Morning Coffee (143)

Good morning, Coffee Quaffers. There's nothing like waking up to 70 degrees with a slight overcast, calm seas, and dolphins playing merrily in my front yard.

I hope everyone enjoyed their celebration of Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, the birthday of the unconquered sun. You may be confused because I said sun and not son. Well, from about, oh, the beginning of time until about 391 CE, people practiced all sorts of different religions, sometimes even freely. Most of these religions actually borrowed ideas from one another. Oddly enough, our present day moral guide, Christianity, was no different, and it co-opted all sorts of ideas from contemporary "pagan" religions; the celebration of the birth of a god on 25 December, the winter solstice, is merely one example among many.

Sol Invictus was a Roman god who was borrowed from eastern mystery cults. The name referred to three deities at different times during the Roman Empire. Sometime around 218 CE, Emperor Varius Avitus Bassianus, primarily known as Elagabalus, replaced Jupiter as the chief deity in the Roman pantheon with a Syrian god El-Gabal, who was the patron diety of Elagabalus' home town in Syria. Elagabalus changed the god's name to Sol Invictus, merging the god with another Roman god, Sol Indiges, an agrarian god who had been worshiped since republican times. Elagabalus even had himself circumcised so that he could become the high priest of the new religion. Since Elagabalus was strange even by Roman Emperor standards, he was killed by the Praetorian Guard in 222 CE.

Mithra is another deity who has been referred to as the Unconquered Sun, and was also borrowed from the East, specifically Persia, and was probably brought to Rome in the first century CE by Roman soldiers. Mithraism is a prime example of a mystery cult, and it had a wide appeal in the Roman Empire from the first to the fourth centuries CE, especially in the Roman army. Some scholars have proposed that the worship of Mithra rivaled the worship of Christ, and might have become the dominant religion had it been more inclusive. Strangely, Mithra may have been born of a virgin.

The final god was a deity whose officially sanctioned cult was brought into being by the Emperor Aurelian in 274 CE. It was Aurelian who likely created the festival Dies Natalis Solis Invicti to celebrate Sol Invictus' birth on the winter solstice. It may be that this festival predates the nativity by 80 years. Until around 354 CE, Christ's birth date had been greatly debated. Scholars in the third century placed his birth anywhere from 20 May to 25 or 28 March, all in the spring months. Some scholars, such as Origen of Alexandria believed that "only sinners (like Pharaoh and Herod)" celebrated birthdays. As late as 303 CE, Christian writer Arnobius opined that gods don't have birthdays. But eventually, Christ got a birthday, and it happened to be 25 December.

I'm not saying that early Christians took a pagan celebration of the winter solstice and turned it into Christ's birthday , but I will say that Sol Invictus, both in stone and on third century Roman coins, has head decorations similar to this guy.

No Membership Card? Dues Not Paid? No Problem!:
In a stunning move that has angered and confused evangelicals around the world, God recently has announced an easing of His millenia-old limits on membership to the exclusive Kingdom of Heaven. He's going so far as to abolishing restrictions altogether. The move contradicts His son's/own dictum that "I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." The Morning Coffee scored an exclusive interview with the Alpha and the Omega.

MC: Once you, through your son, said, "No man cometh unto the Father, but by me." Why the change?

Deus: I took a real close look at sola fide, and you know, the concept just didn't wash anymore. I mean, you look at heaven, and you know, there are like, billions of degenerates, I mean, people who just shouldn't be there. But they got in through sola fide, which I enacted in the early days in order to increase membership. It's really outlived its usefulness. Really, if you look at the new doctrine, that being that if you live a good life, you can get into Heaven, it's really a better method anyway. It ensures that our members will be of the highest quality. Further, this completes my transformation from a tyrannical megalomaniac into a softer, kinder, gentler deity.

MC: What do you say to your critics, for example, other deities such as Allah and Jupiter Optimus Maximus, as well as evangelical Christians, who've complained that the change in rules is unfair? Both groups say they've worked hard; Allah and Jupiter in carving their own niches, however small, and evangelicals in, you know, just accepting Jesus Christ as their own personal savior. How do you respond?

