Tom Emmer is a Bully!

A local blogger got it just right about Tom Emmer
by Charlie Leck

I’m a regular reader of a blog called Blog of the Moderate Left. Usually it’s pretty good stuff. Yesterday morning it was really good stuff. Blogger Jeff Fecke got it just right (correctly) – spot on – when he described Tom Emmer as a bully. Emmer is a Republican candidate for Governor here in Minnesota.

“Of course, it shouldn’t be surprising that Emmer holds others to standards he himself refuses to live up to. He’s a bully. He wants to push others around. There’s nothing consistent about his ethics; he just wants to force others to dance to his tune, to punish others for made-up infractions. This is who Emmer is. And it’s why he’d be a disastrous governor.”

I posted a comment in response to the blog…

“You’ve nailed Emmer. The operative word is “bully.” I’ve seen him in action both in the State Legislature and as a councilman here in our town some years ago. He doesn’t like people to question him or doubt him. He bullies around anyone who does. Though he’s being portrayed as a good citizen, he really isn’t. He’s left bills unpaid to people he promised to pay and who need to be paid. He has weird excuses, like: “That’s my wife’s debt!” I’d really like to get a look at his finances, so we can see where HE gets his money. Good posting. You got Emmer just right!”

Fecke is a freelance writer from Lakeville, Minnesota. He covers politics for the Alexandria Independent. He’s not quite as “moderate” as the title of his blog implies, but he’s enjoyable to read.

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How to get a Rise out of Readers!

I made some comments in a blog last week about the Bible and I got a storm of reaction!
by Charlie Leck

I’ve learned it’s best not to write here about the Bible and Jesus. I got some pretty significant reactions to my blog about the gospels being altered a bit by the early church and that Jesus probably didn’t really say all the things attributed to him (Reverend Idiots). I upset a number of Christians who questioned my own standing in the Faith. I allowed some of those comments to be posted; however, the majority of the comments were so nasty in both tone and language (and, of course, completely anonymous) that I would not permit them to be published. You think people who want to comment on a blog could at least use a name.

And, you would think a CHRISTIAN would at least be kind and considerate in his or her comments. Wouldn’t you? Perhaps I’m naïve.

I want to share with you some information about the development of the New Testament of the Bible and how it came about, but it is not a light or simple matter. I’m working slowly through a blog about this topic and I’m enjoying the process of going back into some of these theories and complicated studies about the historical Jesus – that is, the things about Jesus and what he said that we can be fairly certain are accurate and historical.

One day, in spite of what I say in the first sentence of this blog, when I’m satisfied with it – even as troubling as it might be to some readers – that blog will appear here. In the meantime, if any of you would like to read about the work of the Jesus Seminar you can always go to this web site. The introduction on the home page of that web site explains clearly what it’s all about.

“Convened in 1985 by Robert W. Funk, the Jesus Seminar has become a lightning rod for international debate about the "historical Jesus" - that is, the real facts about the person to whom various Christian gospels refer. The Seminar's on-going project has been to evaluate the historical significance of every shred of evidence about Jesus from antiquity (about 30-200 CE). Over the past twenty years more than 200 scholars from North America & beyond have participated in its semi-annual meetings. Seminar Fellows include prominent scholars from Canada, Great Britain, Germany, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand as well as the U.S. For a roster of active participants click here.

“The first phases of the Seminar's work on the evaluation & interpretation of Jesus tradition are complete & the results have been published. The Seminar is now turning its attention to analysis of the historical value of materials about & by the first generation of Jesus people: e.g., the Acts of the Apostles & letters of Paul.”

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The Tea Party and the GOP

Here’s a possibility that will need to be watched closely by political wonks.*
by Charlie Leck

Do they party together – I mean, these people in the Tea Party and those stand-up, bright and solid people in the Republican Party? Just exactly how do they get along?

A lot of us are watching and waiting to see.

Delaware
A Tea Party candidate, Christine O’Donnell, just beat out an establishment Republican in Delaware in a primary race for the U.S. Senate. That has a lot of establishment folks shaking their collective heads; however, what’s important about this is watching to see who many of those establishment folks will vote for in the general election on November’s first Tuesday.

The same thing is happening here in Minnesota in the gubernatorial race. The Tea Party is solidly behind Tom Emmer, a nutty, knee-jerk Republican who has been endorsed by the Tea Party goddess, Sarah Palin. Emmer also managed to win the GOP endorsement at the State Convention. Here plenty of Republicans are bolting away from Emmer and sliding over to either the Independent Party choice or to the Democrat’s candidate (mostly to the former).

