Category Archives: Big Thoughts

Obama a Great Christian

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You will never hear the words “We want to enslave you” from a left-wing American politician although most left-wing politicians will have you believe their counterparts, the right-wing politicians, want to keep slaves.

The North American Freedom Foundation (NAFF) defines slavery as “forced, unpaid service or work.” They include this caveat: “Due to its graphic content, this website is not suitable for children.”

That definition of slavery as the systematic exploitation of labor is incomplete. “Chattel slavery” refers to people who are the actual or apparent property of another person, company, or government. Let’s repeat that for emphasis: Chattel slaves are the apparent property of a government.

And we haven’t even thought about wage slavery, peonage, debt bondage, or indenture. Or the fact that slaves cannot refuse to work (“unemployment” as well as “workfare” programs). Slaves cannot leave home without explicit permission (meaning they need a passport). And so on.

Evidences of slavery predate the written history in Sumer where history itself began; man has enslaved other men on every continent and in every time that man has lived. It is so pervasive that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 states: “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.” Period.

There is a moral absolute there.

Many religions (including the entire Judeo/Christian/Islamist hierarchy) hold that their systems of morality derive from the commands of God.

There is an opposing moral absolute in religion.

Slavery “was established by decree of Almighty God … it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation … it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts.” Jefferson Davis said in 1850. “The right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example.” Baptist minister Rev. R. Furman said.

Huh. The Bible endorses slavery?

Well, yes. Our Bible indeed recognizes and regulates the practice of keeping slaves (see Colossians 4:1, Deuteronomy 15:12-15, Ephesians 6:9, and First Timothy 6:1-2).

Makes slavery the Christian thing to do, innit. Slave owners would agree. Slave owners must provide everything for their slaves: housing, education, medical care, protection, and love. They do what is best for their slaves.

It’s the Christian thing to do.

Are Americans slaves?

The government already supplies most education, some housing, police protection, and guards the borders against all ingress as well as our egress.

The government Senator Obama would lead wants to take over all the medical care and love, too.

It’s the Christian thing to do.

Senator Obama has one moral absolute: he would lead all Americans on the path of righteousness for its own sake. In his world that is the path of total care, from cradle to grave. His left wing policies would take the sweat of our brows, all of it, and “give” us back our guards, our housing, our medical care, our policing, and our schooling. And, of course, his government would love us totally.

Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard about the “tax cuts.” Anything that increases the national debt ain’t a tax cut.

Owing your soul to the Company Store is slavery, no matter how you gussy it up.

Barack Obama must be a great Christian to want to further enslave us that way.

After all, it’s the Christian thing to do.

The news is all Election all the time. Even I have written about it a couple of times. Conventional wisdom holds that voters don’t usually think about the election until after the World Series. This is not a usual year. The Phillies and Tampa Bay are in the World Series. Most peeps don’t even know Tampa Bay has a baseball team so there is nothing else to talk about.

This morning, Radio Guy asked TV News Guy, “Is there anything else going on out there?” There is. There’s a school shooting in maybe Arkansas with a couple of deaths. I couldn’t even find that on Google news. And a TV news anchor, severely beaten in what police think was a random attack, has died. Oh, that was in Arkansas.

Throw da bums out. Then we’ll have something worthwhile to talk about.

RIP, PL

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I don’t care what “they” say at funerals. Losing a family member or a close friend is not a cause for celebration; it’s a time to fill up the hole left in our lives when all we have are memories.

Paul Newman wanted to be remembered as a racer who supported his habit by acting. He died last Friday at 83 after a battle with cancer.

Darn it, that’s like losing a friend who really made it.

We feel that way when a popular actor dies. We invite great actors and writers into our homes and our thoughts and our lives in a way we would never do with an acquaintance down the street. We often spend more time with them and they stay in our memory longer than people we work with or even our real life friends.

“No, it IS losing a friend who really made it,” my real friend “Rufus” said. “You just hadn’t seen him in the last 32 years.”

Well, sort of. We had more of a relationship with PLN than he did with us. See I started driving race cars a year or so after he did. We drove the same tracks at the same times but rarely in the same class. We rubbed elbows and he even helped push my car in the pits. We shared a favorite track (Lime Rock) where he ran some hot laps just this past August. He was always a better driver than almost anyone else I know.

But he would have known me in Nomex, not in street clothes. I would have known him anywhere.

The Oscar-winning actor was intensely private in public but he never played the part of a celebrity at the racetrack. He didn’t play any part there. He was not just there for his good looks. He was a driver

P. L. Newman drove Bob Sharp’s Datsuns in SCCA and in the under 2-liter Trans Am but he won his first race at Thompson Speedway in Connecticut in a Lotus. I may have driven that race in what was then my E-Production TR-4. I went on to muddle about in Camaros in A-Sedan and GT-1 although I came back to the Triumph a couple of times and even drove a Lotus Formula C. He went on to drive B-Sedan, C- and D-Production, and GT-1, a Porsche 935 at LeMans, an assortment of Corvettes, and a Mustang in GTS at the 24 Hours of Daytona.