Deus: Burn in Hades? Hahahahaha!! No seriously, I mean, I'm God. I pretty much make the rules. My lawyers, Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo, are presently drawing up paperwork to evict Allah and Jupiter, et al from Heaven. We're trying to do it right; trying to avoid what happened with Beelzebub. As far as the evangelicals, well, I guess they'll just have to buck up, eh? No more free passes.

There you have it, from the Man himself. (*The above is satire; a poor attempt to relieve the Blue Balls of Stiffled Creativity. Please don't issue a fatwa on me.)

While God himself might not have technically changed doctrine (how would we know?) a recent survey published by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life suggests that most Americans (70%) believed that other religions could achieve eternal life. Evangelicals weren't happy, that much of my story was true. They stated that the people surveyed couldn't possibly have understood the question. So Pew asked again. Only 65% responded said the same this time. But when asked to clarify which religions would lead to eternal salvation, the respondents said all of them. Fifty percent of the respondents said that atheists could go to heaven. More painfully, nearly the same percentage of Christians felt one could achieve salvation by being a good person as Christians who felt that you must believe in Jesus. Worse still, nearly 20% of Christians think the Bible is not the word of God, but merely a book written by men. Maybe it's time for an Inquisition.

Maybe I'm not as bad of a person (horrible atheist) in the eyes of "regular folk" as I thought.

Presidential Paparazzi:
Barack Obama is the President (elect) of the United States of America, not Brad Pitt. Leave him alone on his vacation. Actually, leave him alone, period. We do not need to see pictures of him with his shirt off. Leave that sort of gimmickry to Vladimir Putin. We do not need to see him scattering the ashes of his grandmother into the Pacific Ocean. I'm all about press scrutiny, but this paparazzi coverage is too much. In fact, it's detrimental. If this sort of coverage doesn't cease, Obama will have cause to be very closed to the press, and that isn't a good thing.

MC Administrative Issues:
One reason that I haven't been posting as much as I would have liked during the Holiday break is that I have been having computer issues as well as have been trying to get my own, no kidding web page up and running (to little success). I have purchased my own web domain, and now have a host. However, unless you do it for a living or a hobby, setting up and running your own page isn't all that easy. In fact, it's a real pain in the ass. Why would I want to get away from the current format? Well, I don't really. It'll still be a blog, but it will give me the opportunity to better control the look and feel of the site. Also, I'd like to add other things to the Morning Coffee Empire. I'll probably have a forum, maybe a place for user-submitted content. Who knows? But I'm working diligently on getting it all up and running.

A weak Brew today, I know. But I don't want to become like some other bloggers and not publish anything of substance.

Word of the Day: Ramble (verb, noun): 1. To wander about. (noun): A walk for pleasure without predetermined destination. (verb): To talk or write about one thing and then another without useful connection.

On This Day in History: Galileo observes Neptune (1612). The United States claims Midway, the first overseas territory annexed (1867). San Francisco has its first municipally owned street cars (1912). The first American test-tube baby is born in Norfolk, VA (1981). Montgomery Ward goes out of business after 128 years (2000). Jerry Orbach, who played Detective Lennie Briscoe on Law and Order, died (2004). Nepal abolishes its monarchy (2007).

"A moth ate words. I thought that was a marvelous fate, that the worm, a thief in the dark, should eat a man's words, his brilliant language and its sturdy foundation. Not a whit the wiser was he for having fattened himself on those words." - A Riddle from the Exeter Book.

Morning Coffee (142)

There are days, like today, that I feel terrible about the prospects for my country. Unless I'm using it to make a point, I try to avoid the dramatic in the Morning Coffee, as it does little save elevate the blood pressure and cause ulcers. But it is sometimes exceedingly difficult. I'm going to write about a few things, and will make every effort to avoid losing my mind (Marine speak for becoming exceptionally angry) while doing it.

