodore Roosevelt offered to nominate Taft to the Supreme Court, and although this was Taft's undoubted ambition, he declined the offer because he felt that his job was not yet done in the Philippines.  Instead, Taft became Secretary of War in 1904, a position which would allow him to continue his work in building the Philippines.  He again turned down an offer for the Supreme Court in 1906.

7. Although he regretted his decision, Roosevelt had promised, in 1904, not to run for re-election in 1908.  Since Taft had become such a prominent figure in Roosevelt's cabinet by this time, it was apparent to everyone that he was the logical choice of the Republican party for the 1908 presidential election.  Though Taft still wanted ultimately to serve on the Supreme Court, he accepted the nomination at the urging of numerous friends and companions, including his wife.  The extremely popular Roosevelt heartily supported his campaign and Taft won easily, taking 66% of the electoral vote.

8. During his time in the White House, Taft departed from many of the progressive standards established by his predecessor, and by 1912, Roosevelt was so disgusted with his former protege that he decided to challenge Taft for the 1912 Republican nomination.  Twelve states held primaries that year, and Roosevelt won nine of them, while Taft won only one (the others went to a third candidate).  Despite this, Taft managed to outmaneuver Roosevelt at the national convention, and ultimately won the nomination.  Roosevelt, however, formed his own party, the Progressive Party, and ran on that ticket.  With the Republican votes thus split, Democrat Woodrow Wilson won easily.  Roosevelt, on the Progressive Party ticket, won more of the percentage vote, and more of the electoral vote, than Taft on the Republican ticket, making Taft's defeat the worst in U.S. history of an incumbent president.  It is also the only time since the advent of the 2-party system that one of the major parties has come in third in an election.

9. Following his presidency, Taft taught law at Yale, and vigorously opposed the prohibition movement, which had been gaining steam for some time.  In 1921, when the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court died, president Warren G. Harding nominated ex-president Taft to succeed him.  His nomination was easily ratified by the Senate, and thus Taft became the first and only person in U.S. history to lead both the Executive and Judicial branches of the U.S. government.

10. Taft is most commonly remembered today for his corpulence.  While president, he famously became stuck in a White House bathtub and rescuers had to use butter to help free him.  He is known to have suffered from sleep apnea due to his weight, and there are numerous contemporary reports of his prodigious appetite and his flatulence problem.  He retired from the Supreme Court in 1930 and died several weeks later.  He and John F. Kennedy are the only two presidents buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

The Emancipation Proclamation: 150th Anniversary

The first page of the handwritten Emancipation Proclamation

As we approach the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, I thought a little background might be useful in understanding this important milestone in U.S. History.  I have divided the following information up into numbered sections, simply for ease of reading.

ONE

The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order issued by Abraham Lincoln in late 1862, scheduled to take effect on January 1, 1863.  As an executive order, the Emancipation Proclamation was not a law, but an order issued under the Constitutional powers of the president.  It sought to free slaves in areas that were then in rebellion, and made a precedent for using those freed slaves as soldiers in the Union cause.

TWO

Although Lincoln privately asserted that he personally wished to see an end to all slavery, his public position on slavery was never an abolitionist one.  On the contrary, he expressed his belief that the federal government did not have the legal right to outlaw slavery in the states, and said, instead, that his only goal was to keep slavery from spreading outside those states where it already existed.

In his first inauguration speech, in 1860, he stated emphatically: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists.  I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."

THREE

Despite misconceptions to the contrary, the Emancipation Proclamation did not actually outlaw slavery, or free all the slaves.  It only freed those people who were slaves in territories that were in rebellion against the United States as of January 1, 1863.  As such, the Union slave states of Kentucky, Delaware, Maryland, and Missouri were exempted from the order, and their slaves would not be freed until they did it themselves (Maryland in 1864 and Missouri in early 1865) or until after the war and Lincoln's death, with the passage of the 13th Amendment in December, 1865 (Kentucky and Delaware).

It also did not affect slaves in regions of the Confederacy that had already come back under U.S. control (such as Tennessee, parts of Virginia, and the area around New Orleans).  Overall, nearly a million slaves (about 25% of the total) were exempted from the proclamation, and thus legally remained in slavery.

FOUR

In light of Lincoln's insistence that he had no intention of ending slavery, why did he change his mind and issue the Emancipation Proclamation?  Quite simply, it served two political purposes: first to threaten the Confederacy, then to punish it.

The proclamation was issued in September, 1862, and stated that any area still in rebellion as of January 1, 1863, would have its slaves permanently and irrevocably freed.  As such, it served as a threat.  The threat didn't work, however; no states or territories within the Confederacy returned to the Union.

As such, when January 1 rolled around, it became a punishment: you have rebelled against the United States, so you will be punished by having your slaves freed as our armies move through and subdue your territories.  Since slaves were legally only property, they could be confiscated as part of the normal course of a war.

It's interesting to speculate about what might have happened if the states of the Confederacy had actually bowed to the threat of emancipation.  What if the rebellious southern states had put down their weapons and returned to the fold before the January 1 deadline?  Slavery certainly wouldn't still exist now, in the 21st century, but it may have carried on for several more decades than it actually did.