It will tell us a lot about the strength of the Tea Party movement if O’Donnell can win in Delaware and Emmer can win in Minnesota.

Other states to watch are the following:

New York
The Tea Party candidate for Governor, Carl Paladino, toppled the GOP’s guy, Representative Rick Lazio.

Florida
The Tea Party took a stand behind Marco Rubio and Charlie Crist, formerly a Republican, will run as an Independent for a Senate seat.

Kentucky
The big victory by Rand Paul, an ophthalmologist and the son of Ron Paul, put him in a race against Democrat Jack Conway for the U.S. Senate. The son of the famous father beat out a traditional GOP candidate, Trey Grayson, in the primary. Since Paul currently is supported by 54% of those polled to only 39% for Conway, it looks like the Tea Party will get its man down there. There is too small an undecided number for Conway to make any kind of big movement up.

Alaska
With the help of Sara Palin, GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski was knocked off in the primary by the Tea Party’s guy, Joe Miller. In the general election Miller will go up against Democrat Scott McAdams for a seat in the U.S. Senate.

Other big races to watch
Watch how the Tea Party’s darling, Sharron Angle, does in Nevada against the current majority leader in the U.S. Senate, Harry Reid. Angle knocked off a GOP regular to get in the race. Other interesting Tea Party candidates are in big races in Colorado and Utah.

I’m going to watch the polls on these races for you!
In order to test the strength of the Tea Party, I’m going to watch the pre-election polls in these states to see if the Tea Party can hold traditional Republicans or if there will be significant leakage enough to cause problems for the GOP and the Tea Party. Can Democrats or Independents manage to pull out victories in several of these situations where they normally wouldn’t have won?

Or, is the Tea Party for real?
The other possibility is that the Tea Party movement is for real and there is a sea-change happening in American politics. We’ll know in another 45 days or so, but Hamline University’s professor of Political Science thinks there is a major change going on and that the Tea Party will elect as many as 7 candidates to Congress. In an interview on WCCO Radio (Twin Cities) this morning, he compared it to the political reformation in the 60s and early 70s that was very liberal in nature and was made up of the young. This time he sees the change as being older, wealthier and conservative.

Dan Balz, in a Washington Post article, suggested it might be called a "Civil War" or an "insurrection." He claims the leadership of the Republican Party has lost control. Of the Tea Partiers he said: “They are the leading edge of an anti-Washington movement that will wipe out the Democrats in November and threaten President Obama’s reelection hopes in 2012. [read the entire Washington Post story]

Yet, maybe not! The movement is so angry, so anti-everything, that it does not have a central message. And, the movement is way off center. There is a history in America of elections being won by the party that can most clearly capture the center. The Democrats have a chance to do that in the next six weeks. Balz, in his Washington Post story also sees this as possible (with a big slap of the President at the same time):

“Whatever the outcome, the Tea Party movement’s conservatism could leave the center of the political spectrum open to Obama and the Democrats, if the President is smart enough to reclaim it.”

A KSTP TV5 Eyewitness News poll here in the Twin Cities shows Democrat Mark Dayton with a slim 2 point lead over Republican (and Tea Party endorsed) candidate Tom Emmer.

Dayton (Democrat) 38%
Emmer (Republican) 36%
Horner (Indepen.) 05%
Undecided 04%
Other 05%

Here’s the interesting question about this local election of ours: Horner’s numbers are certainly going to increase – and dramatically so! From where will those voters come? I hope and expect that they will move over from the far too rightish candidate Tom Emmer and the winner of the race will come from either the Democrats or the Independents.

The polls, all across the nation, will be telling us a lot in the next few weeks and I’ll be following them closely and I’ll report them here.

*WONK (according to the World Dictionary): noun… a person who is obsessively interested in a specified subject…

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Double Lamb Stew

A recipe that worked remarkably – and so I share it with you!
by Charlie Leck

I know I should leave cooking matters to others who really blog well about the subject – like my daughter, out in Oregon [Love Every Bite], or to the remarkable touch of Brett Laidlaw here in Minneapolis [Trout Caviar], but I experimented a couple of days ago on a new approach to lamb stew and it came out so remarkably well that I feel compelled to share it with you.

I’m off white potatoes – not allowed to eat them. Yet, lamb stew is one of my favorite dishes – especially now that cool, bracing evenings have returned to Minnesota. I was in a quandary. An idea came to me. Here’s what I did…

Double Lamb Stew without Potatoes

Here’s a lamb stew that doubles the flavor and intensity of lamb and gives you some lamb with every bite. And, it doesn’t use potatoes, but you won’t even miss them.

