Obama as the Anti-Christ

I’m just left shaking my head!
by Charlie Leck

Here’s a very interesting and somewhat disturbing article I read on MinnPost last evening. I think, as an American, you ought to read it and think about it. This is how the way the article opens…

“A study has found that subtle (and often unconscious) negative racial attitudes toward African-Americans may have made white voters more susceptible to criticisms of Barack Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign — and may continue to prejudice their evaluation of his presidency today.

"In fact, such negative racial attitudes may even explain the popularity of one of the most ridiculous claims about President Obama — that he is the Anti-Christ.”
[click here to read the entire MinnPost article]

If you’ve got the time and fortitude you might also want to read the actual study out of the University of Colorado. Here’s where you can purchase a copy of the study! You’ll need to pay approximately $32 to download it. I’m not willing to do that because I expect we’ll see more and more thorough analysis of the study in the next several days.

Here’s the Abstract that introduces the study:

”This study investigated the impact of subtle racial priming on the persuasive impact of criticisms of Barack Obama in the month prior to the 2008 presidential election. To prime Black or White race, participants wrote a paragraph about a student with a typical Black or White name. They then read editorials that accused Obama of being unpatriotic or being the Anti-Christ, or that listed his positions on major issues. Participants responded to both criticisms with diminished preferences for and more negative beliefs about Obama, but only when African-American race was primed. Interestingly, the Anti-Christ criticism increased preferences and positive beliefs about Obama in the absence of racial priming, suggesting this criticism may have lacked credibility under neutral conditions.”

I’ll be watching the major papers and blogs about information contained in this study and will pass on anything I learn to you, my readers.

This is not a laughing matter with many people. There are real believers out there and they keep spreading the word within fundamentalist Christian circles that President Obama is the antichrist. Here’s a statement on a web site called Countdown to Armageddon – see if it doesn’t sound sculpted to fit….

“The Antichrist – also described in the Bible as the ‘son of perdition’ and the ‘beast!’ Like Hitler, who was one of history’s antichrist archetypes, he will have great charisma and speaking ability, ‘a mouth speaking great things.’ The antichrist will rise to power on a wave of world euphoria, as he temporarily saves the world from its desperate economic, military and political problems with a brilliant 7 year plan for world peace, economic stability and religious freedom.”

Wow! That’s crazy stuff and it is designed intentionally and exactly to fit President Obama. It's a crazy world we live in.

Primary Day

The eyes of all politicos are on 3 states today, to see what the trends are!
by Charlie Leck

Clues will come from Today’s voting in Arkansas, Kentucky and Pennsylvania. We’ll get a glimpse of the impact President Obama’s first year and a half has had on the electorate; but progressives should not panic over these clues. I think we’ll gain markers that will point us in the direction we need to go to get the best results out of November’s election.

I see a trend toward a division in the conservative vote. It’s very evident up here in Minnesota. A lot of people who don’t identify with political parties are turned off by all the hateful fighting among politicians. Many of these people also cannot identify with the Tea Party. I think our state, in November, will elect an independent candidate for governor who doesn’t connect with either of the traditional parties or the Tea Party.

The same kind of thing is happening in Wisconsin. It’s time to start watching trends in other states as well.

Kentucky will provide some clues about the real vote getting power of the Tea Party movement. Good results there for the tea people could send a shiver of fear through politicians and political organizers all across the nation. One caveat to remember about Kentucky, however, is that the Tea Party guy, Rand Paul, son of Texan, Ron Paul, has had both his father’s name and plenty of money to work with; so a victory for him may be an anomaly and may not really tell us much about future elections.

There are also some odd and restrictive primary election regulations at work in Kentucky that may not allow us to see the full strength of the Tea Party. In order to vote in the primaries there, one had to be registered with his/her party by last December 31^st. So, Paul will not be able to pull as many independent voters to his side as might like to vote for him; nor will either candidate get many dissatisfied Democrats out to vote.

What to do on a beautiful Sunday Afternoon

I opted for the TV and my big comfortable chair, with frequent trips to the kitchen to check on dinner!
by Charlie Leck

You've got to start with this: The day before yesterday (Saturday) I pulled a miserable lower lat muscle while I was trying to play golf. It happened on the very first swing of the day. Of course, I did no stretching before I took that first whack at the ball. Because I was in a foursome that was competing in a friendly little event, and because I had a guest with me at my golf club, who I wanted to have a really good time, I played the round anyway. It was a tough day and I, naturally, played very poorly and in pretty significant pain. The other three guys in my group played so well without me that we still tied for first place.