Behavioral Modification Through Taxation:
First, we should discuss the recent slew of new taxes presented to you by Governor David Patterson of New York. Due to our governments' (collective) complete and total inability to spend what they earn, we face tax increases. In New York, Governor Patterson has decided to tax or increase fees on all sorts of things such as beer, non-diet sugary drinks (18% tax on anything with less than 70% juice), tobacco (specifically a 50 cent increase on cigars), cab fares, movie and sporting events, digital music downloads, and vehicle licensing and registrations in order to make up a budget shortfall of $15.4 billion. Not million, BILLION. This is done under the additional guise of "slashing spending." I say guise because the budget has actually increased

What I find almost more offensive than outright lying is the fact that many of Patterson's goals revolve around modifying your behavior. How? By his so-called obesity tax on non-diet soda and his increase in taxes on tobacco products. See, you're too stupid to regulate your own consumption of nasty foods and products, so Patterson wants to increase the cost to you in order to dissuade you from purchasing those products. Most of these behavioral modification taxes are enacted with the rational that these increases will stuff the coffers and help offset the medical costs that obesity and lung cancer incur. Or in some cases, these new taxes will fund education or some other such item which apparently cannot be funded through normal means. Oddly, no one seems to take into consideration that if these taxes were to have the desired effect, then the money derived from these taxes would be minimal.

Regardless, you have allowed yourself to become the government's ward. You can still choose to buy and consume things that are bad for you, of course, since they're not illegal. But you'll pay more for them. And that's really what people do. Proponents of these taxes claim that the rate of smoking is now below 20% nationwide largely because purchasing tobacco products is cost prohibitive. Not true, my friends. I don't know of anyone who's stopped smoking because the cost of cigarettes has gone up too high. Everyone I know who's stopped smoking has done so because it's bad for them. The low rate of smoking is the result of a decades long effort to educate people. The same should be done with unhealthy foods. Legislation and taxation are poor ways to modify behavior (Prohibition).

This whole thing is just strange to me. Very inconsistent. New taxes on soda with the primary aim of decreasing consumption, but the authors of these taxes do not pose that they wish for a decrease in consumption of iTunes downloads, though it seems by their logic it would have the same effect. But I thought the new taxes were supposed to rectify budget shortfalls. I'm confused. Equally perplexing is a new 4% tax increase on "personal services," which would include gym memberships. Wait, you don't want us to be fat, so you increase taxes on junk food in order to decrease our consumption of such things, but also increase the taxes on healthy activities and services that would combat obesity?

I hate to be crass, but in this case it's the blind (literal) leading the blind (figurative).

You can read some more about the taxes and fees here. I think my favorite is the mandate for all drivers to have new "reflectorized" license plates, at a cool $25 a piece.

Increasing Taxes on Tobacco is State-Sponsored Terrorism:
Governor Patterson might not know it, but he's a terrorist supporter. Cigarette smuggling is a major problem in states with high tobacco taxes, where smugglers can make $2 million on a single truckload of smokes. Many of these smugglers have ties to terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and our favorite, al-Qaida. See, higher taxes don't mean less smokers, only education and a desire to be healthy can do that. Instead, increasing taxation on tobacco drives more smokers to purchase cigarettes from "independent dealers" who buy their stock in tobacco friendly states like Virginia and North Carolina. Would you rather pay $75 for a carton or $60 for a carton?

Consider, also, that the State of New York loses over a half a billion dollars in tax revenue due to smuggling. I think that a lower tax rate might actually offset the loss in revenue. Instead, New York will increase spending to combat smuggling, while raising the taxes on all sorts of things in order to afford it. They miss the point.

Engineer a Financial Crisis, Get a 2.8% Raise:
Imagine if your inability to effectively do your job actually got you a pay raise. That wouldn't be a bad gig at all, especially if you got to name your successor when you left for whatever reason. This is what our Congress has turned into. They reward themselves for complete and total ineptitude. I've written about this in the past, when I was a young blogger, so I'd rather not delve into it again. Suffice it to say, the raise is automatic to cover "cost of living" increases. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate is at 6.7% and likely rising, families all across the country are struggling, and Governor Schwarzenegger has mandated that all state workers take two unpaid days of leave a month. The American Worker is not doing so well. But Congress needs that $4,700 more a year. We don't even get a token gesture from our elected leaders. I shouldn't call them leaders, honestly. But they all sympathize...so much so that they demand that CEOs freeze their own out of control pay.