FIVE

Despite this, there can be no question that Lincoln's true motivation was not threats or punishments at all, but actually ending slavery.  There is also virtually no doubt that he never expected the "threat" to work; he surely didn't expect the rebellious states to drop their weapons and hang their heads in submission.  He had always publicly stated his opposition to abolition, on Constitutional grounds, but the war gave him an opportunity to get around the normal limits of the Constitution and ultimately end what he viewed as the immoral institution of slavery.

SIX

So how, exactly, did Lincoln achieve this?  After all, he had said himself, just two years earlier at his inauguration, that he had no legal right to free slaves.  So how did he justify his actions?

There is positively no question that the U.S. Constitution, in 1862, did not give the federal government the right to interfere with slavery in the states.  The 10th Amendment states that any power not expressly given to the federal government in the Constitution automatically becomes a right of the individual states.  Therefore, since the power to control slavery isn't given in the Constitution to the federal government, it must by default be a state's right.  This is why Lincoln, and most everyone else, never embraced abolition as a legal right of the federal government.  It was unquestionably a state's right.

But because the South had rebelled and was now at war with the Union, Lincoln could use the excuse of hastening the war's end by taking actions aimed at ruining the economy of the enemy - in this case ending slavery.  Many people throughout the Union, and particularly in Congress, had argued that ending slavery would decimate the South's economy and thus bring an end to the war.

This, then, is how Lincoln justified the Emancipation Proclamation from a legal standpoint.  He argued that hastening an end to the war through economic ruin was necessary to preserve the Union.  He further argued that since the president is the commander-in-chief of the U.S. military, he has the Constitutional right and responsibility to do whatever he deems necessary to achieve a military victory, particularly when it affects the very preservation of the Union.  Remember that the Constitution charges the president with the duty to "preserve, protect, and defend" the Constitution, and Lincoln saw preserving the Union as his primary duty as a wartime president.

SEVEN

One argument that Lincoln could not make, and which no doubt caused him more than a few nights of fret, was that he had the right to end slavery because the Confederacy was not part of the United States.

Normally, if a country is at war with another country, and intends to overtake and rebuild that opposing country, setting up military rule and suspending the old civil laws is typically fair game.  This is what the Allies did in Germany in World War II, and what numerous other nations have done in wars throughout history.

So Lincoln might have argued that he had the Constitutional right to free Confederate slaves simply because the Confederacy was a foreign nation that the United States was at war with.  Anything goes, as it were.

Lincoln would no doubt have loved to make this argument.  But he couldn't, because he had spent the first two years of his presidency arguing vociferously that secession was not legal to begin with, the Confederacy was not a legal or legitimate nation, and the states comprising the Confederacy were still part of the "perpetual union" of the United States.  This, in fact, had been his entire justification for waging war against the southern states in the first place: they had seceded illegally, were thus in open rebellion against the Union, and the federal government thus had the right and responsibility to subdue them and bring them back into the fold.    

With that in mind, he couldn't now turn around and claim that he had the right to free the slaves based on the fact that the Confederacy was a foreign nation and the U.S. was not obligated to recognize its laws.  That would have been a "flip-flop" and it wouldn't have sat very well with his supporters, his generals, or his soldiers dying in the fields to preserve the Union.

EIGHT

It's probably fair to say that the Emancipation Proclamation was unconstitutional.  That may sound shocking to a lot of people, but it was a common perception and criticism at the time.  Anti-war sentiment was very common throughout the North, especially in the first few years of the war.  Many people believed that the best way to end slavery in the United States was simply to let the slave states secede and go their merry way; that slaves weren't worth fighting a war over; that as long as slavery didn't expand from those states where it already existed, it wasn't a big deal.

Today we imagine a Union united behind the cause of freeing the slaves, but the fact is that the primary impetus for Union soldiers to fight wasn't freeing slaves; it was preserving the Union.  With the exception of the abolitionists, who represented just a small percentage of the whole Union population, most people didn't really have a problem with slavery continuing in the South.  Most people figured it would eventually die out on its own, and there were even political movements to give federal aid to states that voluntary repealed their own slavery laws.

So there were many critics of the Emancipation Proclamation when it was enacted, and some of their criticisms, from a purely Constitutional point of view, were probably valid.  No one, of course, questions the ethical and moral rightness of the document.  But if we look, for a moment, at the Emancipation Proclamation the way a Supreme Court justice might look at it, we're forced to accept the possibility that the entire thing was unconstitutional.

I've already provided Lincoln's own justification for issuing the proclamation.  If that passage sounded like a lot of legal mumbo jumbo and hair-splitting, that's because it basically is.  The Constitution makes the president the commander-in-chief of the military, but it also assumes that the president will be commanding the military against foreign enemies, not internal ones.  And aside from giving the president this broad power, the Constitution is mute on what, exactly, the president can do as commander-in-chief.  Hire and fire generals, certainly.  Make military decisions during times of war, absolutely.  But the actual power of waging war and conducting war belongs to Congress, not the president.  It is highly questionable whether Lincoln, in his capacity as commander-in-chief, actually had the constitutional right to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.  His justification was, in my opinion, on very shaky legal ground, and probably overstepped his constitutional powers.