So, then, on an absolutely elegant and sunny Sunday morning, I made some decisions about resting the back and trying to get it better. The ice and then heat treatments of the night before had helped, but I didn't want to do anything foolish to again injure the thing. The Twins and Yankees were on TV and that would make for a good afternoon.

In the morning, I took a batch of lamb, which I'd had marinading for a day, out of the refrigerator and began the process of cooking it all up. It was a complicated recipe that called for three hours of braising in a low oven, so I got started well before the game and used a variety of different cuts as a kind of lab test of which parts of the lamb would do best in this process.

It took me about two hours to pull everything together and I finally started the braising process just as the ball game was beginning. Perfect timing. The braising would end about with the conclusion of the ball game and then I'd devote myself to the other hour or so the recipe called for finishing things up with a crisping process.

In the end, the dinner was supposed to be a magnificent sight and just perfect for a photograph. And as I watched the game, the aromas from the kitchen began wafting their way through the entire house. It was rather magical and tantalizing. What a perfectly wonderful smell.

It was a great ballgame that the Twins won in a very dramatic fashion. That left me happy and my back was feeling great.

The game over, I took the big braising pot from the oven and checked my lamb, prepared to do the crisping routine that would finish it off. The intent was to take the small pieces of lamb, still on the bone, and put them in a very hot oil to quickly crisp them up for finger eating; however, the braising had been so thorough that the meat was all separated from the bone. What to do? Just serve it the way it was or go ahead and crisp up just the meat. A fantastic sauce, very new to me, was heating up on one of the burners and I began crisping pieces of meat on another. It didn't work! The meat just sort of broke completely apart and dissipated into nothingness. I stopped that approach immediately and decided to just go with what I had.

My wife came up from the farm, tired and hungry, just as I was spooning the sauce over a pile of lamb that really could not be identified by cut or variety. I sprinkled some chopped, fresh mint over the entire concoction and then added some chopped cilantro and basil as well.

You know, it turned out to be a spectacular dinner. The sauce, which was loaded with fresh herbs, butter, Harissa and lime juice, saved the day. It penetrated all those boneless, broken up bits of meat and flavored them perfectly. I served it all with a platter of raw, fresh, chopped vegetables in an Asian sauce, along with some nice, fresh slices of avocado.

It was a meal big enough for six, but the two of us sat together and munched away with enthusiasm. It wasn't pretty, believe me (see photo in the header), but it was terribly, terribly tasty. Sometimes you win even when you lose.

Taxes101, Taxes201, Taxes301

As a politician, John James sucks; but he is a creative thinker who wants to mend Minnesota’s sticky financial chaos.
by Charlie Leck

It’s not an enjoyable thing to do on a Sunday morning, but I invite fellow Minnesotans to take a serious, non-political look at the economic situation in Minnesota and at our state’s fiscal footing.
It is a fact that our state’s legislators and our Governor are at loggerheads about how to balance our coming fiscal year’s budget (a constitutional requirement).

Charging in with help is John James, riding on a questionable looking gray mare with aging legs, a dusty, mousy looking coat and a bowed back-line. “Hi O’ Smokey, away!”

I know John James. He is a very good, good man. He is also bright and he loves his home state. He is a student of taxes and has plenty he could teach any of us about the subject. His problem is that he just can’t get very many people to take him seriously, but that’s not for a lack of trying.

John’s problem is that he is one of the most non-political characters you’ll ever meet. That probably makes him attractive to you, as it does to me and a wide-ranging and kaleidoscopic number of his friends. However, this doesn’t get him far in trying to influence a large body of legislators or a Governor who can’t place him anywhere on the political spectrum because he actually doesn’t fit into any of their little slots of definition, power or influence.

So he takes his case to the general public; but he comes riding in on the same dull and mottled horse that looks no more attractive to us than it did to the politicians.

Nevertheless, if you want to take a serious and intellectual course on taxes and state finances, John James has now created a web site that offers his very bright and creative views. He calls it Sensible Tax & Fiscal Systems (STAF). John will take you as deeply into this subject matter and possible solutions to our state revenue problems as you want to go. And, if this is a subject for you, you won’t go away sorry you delved into it. Begin with John’s basic explanation of Minnesota’s Tax & Fiscal Systems and their current, sorry condition– what John calls “the big picture.”

There are plenty of places on John’s web site to go mulling around. You can eventually, if you have the stamina, end up at his three proposals to solve the problem (or perhaps it is one proposal in three different gulps): John James Light, John James Medium, or John James Jumbo or Bold.

If you have any influence with Minnesota’s political leadership, beg them to take the course and give John James some thought.