INGREDIENTS
(The lamb I used came, of course, from Sheepy Hollow at Native Oaks Farm)

• 1 lb of lamb stew meat (cubes)
• 1 lb of ground lamb
• 4 or 5 peeled and diced medium size tomatoes
• 1 or 2 stalks of celery sliced thinly
• 1 medium, chopped white or yellow onion
• 1 cup of fresh, high quality mushrooms
• 4 medium carrots sliced into medium pieces
• 1 medium sized fresh eggplant (cut in chunks as you would a potato)
• 2 cups of green peas (fresh is nice, but frozen are okay too)
• 4 cloves of fresh garlic diced into teeny little bits
• salt (I used course Kosher salt)
• pepper (freshly ground)
• ½ teaspoon of Turmeric
• small handful of fresh Parsley (if you can get it fresh)
• ½ teaspoon of Thyme
• ½ teaspoon of Oregano or Marjoram
• ½ teaspoon of Paprika
• 1 cup of a beef broth (I like to use the Better Than... brand!)
• Some fine, dry Marsala wine – at hand to create a fine stew sauce (I use one by Cantine Florio, Sicily)

1. Put the diced tomatoes and juices and a gulp of Marsala wine in a stewing pot and begin heating them on low. Use some of the salt and pepper to your own taste.

2. Add the Turmeric, Parsley, Thyme, Oregano and Paprika and allow the mixture to warm up at a low temperature. While this warming takes place start browning the following…

3. Brown the chopped onion, mushrooms and garlic in a terrific olive oil – ‘til they look wonderful but not burned. Drain and add to the stewing pot

4. Crumble and brown the ground lamb in the same pan you browned the onions, etc… without cleaning the pan, but with some more olive oil as needed. Just brown lightly because the ground meat will have hours to cook in the stewing pot. Drain and add to the mixture

5. Now, the same way, brown the lamb cubes in the same pan, adding a little salt and olive oil if needed, so that just the outside is browned thoroughly. Add to the mixture

6. Put into the pot the carrots, celery, and eggplant (not the peas)

7. Stir with a wooden spoon and increase the temperature as you attend to the mixture and pour in the cup of boiling beef broth

8. Before boiling takes place add another gulp of the Marsala wine and then allow the pot to boil gently for about five minutes, stirring all the time

9. Turn the heat or flames down so that the mixture will gently simmer for about three hours. Give the pot a light stirring every hour or so

10. You can then refrigerate the mixture for a day (there’s something wonderful about the flavors the next day when you reheat everything for an hour) or you can add the peas and allow the mixture to simmer a little more vigorously for another hour. If you’ve refrigerated over-night, add the peas the next day and allow everything to cook gently for an hour.

11. If, after an hour, the peas are the correct texture, you are ready for a very wonderful treat. Enjoy!

If you’re a lamb lover, what a wonderful dinner this will make. The ground lamb assures that you will get lamb flavor in every bite. Thanks to your regular stirring, the meat will be distributed throughout the mixture. I think you’ll find that the eggplant has added a soft, mild flavor to the mixture that you can’t get from potatoes.

You might enjoy adding a French baguette and, perhaps, a small green salad with your own vinegar and oil dressing. Add a nice, smooth and light red wine. I’m not allowed glutens anymore, so I scratched the bread and substituted some wonderful non-gluten crackers that I’ve discovered (made by Blue Diamond).

My late sister, Jean of Blessed Memory, liked to have some wonderful cucumbers and sour cream with a stew; and that would work with this Double Lamb Stew just fine.

Now that was a nice, pleasant break from my usual rants.

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Expiration Date Approaching

The Bush tax cuts are inching toward expiration and the Republicans want to restore (or renew) them. Why not have everyone pay his or her fair share?
by Charlie Leck

It was nine years ago that Dick Cheney and George W. Bush gave the wealthy of this nation a nice, juicy tax cut. Ever ask yourself why?

There are plenty of economists around who draw a line directly from our current economic collapse to these tax cuts. I think this tax favoritism is unfair. A couple of the nation’s wealthiest entrepreneurs also think it's unfair and they favor letting the cuts expire (Warren Buffet and Bill Gates). Warren Buffet has often used his secretary as an example of the unfairness of these tax policies. She pays taxes at a far higher rate than Buffet does. Why should she have to do that?