Don't think that my short missive on this in any way means I care less about it than I do about inane taxation. This makes me positively livid. The disingenuous bullshit from our employees (elected officials) should make us all sick. But it doesn't really. Besides, the news has come out now, and in two years when these idiots are up for reelection, we'll have forgotten all about their insulting behavior of allowing themselves a raise in what many are calling, right or wrong, the worse economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Chronic Cronyism from a Conscientious Congress:
Hey, let's turn our Legislative body into one based not on ability (is it now even?) and the will of the electorate, but into one based on heredity. What do you say? Read a little bit about it here.

If I could enact one thing (okay, two: term limits), it would be that our elected officials must step down from their positions if they choose to seek another office, and that in doing so, an election, special or otherwise, is mandated so that another individual can be ELECTED to this freshly vacated office. This way, we wouldn't have Blagojevich wanting to sell a Senate seat or Patterson, who's decision making skills have been illustrated a few paragraphs ago, possibly selecting Andrew Cuomo (son of Mario Cuomo - longtime NY Governor) or Caroline Kennedy as New York's Senate representative. Or in Delaware, where Joe Biden's crony Ted Kaufman has been selected by Governor Ruth Minner to take Biden's spot. Kaufman will ostensibly hold the seat until 2010, when Beau Biden, Joe's son, can run in a "special election" in 2010, after he returns from Iraq. At least in the case of Delaware, the appearance of the electoral process took place, though Joe's opposition wasn't given much of a chance since he didn't bother to actually campaign for the seat he's held since 1972.

*****

We are the stewards of our nation. We are the ones who elect these people to lead. We have forgotten our responsibilities, and we are now paying, and will continue to pay, the price for our transgressions. As the Declaration of Independence states, governments are instituted among men, and derive their powers through the consent of the governed. We have given our consent to be governed like fools and sheep. When will we realize that it's time to revoke that consent? Revolution, as was necessary in 1776, I am not suggesting. But your will, our will, can be heard through other means. We can demand that our employees are accountable. Will we? I doubt it, for I have nearly lost faith in you.

Word of the Day: Jaded (adjective): Worn out; tired; weary.

On This Day in History: Vespasian, a general under Nero, enters Rome to claim the title of emperor (69 CE). Richard the Lion-Heart is captured by Leopold V of Austria on his way home from signing a treaty with Saladin (1522). The Virginia Company loads three ships with settlers and sets sail to establish Jamestown, Virginia, the first English settlement in the Americas (1606). The Cheka, the first Soviet secret police, is founded (1917).

"They don't even go through the front door. They have it set up so that it's wired so that you actually have to undo the pay raise rather than vote for a pay raise." - Steve Ellis, VP of Taxpayers for Common Sense. by $1.3 billion, part of which is illustrated by the increase in Medicaid spending by $500 million.

Morning Coffee (141)

Again, an edition of the weekend Coffee, since that's the only time I have to write.

Indulge me, as I discuss something most of you might not care about.

"Mad Dog" Sails into Sunset:

In the waning days of the summer of 1995, I had an awakening of sorts when I saw a Cleveland Indians' game on television. Something clicked for me with the game of baseball, and it was love at first sight. It was also the beginning of a love-hate-anguish relationship with the Tribe. That year, they were a 25-man wrecking ball of offense, pouring on the runs with the speedy Kenny Lofton at the top a lineup featuring future Hall of Famers Jim Thome, Manny Ramirez and Omar Vizquel, along with another man, Albert Belle, who would have been a lock for the Hall had his hip not given up on him. These guys were backed by a decent starting rotation, and a couple of fireballing relievers. They put the finishing touches on their Central Division championship pretty early that year, going 100-44 in a strike shortened season. And low and behold, they found themselves in their first World Series since 1952.

But the Tribe fell short that year, largely because of a slightly built, nerdy looking Atlanta Braves pitcher who I had never heard of: Greg Maddux. Maddux started two games against the Indians during the World Series and won them both. After seeing him and the other two members of the trifecta of doom, Tom Glavin and John Smoltz, completely disassemble the world's greatest offense, I was hooked. Greg Maddux became my favorite pitcher that year, a year in which he went 19-2 with an other-worldly 1.63 ERA, and he remained so until his retirement from pitching this past Monday.