As John says on his web site, “Republicans and Democrats, stop fighting! Let’s get something done for Minnesota!”

I can support John’s claim that his proposals are not left, right, liberal, conservative, Republican, Democrat or even Independent. They are for serious thinkers who want to get this problem, which is bound to get worse if it isn’t seriously attacked, solved.

“Minnesota’s state-local fiscal system is no longer sensible in multiple respects, which is hardly surprising in light of the state’s seemingly endless fiscal crisis.”

I’ve given John James some time because I know and respect him. He’s not seeking personal gain or profit. He’s genuinely concerned and looking for serious state leaders who are willing to look at some new and creative ways of attacking the problem.

John is a graduate of the University of Iowa and Harvard Law School. He served as the Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue from 1987 to 1991. He is currently a practicing attorney and he serves on a number of boards for non-profit organizations.

Lamb Riblets

lamb riblets from one of San Francisco's highly regarded
neighborhood restaurant, Nopa

One of the least expensive cuts from the lamb, is a cut we can't sell because we haven't been able to tell people how to cook them. That's all changed!
by Charlie Leck

Riblets ain't easy to cook! That's as emphatically as I can say it. I've struggled with recipes, trying to learn how to do them. I shared my struggle with a friend the other night and he went looking around on the internet and found a recipe that he thought would work. It was at the CHOW web site, which I've often visited. The Nopa, a very highly regarded neighborhood restaurant in San Francisco serves them as a bar snack and they're among the most popular in the restaurant. Here's Nopa's recipe.

Well, my wife has been begging me to find a way to prepare these riblets -- she sells them for only 2 bucks a pound and still can't move them because she can't tell people how to cook them. That's history! She can now give them this recipe and can guaranty folks that it works.

I was alone for dinner tonight. My wife was having dinner out with one of the daughters and then heading for Orchestra Hall and an evening of symphony music. So, I gave them a try. Good? I'm afraid there were none left to let her sample when she got home. Spectacular!

If you're reading this somewhere out of range of my wife's domain, you'll have to ask your butcher to special cut these and he may charge you for it. Don't pay much, however, because this is a part of the lamb that is normally wasted. We charge $2 per lb for these little ribs. Then, give the recipe a try. It's really quite easy to do them and there are plenty of things you can substitute for seasonings and herbs you don't have around. You'll be amazed at how wonderful the little munchies are.

I've discovered that CHOW is a wonderful place to go to find clever and creative recipes for cooking lamb. If you haven't tried it, do.

A Poetry Kind of Morning

Understanding Poetry
by Charlie Leck

I never really understood poetry – at least most poems – until I gave up trying to understand it. Or, put better,…

I never really understood poetry –
at least most poems –
until I gave up trying

I remember once reading a poem, which I am certain was by Billy Collins, a past poet laureate of the United States, that described a poem, tied to a chair, tortured by some villains seeking to find out from the poor thing what it really meant.

These days I enjoy poetry more. I simply read along with it, slowly and calmly, waiting patiently for gentle and beautiful breezes to blow across my understanding, leaving me stunned by a sentence or a phrase.

“We’re all attracted to the perfume
of fermenting joy,..”
[Tony Hoagland]*

I don’t remember the rest of Hoagland’s poem, but that line has stuck in my mind for a decade or so. Nice! True!

There is something about reading a poem
That changes everything in its moment

That opens something that ambles along inside me
Challenging slopes too steep and ledges too dangerous

That leads me down through the peril
To the mesmerizing, peaceful meadowlands below

There are some days, like this dim, grayish and damp one, when I feel the compelling urge to go to the shelves where the books of poetry are set aside. I pull out familiar volumes and leaf through them. I search for lines that unruffled me on other occasions.

After Hearing Robert Bly Read a line
From a Poem by James Wright

Emotions skitter down my back
My brain melts into tears;
My God! This verse I cannot wade,
There is no bottom here.
[Arthur Mampel**]

That nails it pretty well – I mean, that feeling I get when I encounter something said so extremely well and beautifully in a poem or in prose that may as well be poetry. I simply yield to it rather than try to understand it.

A fellow found my blog quite by accidental circumstance recently. He wrote that "One has to stop and check out a site which contains a Milton quote at the top of the page."

Many years ago, as a young and foolish man, I wanted to be a writer of prose who occasionally dabbled in poetry. It is quite as silly as a boy dreaming about being a Yankee slugger some day. Such high ground is reserved for the few. One day, back then, I discovered Yvengy Yevtushenko, the Russian poet, and wondered how beautifully he must have sounded in his own, Russian language. Some of his poems were compellingly simple to understand, such as the one below. Others required an understanding of some Russian history and some appreciation for the Russian language. So, I went through his volume of work, satisfied to understand what I could understand and to enjoy that and not worry about the other. I'll leave you with this simple Yevtushenko poem.