“If he had started younger,” Bob Sharp said, “he would have been World Champion.” He was simply that good a driver.

It has been a bad year for racing. Phil Hill, our only American-born Formula One champion, died in August. Watkins Glen founder Cam Argetsinger died in April. Jimmy Stewart, who carried the Scottish flag against Stirling Moss, Mike Hawthorne and Juan Manuel Fangio and who inspired his little brother Jackie to go racing, died in January.

I don’t feel the same sense of personal loss about them. See, I didn’t know them.

Paul Newman was one of the good guys. My c.1974 race at Bryar (now New Hampshire Motor Speedway) was red flagged and the entire pack was diverted to sit in the pit lane. The pack inched forward but pit lane was pretty flat where I sat and I couldn’t get the Camaro to roll without starting the engine. Race cars don’t have fans and don’t idle well so no one wants to start one without reason. He was walking through the pits at the time. He grabbed a couple of other guys to push me along. It’s what everybody did.

“Can you send me that picture of you guys at Pocono?” Rufus asked me.

Rufus would like that photo because I was driving his car while he babysat millwrights rebuilding a chemical plant in Houston in 1976. I’m not sure anyone took any pictures although perhaps my dad did. He took a lot of photos over the years. I’ll send it if I can find it. His car wasn’t in the background, though.

Paul Newman, Mary Harper, Dick Harper (back to camera)
My whole family had come to the race. PLN was also there, driving. He won that race as well as an SCCA national D-production title that year. I introduced him to Anne and to my mom in the paddock. He stood and talked to these drooling women for quite a while, easily. That was my parents’ 30th wedding anniversary which put my dad in that “how do I top this” kind of spot.

Those are some of my memories of a genuine nice guy.

Not Writing

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I write but I rarely write about writing. I think about writing. I sometimes talk with friends about writing. I have written once or twice about writing*1*. Thank goodness I don’t do it very often.

See, the first piece of advice a young writer gets is, “Write what you know.” Unfortunately for readers, most writers know most about writing so they tend to, well, write about it. I’d rather write about nude wimmens or careening to the inside of turn 7 at Lime Rock or whether I can catch a cow on a hook in the deep blue waters of the Gulfstream.

But the sun is shining. Life is good. And Duma Key the place is, for now, very far away.

I’m reading Duma Key the book right now and have been thinking about why I like Stephen King and, as a broader question, why we all like Stories-with-a-Capital-S and the people in them. See, I don’t read fantasy. I don’t even like horror stories. I never told ghost stories around the campfire nor believed them when I listened but I like Stephen King and he tells some serious ghost stories.

I have just two simple truths to share here:

1. We want to spend our time with interesting people.
2. Characters in novels are always busy.

The USA Network peeps have it right with their “Characters Welcome” promotion. The books I like best, the movies that grab me, and the television serials I keep going back to are all peopled with interesting characters. It doesn’t matter as much what they do in the stories as it matters what makes them interesting.

I may be an interesting person. Or not. You may even like me as a person. Or not. No matter. Neither of us particularly wants to share our time with someone doing what I did today. I brushed, pooped, showered, and wandered around my office in my underwear for a while. I spoke to a couple of clients. I researched a strategic plan. I wrote this blog and my weekly column. I worked on a couple of photo images. I checked that I have a band booked for the weekend concert. I may have passed gas. I ate lunch and will eventually eat supper. Tonight I have a heavy evening planned with the t00b.

Yawn.

That was a busy day. Absolutely no part of it moved this story forward. In the novel we could have skipped directly from finding the red picnic basket in the attic to catching the cow on the hook.

Any writer who can create someone we like and keep us hooked with his or her day-to-day puttering is a treasure.


1 My 10-1/2 Hot Tips for Small-Town Op-ed Writers was commissioned and published by Inklings in 1997.

America needs trucks

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I’m not a carpenter, but I do haul sheets of plywood. I’m not a garbage man, but I do haul trash to the dump. I’m not a yardman, but I do tow my broken down tractor around. I need a truck.

My op-ed in the Detroit Free Press was an open letter to Bob Lutz, Vice Chairman and general visionary of Global Product Development at GM.

Dear Bob Lutz, I wrote:

GM needs to lead the market. You can touch the real heart of America with GM innovation. If you can put a 30-m.p.g. truck in the showroom this year and build the new 35-m.p.g. truck for 2011, the rest of the product line would fly again. Read the entire op-ed here..

We’re dying here. GM has to do something.

So. Anybody know how to get to Mr. Lutz? If so, send him a copy, would you?

Network Effect

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The “network effect” describes a phenomenon in which the value of a product goes up as more people use it.

E-mail and telephones are classic examples. So is a Ponzi scheme, although the two are not related.

I think.