NINE

Even if we accept that Lincoln had the legal power to issue the proclamation, as part of his wartime powers, there is almost no question whatsoever that the wording of the proclamation itself was unconstitutional.

The key phrase comes in the very beginning of the text: "[Beginning January 1, 1863], all persons held as slaves [within the Confederacy] shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free."

In other words, the proclamation isn't vague at all: as of January 1, 1863, slaves held in any territories rebelling against the Union will not just be freed, but will be forever free.

The problem here is that even by Lincoln's own justification, this proclamation was issued as part of the presidential war powers.  As such, it could only be understood to be in effect as long as the war continued.  Once the war ended, the order could no longer be in effect - meaning that the proclamation didn't actually have the legal authority to declare slaves freed under its powers as "forever" free.

The fact is that if so much of the country had not been focused on waging and winning the existing war, it is a very good possibility that the Emancipation Proclamation might have been challenged in court, and it is difficult to say with any degree of certainty that it would have been upheld as legal.

TEN

In the end, the Emancipation Proclamation is one of the most important executive orders ever issued by any president.  It was radical, it was provocative, and it might even have been unconstitutional.  But it undoubtedly gave a new focus to the war and a new expectation of the war's outcome and ultimate purpose.

Yet, at the same time, it was in many ways very limited.  It did not end slavery.  It left nearly 25% of existing slaves in servitude.  It did not make the practice of slavery illegal.  It did not have any authority beyond the war itself, or upon any part of the U.S. not currently in rebellion as of January 1, 1863.  Upon its initial implementation, it hardly affected any slaves at all - the slaves that would eventually be freed by it would not be freed until the Union armies reached them, which in many cases would be many months, and even years, later.  As one critic has cynically pointed out, the only slaves it freed were those in areas not controlled by the Union - in other words, the enemy is not allowed to have slaves, but we'll keep our own.

Despite this, it is hard to underestimate the importance of this provocative historical document, and the impact is has played on racial issues in the United States for the 150 years since it was enacted.

This photograph was taken in early October, 1862, just a few weeks after the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued, to take effect the following January.

Great Rock n' Roll Images

A little something different today on Ye Olde Blogge.  I thought I'd post a bunch of my favorite images from the history of rock.  Without further ado, let the tour begin! (Click the picture for full size.)

These guys agree: New Skynyrd sucks.

The last live Beatles performance, on the roof of their studio, 1969.

No caption needed.

Only the good die young.

The incomparable Beastie Boys

Jimmy Buffett was a singer-songwriter in the 1970's.  He died in 1998.

Next to Slash, there's never been a better stage persona than Angus Fucking Young.

Pardon me while I get off.

Geddy Fucking Lee

Alex Lifeson, EASILY the most underrated rock guitarist in history.

The Professor.  Just revel in it.

Love 'em or hate 'em, these guys had no peers in the 1980's, AND they would have kicked your ass for you, too.

10 Fun Facts About Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States

1. Abraham Lincoln was born near Hodgenville, Kentucky, about 40 miles south of Louisville, in 1809.  Named for his paternal grandfather, who had been murdered in an Indian attack about 20 years before his birth, Lincoln's maternal grandfather's name is not known.  His mother, Nancy Hanks, was born out of wedlock (possibly even the result of rape), and her maiden name was not her father's name, but her mother's.  The actor Tom Hanks is a distant relative.

2. Despite the common belief (made famous during his 1860 presidential campaign) that Lincoln was born into virtual poverty, his father was a large landowner and, according to a number of historians, among the richest individuals in LaRue County, Kentucky, at the time of Lincoln's birth.

3. When Lincoln was still a boy, the family moved to Indiana, partly as a result of land disputes in Kentucky, and partly because of the family's strict opposition to slavery, which was legal in Kentucky.  His mother died a few years later, in 1818.  His father remarried, but in 1820 the family moved to Illinois, due to an outbreak of the same disease that had killed his mother two years earlier.

4. Lincoln is known to have been taught as a child by a series of traveling instructors, but otherwise had no formal education.  An avid reader, he was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1836 as a completely self-taught lawyer.

5. Lincoln's love life was complicated: according to his step-mother, he "never took much interest" in girls as a young man, and isn't known to have been romantically involved with any woman until his late 20's.  At that time, he was involved with a woman named Ann Rutledge, and when she died in 1835, he was evidently crushed.  Not long after, he became involved with a woman named Mary Owen, but broke off their relationship because she got too fat.  In his early 30's, Lincoln met and got engaged to Mary Todd, but called it off shortly before their January, 1841, marriage.  A year or so later, they rekindled their relationship, and were finally married in late 1842.  A number of writers and historians, going as far back as Carl Sandburg in 1926 (whose Lincoln biography won a Pulitzer Prize), have questioned Lincoln's sexual orientation, suggesting he may have been gay or at least bisexual.  Others have dismissed these theories as unlikely and supported only by circumstantial evidence.

6. The Lincolns had four children, but only one lived to adulthood.  Lincoln's sister had died in the 1820's giving birth to a stillborn child, and since Lincoln himself only had one son who lived to give him grandchildren, he had very few descendants.  His last descendant, a great-grandson named Robert, died in 1985 in Virginia.