We, here in this household, benefit financially from the Cheney-Bush tax cuts; yet we whole-heartily favor letting them expire. We’ve bills to pay folks – heavy debts left us by the Cheney-Bush wars and foolish taxation policies. Those incredible expenses and debts should not rest so heavily on the shoulders of the middle class.

And Republicans are running around claiming that Democrats want to raise taxes on common middle class citizens. It is, of course, a lie. Republicans don’t mind lying these days. It fires up the Tea Party and frightens people who don’t pay close enough attention.

Instead, watch what the Republicans are doing. They want those favorable tax benefits for the wealthy continued.

Have you ever asked yourself why we’ve arrived at such an enormous chasm between the rich and the poor – or even between the rich and the middle class? Wealth in America is staggering, breath-taking and hard to believe! So is our poverty! Yet, the Republicans try to make us think these tax cuts are ambrosial. In fact, they smell very much like our sheep barn on a hot, humid day.

It’s really important that those of us who want the favoritism toward the rich to end sign a petition for Senator Patrick Leahy asking Congress to allow the tax cuts to expire. You can do so here…
http://act.democracyforamerica.com/go/197?akid=190.79982.JePdTj&t=1>

I hope you’ll sign the petition as I did just this morning. Recent polls show that nearly 70 percent of Americans want the tax cuts to expire. Republicans and the right-wing media ignore this overwhelming opposition to those tax cuts and use heavy-handed tactics to squeeze Democrats who are facing challenging reelection bids into siding with them on extension. Your voice is really needed on this issue.

You might also think about copying, cutting and pasting the message in this blog and emailing it to your friends who you think would be sympathetic to the appeal. Ask them to sign the petition.

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Dirty Banks

Sometimes it causes me to wonder… wonder!
by Charlie Leck

Hope some of you got hold of a copy of THE BIG SHORT and read it. It tells a remarkable story of America’s financial industry out of control. And here’s more…

"LAST month, a federal district judge approved a deal to allow Barclays, the British bank, to pay a $298 million fine for conducting transactions with Cuba, Iran, Libya, Myanmar and Sudan in violation of United States trade sanctions. Barclays was discovered to have systematically disguised the movement of hundreds of millions of dollars through wire transfers that were stripped of the critical information required by law that would have enabled the world to know that for more than 10 years the bank was moving huge sums of money for enemy governments. Yet all federal prosecutors wanted to settle the problem was a small piece of the action.

"When Judge Emmet Sullivan of federal district court in Washington, who ultimately approved the deal with Barclays, asked the obvious question, “Why isn’t the government getting rough with these banks?” the remarkable response was that the government had investigated but couldn’t find anyone responsible."
[from an editorial in the 13 September 2010 New York Times]

My god!

The quotation above is from an extraordinary editorial in today’s (Monday) New York Times. I urge you to read it.

My wife was cussing the other night about America’s banks. She grew up in a respectable and proud banking family. Her grandfather, Lyman E. Wakefield, Sr., was pretty illustrious in the business as one of the founders of First Bank Corporation here in Minnesota. He served as the CEO of the Corporation for many years before his death in 1945. He started at the lowest possible level on the ladder when he was assigned to work as a clerk in a First Bank in Austin, Minnesota. His duties included janitorial responsibilities. Her father (Junior) went to work for the Corporation right after graduating from Dartmouth and put in hard-time in North Dakota and Montana before being called back to duties in St. Paul. He was one of the founders in the 70s of a creative bank and wealth management company (Resource Trust Company) that was eventually swallowed up by U.S. Trust and eventually by Bank of America.

“I feel so ashamed of America’s banking industry,” my wife said to me one evening. “Whatever happened to honest, conservative banking?”

Of course, I had no answer for her – only a consoling hug.

Slowly, over the years, the Republican Party won over a lot of people to the idea that American banking and investment companies were far too regulated. Restrictions and curbs were loosened and much more freedom and flexibility was given to the industry. Go back and reread the paragraphs from the New York Times quotation above. It was bad and it was dirty, but no one seems to know who was responsible.

Whatever happened to corporate responsibility? It isn’t that difficult to figure out! Barclays was responsible! Who was in control of Barclays at the time? Part of getting all that big time money to run a company like that is too take on the risks of something like this and to be responsible for it.

Let me be clear. The New York Times editorial is really an hard slap at federal law enforcement agencies for allowing so many banks to get away with this (and take a look at some of the incredible things that banks have pulled off by looking at the editorial).