We are sitting at an airport in Copenhagen drinking a lot of coffee. It was most elegant there, and comfortable, and refined to the point of lassitude. Then suddenly he appeared- that old man- in a plain green parka with a hood, his face deep tanned by salt and wind- loomed up rather than appeared. He walked, furrowing through a crowd of tourists, as if he’d just been sailing a boat, and like the sea foam his beard, whitening it, fringed his face. With grim victorious determination he walked, generating a big wave, that swept through the modernized antique, through every sort of antiqued modernity. And pulling open the coarse collar of his shirt, he, rejecting a vermouth and a pernod, ordered a glass of Russian vodka at the bar and pushed back the tonic with his hand: 'No! ' With rough-hewn hands, all scarred and dented, in boots that made a mighty clatter, in trousers indescribably stained and greasy, he looked more spruce than anything nearby. The earth seemed to bend beneath him- so heavily did he tread upon it. And one of us said to me with a smile: 'Just look! The very spit of Hemingway! ' Expressed in each brief gesture, he strode off with a fisherman’s ponderous gait, all out of granite crudely hewn, strode as men stride through gunfire, through the ages, He strode as if stooping in a trench; strode shoving chairs and men aside... He resembled Hemingway so much! Later I learned it was, indeed, Hemingway! Yvengy Yevtushenko Translated by George Reave

*from Donkey Gospel, Tony Hoagland, Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota, 1998
**from Silk Over Wood, Arthur Mampel, International Theological & Philosophical Library Press, London, 1981

Open Culture

Do you have favorite web sites? Here's some tips on using the web wisely!
by Charlie Leck

A lite moment before we begin...
If you've taken my advice and gone to Open Culture on the wonderful, world-wide web, then you've already seen this terrific video about encouraging more people to take the stairs rather than the escalator. Man, I loved it.

If you don't see the You Tube graphic above, you can get to it by clicking here!

I rose early this morning, after getting home late last night from the Twin-White Sox baseball game, and found myself going to Open Culture before I turned to my email. That's something!

When I did turn to my email, I found a couple of responses to my blog of yesterday, from people who don't agree with me. They claim that the Internet is actually creating a whole new generate of imbeciles or malaperts. (Naturally, I had to go check on the definition of a malapert -- and found it was the word of the day for Dictionary.com yesterday. Someone is trying to fooooool me!) To those people, who don't think the Internet is going to help us educate our kids, I replied by sending them to this lecture by Don Tapscott, the Author of Grown Up Digital. It's a lecture I found a few days ago on Open Culture. It was cataloged on an impressive site that accumulates "smart (free) videos," called Big Ideas.

Open Culture can send you to hundreds of other productive, educational and cultural (free) videos.

It has gotten so spending time in front of your computer can be much more valuable than time in front of a TV (the operational word here is, of course, "can" or, more truthfully, "might" be).

If you want the Internet to be a productive tool for you and your work and interests, you have to build up a page full of those links you will regularly check out. I keep such a page for my wife and me that pops up every time we tune our computers into the Internet. Sure it includes some fun web sites and practical places -- like the Minnesota Twins Homepage, Snopes.Com (to fact check flagrant emails and rumors), the United States Postal Service, Google Maps, and Weather.Com -- and our banker's home page and those of the companies we regularly buy from and consult about professional matters -- but the concentration is on those places on the Internet where we can spend educational and culturally enlightening time. I'm talking about web sites like the following links that I've collected over the last few years...

Answers.Com
ArtCyclopedia.Com
Ask a Librarian
Ask Oxford
Botany.Com
Dictionary.Com
eHow.com
Google Translate
Internet Public Library
Minnesota Public Radio

National Geographic

National Public Radio
New York Times
Open Culture
Oxford Journals
Plant Care
Physicians Desktop Reference
Scholarpedia
Wise Geek

You, naturally, should build your own list and put them right there on your desktop where you can get at them easily and, through habit, use them regularly. With tools like this at hand, you will suddenly discover that the Internet is the most potent utility in your home.

Well, I've got to go now because it's time for my Yale University course on the history of the civil war and the reconstruction... (by the way, for that course, I am reading E. L. Doctorow's book, The March... you might remember that Doctorow wrote the spectacular book, Ragtime, and this one, though non-fiction, reads just as well... it's a very, very good account of Sherman's march to the sea during the Civil War).