7. In addition to his law practice, Lincoln served as a member of the Illinois General Assembly throughout the 1830's and 40's, then served one term as a U.S. Congressman from 1846 to 1848, where he took a firm anti-war stance regarding the Mexican-American War that was being waged by president James K. Polk.

8. After leaving Congress in 1848, Lincoln spent the 1850's making himself famous as a lawyer and public speaker, and while he lost bids for U.S. Senate in both 1854 and 1858, the speeches he gave in those campaigns made him a national figure and a rising star in the new anti-slavery Republican party.  He was nominated for president in 1860 and won by defeating three other candidates who effectively split the Democratic vote three ways.  Although Lincoln was not an abolitionist, and had on numerous occasions stated that his only goal was to keep slavery from expanding to new territories, the slave states of the South seceded after his victory, certain that his election spelled doom for their rights to own slaves.

9. After the start of the Civil War, which began shortly after Lincoln took office, Lincoln did eventually free the slaves, in his now famous Emancipation Proclamation.  Many people questioned if he actually had the legal right to do this; Lincoln defended the move by saying it fell under his authority as head of the military.  He argued that, because the South was in rebellion, he had the right, as commander-in-chief, to suspend their civil laws.  Despite misconceptions to the contrary, the Emancipation Proclamation only affected states and territories that were, as of January 1, 1863, still in rebellion to the Union.  Thus, Kentucky and three other border slave-states were excluded, and their slaves were not freed until the 13th Amendment was passed in 1865.

10. Lincoln was assassinated in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865, just weeks after the war officially ended.  His assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was chased down and shot to death about a month later.  Several months after that, four people were hanged for conspiring with Booth, including the first woman ever executed under federal law in U.S. history.

10 Fun Facts About James Buchanan

James Buchanan, the 15th President of the United States

1. James Buchanan was born in a Pennsylvania log cabin in 1791, one of eleven children born to his parents. His father, also named James, was an immigrant from Ireland and was a well-respected businessman and farmer. Buchanan attended Dickinson College in the early 1800's, and after being expelled for bad behavior (which included heavy drinking, "cigar smoking," and practical jokes), he was later allowed to return and eventually graduated with honors in 1809.

2. Buchanan studied law after graduating from college and became a member of the Federalist party. He served in the defense of Baltimore during the War of 1812, and was also active in the Freemasons.

3. Following the end of the war, Buchanan served at term in the Pennsylvania legislature, then moved on to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served from 1821 to 1831. Following the collapse of the Federalist party in the 1820's, Buchanan joined the new Jacksonian party, which would eventually come to be known as the Democratic party. After serving a brief stint as the U.S. Minister to Russia, he returned to the States to fill a vacancy in the U.S. Senate in 1834. He remained in the Senate until 1845, when he resigned to become Secretary of State under James K. Polk.

4. During his tenure as Secretary of State, he turned down an offer to become a justice for the U.S. Supreme Court, and instead focused his attention on negotiating the Oregon Treaty with Great Britain, which ultimately settled a long-standing dispute regarding territorial ownership in the Pacific Northwest. The present border between the state of Washington in the U.S., and British Columbia in Canada, was established by this treaty. To date, Buchanan is the last Secretary of State who eventually became president.

5. Following his tenure as Secretary of State, Buchanan returned to diplomacy, serving as the U.S. Minister to Great Britain. Because he was overseas for much of the early 1850's, he was not involved in the divisive political debates that occurred during that time, most notably the highly controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act. This set the stage to make him a solid compromise candidate for the 1856 presidential election.

6. Though he did not expressly seek the nomination of the Democrats in 1856, he knew his name was being floated by a number of high-ranking officials in the party, and when the nomination was finally cemented at the convention, Buchanan accepted. He faced two opponents in the general election: former president Millard Filmore, now running as a member of the extremist Know Nothing party, and John C. Fremont, running as the first presidential candidate of the new Republican party. The Know Nothings and Republicans split their vote, and Buchanan won the election, marking the last time (to date) that a Democrat has won the presidency following directly on the heels of another Democratic president (in this case, Franklin Pierce).

7. Buchanan is the only president in U.S. history who never married. His neice, Harriet Lane, whom he had adopted at age 11 following the deaths of her parents, served as White House hostess during Buchanan's presidency.

8. Buchanan's presidency was marked by immense partisan strife over the issue of slavery. Buchanan attempted to take a middle ground approach in an effort to appease both sides, but the result was that both sides felt alienated and viewed Buchanan's leadership as weak and vascillating. He had promised not to run for re-election, and he kept true to that promise in 1860, retiring to his home in rural Pennsylvania. On his last day in office, Lincoln's inauguration day, Buchanan famously told him: "If you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel upon leaving it, you are a happy man."

9. Much speculation has been made about Buchanan's sexual orientation, with the majority of modern experts convinced he was unquestionably gay. He had been engaged early in life, but his fiancee broke off the engagement due to neglect, dying very shortly thereafter. Following this, Buchanan vowed to never marry, and instead lived for many years in Washington with Alabama Senator William Rufus King, who became vice-president under Franklin Pierce. Rumors abounded about their relationship, and they were jokingly referred to by other congressmen as "Buchanan and his wife." Following both men's deaths, their personal correspondence to one another was destroyed by their surviving family members, leading to even more speculation about the nature of their relationship.