We’ve got to get the financial industry under control in this nation and that means tougher and stiffer regulations and strict enforcement. It won’t happen under current Republican philosophies and politics. The price we’ll pay for reinstalling Republican control over the Congress will be devastating.

I’m not kidding!

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Reverend Idiots

I have known many Christian pastors in my life and an awful lot of them are idiots – pure and simple!
by Charlie Leck

One reason many people have soured on religion is the collection of villains, thieves, scoundrels, and morons whose actions and comments demonstrate a perverted sense of its meaning and purpose, whether it's Sharron Angle claiming in a recent anti-abortion statement that "rape and incest are part of God's plan," or Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, asserting his belief that "President Obama is a Muslim because he was, in fact, born into that religion due to the 'seed of Islam' being passed to him through his father." [Ivan Gurvitz, Huffinton Post, 12 Sept 2010]

Terry Jones
Somehow, in some way, Terry Jones, of Gainesville (FL), got some kind of degree that allows him to refer to himself as the Reverend Terry Jones. In fact, this guy is an idiot. That’s nothing new. I’ve known lots of idiotic clergyman over the years.

Jones is the guy who threatened to burn a copy, or several copies, of the Koran(Quran) to commemorate 9-11. It caused a firestorm of controversy.

Have you heard this nut talk? Let’s understand this. Jesus would be ashamed of him. Jones bellows that “Islam is of the Devil!” Jones should understand that the sort of Christianity he espouses is of the devil – whatever the hell that means!

Jones often refers to his flock in the Dove World Outreach Center. It amounts to about two dozen. Jones and another pastor in the congregation are armed while they are in their church. Jones is often seen with a pistol sheathed in a holster on his hip. When you listen to him talk he is nothing more than a babbler with very poor grammar. He says he’s a former hotel manager who served as a Christian missionary in Europe for 30 years. The Gainesville Sun reported that Alachua County revoked the tax-exempt status of Dove World Outreach because portions of their property and facility are used as for-profit businesses. A number of the employees in the for-profit side of the Jones operation say they are forced to go to church and listen to the idiot or lose their jobs. [Here’s a story in the Orlando News about some of the followers of Jones.]

Gurvitz, quoted above, calls Jones “a clown.” Gurvitz then goes on to ask: “Why should anyone care about the actions of a dope? Even a religious dope?”

The problem is that Jones is now famous and has been given some sense of legitimacy, I suppose. He is certainly given a world stage where he generally exposes himself for the idiot he is. The only problem is that there are quite a few other idiots who are quite taken by him and think he is a hero.

Gurvitz gets even better in his 12 September blog when he very succinctly says of religious idiots…

The world is stuck in this cesspool of stupidity when it comes to religion, extending not just to the dumber individuals in various traditions, but to the media and government as well, where we're subjected to politicians who claim their candidacies are divinely sanctioned, goofball ministers who think they're striking a blow for God by burning books, and adherents ready to strike back with violence if their cherished book is burned.

Franklin Graham
This Franklin Graham character, son of the late Billy Graham, is another clergyman I’d put in the idiot asylum if it was up to me. Man, is he a whacked-out nut case. He’s running around saying that President Obama is a Muslim because his father was and "the seed of Islam" was passed to him and is a part of him. Now, do you see what I mean about stupid?

Muslims, Reverend Graham, says are bound for hell because salvation can only come through Jesus Christ.

“The Bible tells me so,” Mr. Graham exclaims.

He points to a Bible and proudly smiles because it says so right there.

This is what I mean by stupidity. Graham doesn’t even understand what the Bible is; that it is a product of man – pure and simple. The extraordinary scholar and missionary, Albert Schweitzer, years ago published a spectacular study called The Quest for the Historical Jesus. Schweitzer showed us what we can trust in the New Testament as an historical accounting of Jesus and his disciples. There was very little indeed, and the quotation to which Graham points is not part of that historical material, but was, in fact, an addition put into the mouth of Jesus by the early Church in order to establish its authority. Schweitzer was right. You can bank on it. And, it did not lower or weaken Schweitzer’s deep faith or his devotion to Jesus as a disciple. You can bank on it!

What makes Franklin Graham any kind of authority on scripture? Because his father was a famous evangelist? The world should stop being nice to these members of the clergy who are nothing but scoundrels and idiots. Religion has led too many people down foolish and harmful paths; and Christianity is included among those religions that do that.

I’m furious about this Franklin Graham character. I'm also angry that there are foolish people out there who buy into him – hook, line and sinker!

My god!

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