10. Buchanan died in 1868 of respiratory failure, having published his memoirs a few years earlier - the first president to do so. In those memoirs he defends himself and his choices in office, particularly his highly criticized choice to do essentially nothing about the seccession of the southern states following the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln. He predicted that history would vindicate him, but to this day, he is generally ranked by historians among the worst of U.S. presidents.

Why the Tea Party Has to Go

(Stick with me through the following poll numbers and percentages.  I promise there is a point, but the background has to be set.)  

The 112th Congress is coming to an end.  The term won't officially end until the next Congress begins in January, but most of the bloodletting is done.

In both February and August of this year, Gallup polls found this 112th Congress's approval rating as low as 10%, the lowest ever in Gallup's 38 years of performing this poll.  The previous low was 14%, in 2008 during the 110th Congress and at the height of the worst economic recession since the 1930's.  Prior to 2007, Congressional approval ratings had only fallen below 20% twice - in 1992 and 1979 - both times during a recession.  

Throughout the 1980's and much of the 1990's, Congress's approval rating tended to vary between 20% and 40%.  Following the economic boom of the late 1990's, then the national unity after 9/11, the rates got as high as 84%, then quickly fell back to the traditional range between 20 and 40, with the average being roughly 30%.  A few quick snapshots to illustrate: In December of 2005, it was 29%; in October of 2006 is was 24%; in January of 2007, it was 35%.  

Then the economic recession happened.  That year, in 2008, the numbers began plummeting.  They entered the territory of the teens for the first time in years.  As mentioned above, they got as low as 14% at one point.  

However, in 2009, a new president and a new Congress came into office and the numbers returned to the normal equilibrium around 30%, getting as high as 39% in March of that year.  But the return to normal didn't last.  In 2010, the numbers began to fall into the 20's again, and began hovering in the low-20's and upper teens.  Even with the start of a new Congress in January of 2011 (the current 112th Congress), there was no new enthusiasm seen in the polls and the bad numbers have continued. 

This current Congress has only been at 20% or higher three times and not at all since May of 2011.  As stated above, it has twice rated as low as 10% - the lowest ever.  Its average approval rating in Gallup polls over the last two years has been 15.4% - easily the lowest in Gallup's history.  Compare that to (for instance), the 102nd Congress of 1991-1993 whose average approval rating was 30% (and that was during a mild recession).

So why have this Congress's numbers been so abysmal?  What separates this Congress from the one hundred and eleven that have come before it?  

There are a lot of reasons, of course.  According to a recent editorial in USAToday, which refers to the 112th Congress as the "Do-Nothing Congress" and opines that this Congress is easily the "worst ever" in the modern era, the rise of "rampant partisanship" is clearly the smoking gun, with both Democrats and Republicans "too beholden to special interests" to actually get any legislating done.  That's true of course, and the rise in partisanship can also be blamed, I believe, on the flow and availability of information in the modern world, where we are all inundated with different opinions in a constant stream, and everyone can find a partisan niche to wall up around themselves.  There's never been a time in U.S. history when so much information and so many different perspectives were so available on such a large scale.  Anyone looking for like-minded individuals can find them in the instantaneous click of a mouse, smart phone, or remote control button.

But the fact remains that there have always been partisan divides in this country.  We have functioned under a 2-party system for more than 150 years now, and it would be short-sighted, not to mention completely indefensible, to suggest that our partisan quarrels are somehow worse today than at any other time in the past.  Republicans and Democrats have always fought over ideologies, management and labor have always been at each other's throats, and the Left and the Right have always been avowed enemies.  

So what's different in the last few years?

Enter the Tea Party.

The Tea Party movement seems to have begun around 2008, springing from the 2008 presidential campaign of Texas Republican Ron Paul, a favorite among fiscal conservatives and Libertarians.  Following the recession and subsequent federal bailouts of 2008, as well as the election of Barack Obama in November of that year, the movement really got going.  According to the website of the so-called Tea Party Patriots, the movement found its voice in 2009 "from the reaction of the American people to fiscally irresponsible actions of the federal government."  

Gallup first began tracking support for the Tea Party movement in early 2010.  Since that time, support for the movement has been as low as 21% and as high as 32%, with the average during that span (up through August of 2012) around 27% - or roughly 1 in 4 Americans at any given time.  Percentages for Americans who claim to be "opponents" of the movement are about the same - averaging around 25%.

What this means, of course, is that the Tea Party first became a major political force in 2010, after about a year of formation.  Therefore, the first major federal election that the movement influenced was the 2010 Congressional election - the election that brought in the current low-rated 112th Congress.

In that election, numerous candidates supported by the Tea Party won seats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.  Earlier that year, motivated by the growing strength of the movement, Michele Bachmann, Representative from Minnesota, formed and became the chair of the congressional Tea Party Caucus.  After the election later that year, the Caucus grew and currently has 66 members in this 112th Congress, making it one of the biggest ideological caucuses in Congress.

In addition to the 66 official members of the Congressional Tea Party Caucus, there are numerous other members of Congress who are affiliated with the Tea Party movement, but have chosen not to join the congressional caucus.  Among them are prominent Tea Party favorites like Ron Paul, Paul Ryan, and Marco Rubio.

The point of all this is to say that our current Congress, particularly the House of Representatives, is heavily populated by active members of the Tea Party movement, or by people closely associated with, and heavily influenced by, the Tea Party. 

The fact that the 112th Congress has, in many ways, been characterized by its takeover by the Tea Party, and the fact that this Congress is among the least effective, and certainly the most unpopular of all Congresses in modern memory (remember the Gallup poll numbers above), can surely be no accident or coincidence.  The first fact is undoubtedly one of the direct results of the second fact.  

I asked above what separates this Congress from the one hundred and eleven that have preceded it.  Partisan and ideological divides have always existed, and we have been living in the Information Age, with information overload, for at least 20 years, so the only difference between this Congress and the ones before it is the Tea Party.  It's the smoking gun.  It's the cause that has led to the effect of an abysmally inoperable Congress, and the most unpopular Congress in modern memory.    

So why has the Tea Party caused this situation?  What is it, exactly, about the Tea Party movement that has led to such a deadlock in Congress, causing it to be so wildly ineffective and widely condemned?

Two words: No Compromise.

This brief phrase has essentially been the rallying cry of the Tea Party movement.  Numerous Tea Party-backed candidates have won election to Congress on this slogan, and have made it the centerpiece of their ideology.  

Richard Mourdock, the current Republican nominee for U.S. Senate from Indiana had this to say on MSNBC following his primary win in May: "I think bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view."  

An article in the Tea Party Tribune (a Tea Party news website), dealing with budget issues, was titled "Our Moment: No Compromise. No Surrender. Total Victory."  

On a Tea Party newsletter from Tennessee, the biggest words on the page are simply: "NO COMPROMISE!" 

On Amazon.com, a DVD detailing the history of the Kansas Tea Party says it is produced by "No Compromise Productions."  

In the Oregon Tea Party online store, you can buy a hooded sweatshirt with an image of the cracked Liberty Bell and the slogan "No Compromise."  

As Juan Williams, of Fox News, wrote in May of this year, "The Tea Party's no-compromise ideology has become an accepted part of the political game."  

The fact is, the Tea Party's central political strategy and rallying cry is a refusal to compromise.  It's what makes the Tea Party the Tea Party.  

Can there be any wonder, then, why the 112th Congress has been so ineffective?  When we, as Americans, go to the polls and elect a slew of political leaders who have vowed to never compromise, can we really be surprised when we end up with a deadlocked Congress that gets nothing done?  When we end up getting exactly what we asked for?

When people vote for Tea Party candidates who promise no compromise, what sort of government are they expecting to get?  One that actually works?  In what way is "no compromise" related to the democratic ideals this country was founded on?  The fact is, in a free republic, built on democratic principles, compromise is the only way to get anything accomplished.  And to our great detriment, we have seen the truth of that statement played out over the last two years during this 112th Congress.  No compromise means, effectively, no government.  Is that really what we want as a country?  Maybe it's time to start voting for candidates, Republican or Democrat or any other party, who actually want to compromise, who actually want to move this country forward into the 21st century, instead of imagining a fantasy world where the 18th century lives forever.

And, of course, that's the really ironic thing about the Tea Party movement.  They claim to uphold the ideals of the Founding Fathers, but what they are really upholding are the very ideals that the Founding Fathers fought against and revolted against.  

"No Compromise" is the rallying cry of autocrats and dictators.  

Dictators don't compromise.  In a free society, compromise is what sets us apart from dictatorships.  And the Founding Fathers knew compromise better than any Republican or Democrat alive today.  A simple elementary school review of the drafting of the Constitution makes that abundantly clear.    

If you think Congress is ineffective; if you are tired of the partisan gridlock in Washington; if you are ready to see this country move forward; then you might want ask yourself if the group of "No Compromise" is really who you want to be casting your vote for.  

As long as we continue to elect ideologues who refuse to compromise, we will continue to get exactly what we asked for - a pitifully ineffective, virtually inoperable Congress that only masquerades as a government.  

Rush in Indianapolis

On Thursday, I attended my seventh Rush concert, this time in Indianapolis.  Now, seven may sound like a lot to some people, but be assured, it's nothing compared to many Rush fans.  I discovered Rush later than some of my fellow fans, not becoming interested in them until I was about 26, and I didn't attend my first concert until 2004.  By then, they had already been putting out albums and touring for thirty years.  I know other fans who have seen thirty or forty shows over the years.

In any case, I had originally intended to sit this tour out, not because I didn't want to see them again, but simply because they weren't coming anywhere very close to me, and I figured I'd save the money.  My wife was totally down with that.

But after I heard their new album, released in June, I simply couldn't resist** the urge to find a show and buy a ticket.  The closest venue was Indianapolis (about two hours away), so that made the most sense.  However, the tickets for the show had already been on sale for over a month by that time, and I had very little hope of getting a very good seat.

It's important, at this point, to note that I refuse to see concerts unless I have a very good seat.  I've simply seen too many shows up close to ever settle for the rafters.  That may sound snotty, but I don't go to that many concerts, so when I do spring for a show, I want to be up close.

As I had feared, the ticket offered to me on TicketBastard was not very good.  So I made the somewhat rash decision to purchase a ticket through a broker called VIP Nation.  I received a 13th row, center stage seat, a commemorative ticket and show pass, a T-shirt, and a bag.  The cost was $325.00 - way more than I've ever dreamed of paying for a concert, even Rush.  But it had to be done.

Despite the fact that my car had been acting up for about a week prior to the show, and despite suffering from a sinus infection, I said a little prayer and headed off to Indianapolis on Thursday.

Ironic, no?  Rushville, Indiana, is halfway between Indy and Cincy.

The weather was fine and the car ran well and I arrived at the venue around 5 pm.  Since I had some time on my hands, I had a few beers in a nearby bar called The Tilted Kilt.  Think British Pub mixed with Hooters.  The servers were all in skimpy kilts, knee socks, and push-up bras with bare midriffs.  It was pleasant.  I'm pretty sure there was something on TV.

Anyway, when the doors opened, I headed inside and found my seat in the 13th row.  Next to me was a middle-age father and his teenage son.  On the other side was a forty-something woman and her husband or boyfriend.  She told me she had seen Rush thirty-five times, but this was the first time she had ever been on the floor close to the stage.  She was so excited she was literally quivering.  She was also drunk.  She was so keyed up, I was afraid to bump her for fear I'd give her an orgasm.  It was unbelievable how excited she was.  Her partner seemed embarrassed.

Right on time, the lights dimmed and the opening video montage came on.  These are always amusing and quirky little films starring the three members of Rush, usually dressed up in some outrageous costume and doing extraordinarily bizarre things.  While the video is playing, the members sneak onto the stage in the dark, then the video segues into the opening chords of the first song - in this case, the 1982 fan favorite, "Subdivisions," with its familiar and chest-buzzing opening keyboard riff.

The first set can best be described as "Deep Cuts of the 80's."  For hardcore fans like me, this was very satisfactory, but I'm sure a lot of casual Rush fans, who prefer the more familiar older stuff, were baffled by the lack of "concert standards" like "The Spirit of Radio," "Freewill," and "Limelight."

By the end of the first set, I was feeling pretty crappy.  Naturally, I had been on my feet the whole time, bouncing and fist-pumping and whooping it up, and my sinus infection did not agree with these actions. I was glad to have twenty minutes to sit in my seat.

During the second set, the boys did something they have never done before: they brought other performers onto the stage to play songs with them.  In this case, a small string orchestra consisting of about six violins and two cellos.  This group played along with every song of the second set except the final one.  The first nine songs of the set consisted of songs from their new album, "Clockwork Angels."  About halfway through this run of new songs, I heard the girl next to me - the one who was wetting herself at the beginning of the show - remark to her guy: "Guess we should have bought this album, huh?"

They ended the set with another song from the 80's, one from the 90's, then two old fan favorites, "YYZ" and "Working Man."  The latter was their first radio hit, from their first album in 1974.

After letting the crowd cheer and scream for a few minutes, Rush came back out for a 2-song encore, ripping into their most famous song, "Tom Sawyer," and finishing with what is probably their most popular concert song, "2112" (the latter in abbreviated format, since it's almost 20 minutes long).

Overall, I enjoyed the show and it seems to me that, despite being over 60, the boys still have it.  Every new Rush tour breeds fear in the breast of the hardcore Rush fan that this will be their last, but it seems to me like they could keep going for a while.  I sure hope so, anyway.

By the time the show ended, I was sweaty, tired, and had a sinus headache.  I was looking forward to getting into the air-conditioned car, getting a Diet Dr. Pepper for the road, and getting home to bed.  I was already planning on going to the doctor the next morning.

I had parked in a pay lot near the venue in downtown Indianapolis.  Recall that my car had been acting up for about a week prior to the show.  I got out to my car, got in, turned the key, and it wouldn't start.  Turned the key again.  Still wouldn't start.  I now found myself sick, tired, ears buzzing, and stranded in a strange city, in a downtown parking lot at 11 o'clock at night.

By sheer luck, I have an aunt and uncle who live in Indianapolis.  Without dragging this sorry tale out, they came and got me, waited with me until after 1 o'clock for Triple-A to arrive (their Triple-A account), and arranged to have the car towed to a local Nissan dealer.  They also offered to let me take their car home the next day so I could get to work, then bring it back Saturday to pick up my own car.  After the car was towed, they took me home, put me up in a room, watered and drugged me, and let me sleep.  I got up the next morning to towels and a new toothbrush in the bathroom.  I called the Nissan place, explained my predicament, and they got the car fixed by 9:30.  It was just a sensor that was easily replaced.  Big relief.  I made it home with almost two hours to spare before I had to be at work at 1 pm.

And so ends another sordid account of Scott and Rush concerts.  This wasn't the first time I had driven a long way to watch Rush only to find my car not starting when I attempted to leave.  The previous time I was able to get the car started after about ten minutes, and it turned out to be nothing - just a glitch or something.  That was five years ago.  Same car.

But the sordid tale ends with a silver lining in the clouds: the silver lining of family.  How fortunate to have family in Indianapolis who love me and care about me and are willing to put themselves out, late at night, to haul my sorry ass out of a downtown parking lot, put me up for the night, and help me get my car fixed!  And they were going to let me take their own car home, if need had been!  So a big shout-out to Uncle Michael and Aunt Sheila - thanks for being there for me :)



** As I have been typing this post, I have had my Rush mix playing in the background.  When I typed the word "resist" above, my thoughts immediately went to the 1996 Rush song by the same title.  Wouldn't you know it, not five seconds later, "Resist" popped up in the mix - out of 172 songs.

10 Fun Facts About George W. Bush

George W. Bush, the 43rd President of the United States

1. George W. Bush was born in the summer of 1946 in New Haven, Connecticut.  His father, the future 41st president, was an ex-Navy pilot and current student at Yale University when his first child was born.  His grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a successful businessman who would later serve in the U.S. Senate.  The oldest of six children, one of Bush's younger sisters died of leukemia at the age of three.

2. Following his father's graduation from Yale in 1948, the Bush family relocated to Midland, Texas, where the elder Bush got involved in the oil business.  George W. Bush attended public schools in the Midland area until the family moved again, in 1959, to Houston.  In high school, Bush was sent to Massachusetts to attend the prestigious Phillips Academy boarding school.  In the 1960's, Bush attended Yale, graduating with a degree in History, then earned an MBA from Harvard, the only president to have earned such a degree.

3. In 1977, Bush met and married Laura Welch, a school teacher who had also worked as a librarian in the Houston Public Library system.  She gave birth to fraternal twin daughters in 1981, their only children.  When Laura was still in high school, she ran a stop sign two days after her 17th birthday and caused a collision in which a passenger in the other car was killed.  She was not charged with any crimes, and has since stated that the episode caused her to lose her religious faith for a very long time.

4. Shortly after marrying, Bush made his first foray into politics, running for a seat in the House of Representatives from Texas.  Following his defeat by Democrat Kent Hance, Bush left politics and instead went into the oil business like his father before him, creating and overseeing a number of oil exploration companies.

5. In 1988, when his father ran for, and eventually won, the presidency, Bush served as one of his father's primary campaign advisers.  After the successful run, Bush returned to his business interests and became a managing partner in the Texas Rangers baseball team.  When he sold his shares in the team nine years later, he made more than 14 million dollars over his initial investment.

6. After serving again as a campaign adviser for his father's failed bid at re-election in 1992, Bush, who was now widely known and recognized, entered politics again, running for Texas governor in 1994.  He faced a strong incumbent in Ann Richards, but Bush defeated her easily by a margin of more than 7%.  A popular governor in Texas, he won reelection in 1998 with nearly 70% of the popular vote, and became the first Texas governor in history to be elected to two consecutive 4-year terms.  During his second term, he controversially declared June 10, 2000, to be "Jesus Day" in Texas, a day when Texans were encouraged to help those in need.

7. Throwing his name into the hat for the 2000 presidential election, Bush very quickly moved to the head of the pack of potential Republican nominees, and it came down to a race between Bush and Senate icon John McCain.  The primary was a nasty business, with both candidates accused of running a smear campaign, and in the end Bush came out ahead, winning his party's nomination.  One of the accusations of smearing leveled by McCain's camp was a rumor that McCain's adopted Bangladeshi daughter was actually a black child that he had fathered out of wedlock.

8. The general election proved to be no less divisive.  Polls throughout the year showed both Bush and Democratic candidate Al Gore neck and neck, and in the end, Gore won the popular vote, but Bush won more of the electoral vote, and thus won the presidency.  The electoral vote count was contested based on problems with vote-counting in Florida, leaving the results in limbo until early December when the Supreme Court reversed a decision by the Florida Supreme Court and put a halt to all recounts, effectively giving Bush Florida, and thus the presidency.

9. Bush's time as president was one of increasing political cynicism in the U.S., and increasing political instability abroad.  He won reelection in 2004 over Democratic challenger John Kerry, but many saw the election as one deciding between the lesser of two evils.  Following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, Bush enjoyed the highest approval rating of any president since polling began, but by the end of his second term, his approval rating had plummeted and he actually attained the highest disapproval rating of any president - 71%.  This was largely due to the global economic collapse that occurred during the final few months of Bush's second term as president.  Bush was applauded by his supporters for his leadership in the War on Terror, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his educational reforms, but criticized by his foes for blurring the lines of Church and State, not responding adequately to the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, and for turning a large government surplus into a large national debt.

10. In retirement, Bush has kept a low profile, rarely appearing in public and staying almost entirely out of the political arena.  He and his wife purchased a home in the Dallas area, and Bush published his memoirs in 2010.   He was forced to cancel a speaking engagement in Switzerland in 2011 due to increasing pressure on the Swiss government by human rights groups to arrest him for human rights violations if he ever enters the country.  These accusations are related to his administration's use of torture on suspected terrorists.  In 2010, he teamed up with former president Bill Clinton to raise funds for earthquake victims in Haiti.