Maddux wasn't like most of the pitchers you probably heard of during the 1990s. He didn't throw 95 miles per hour or more. He wasn't a big, strong dude who struck out batters by the dozen. He didn't have a knee-buckling curveball; his frankly rated little better than a good high schooler's curveball. He didn't have a jaw-dropping splitter. He was just a regular looking guy. His success was derived partly from laser-like accuracy (a mere 999 walks in 23 years) and a late moving, if not particularly fast fastball. But make no mistake about it, Maddux conquered baseball with something beyond pure physical skill: his intellect. This was how he thrived in an era of high-octane offense. And that's why I liked Maddux. He was as analytical as anyone in the game, and was perhaps more so than anyone. They called him "The Professor." My favorite bit of Maddux trivia illustrates the intellectual vigor with which he approached the game. He said that during warm ups and bullpen sessions, he threw more pitches from the stretch, the stance used with runners on base, because, he said, "when is it more important to execute a pitch, with runners on base or with no one on?" In another instance, Braves staff were reviewing scouting reports when Maddux chimed in, "that report is wrong, I've been watching [blank] during batting practice." They're reply, "throw out the scouting report. Listen to Mad Dog." He once watched a player take his BP cuts and leaned over to another player and said, "We might have to call an ambulance for the first base coach." Sure enough, the first base coach got drilled in the chest on the very next pitch. He could tell where the ball was going just by the placement of the hitter's body in the batter's box. Which was probably the reason he won an unprecedented 18 Gold Glove awards, 13 of them consecutively.

Despite his success (i.e. four consecutive Cy Young Awards), he was humble in demeanor. More than this, his reputation is without blemish. No one would ever accuse Maddux of using performance enhancing anything, unless they were referring to his 100-lbs brain, of course. And get this, Maddux, winner of 355 games, is the winningest pitcher alive, a title he will certainly carry until his death. Thankfully Maddux overcame the now-tainted Roger Clemens.

So Monday was, for me, a time of reflection and a bit of sadness. Every time Greg Maddux came up for free agency (which wasn't very often in this free agent mad world), or when trade rumors circulated (again, very infrequently), I hoped that I'd see him pitch in an Indians' uniform. It never happened, but I still count myself lucky to have seen one of the greatest pitchers to have ever played the game.

The Great Overachiever:
It amuses me that the man who was supposed to change everything is already mired in a political scandal, and he's still more than a month from being sworn in as our President. So much for Washington outsider, eh?

As of right now, nothing reported points to Obama having anything to do with Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and his desire to sell off Obama's now vacant Senate seat. And it might be that nothing ever does, though that doesn't prevent the stain of the scandal from setting on his Inauguration. Especially as it is becoming more evident that Obama's soon-to-be Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, who has close ties to both Obama and Blagojevich, at the very least talked with Blago about the Senate vacancy. And it doesn't help that neither Obama nor Emanuel made more than a token effort to answer questions about this scandal this past week, with Emanuel being downright hostile to questions. At least Obama tried, proclaiming that he was confident that no representatives of his engaged with Blagojevich regarding the selection of a replacement Senator. That assertion losses credence when Emanuel apparently called Blago's Chief of Staff, John Harris (who has also been brought up on federal corruption charges) just prior to Election Day and presented to Harris a list of names that Obama would find acceptable. Emanuel then called back after the election to add another name to the "approved of" list. Very interesting.

Did Obama or Emanuel do anything illegal? Not as far as I can tell. But Blagojevich surely intended to gain personally from his selection of Obama's Senate replacement, that much is clear from the transcripts of the taped conversations Blagojevich had with Harris and others. Even if Obama and his representative Emanuel did nothing technically illegal, the appearance of impropriety is there, despite Blagojevich's tapped statement that "they" (Obama's administration) were unwilling to give him anything except appreciation (if that's true, I give kudos to Obama and his proxies). Appearances trump reason in all cases. Mayhap Emanuel will the sacrificial lamb here. A good cleansing cures a great deal.

With that, I sidebar into another Morning Coffee sponsored political reform proposal, which I'll continue to repeat ad nauseum: when one politician decides to run for another office, he/she must give up their present office so that another may run (see previous rant on Joe Biden's seat in Delaware). This way, the People (you remember those guys, right?), can select their own Representation (imagine that) and we take remove such power from the hands of an individual. Selecting replacements for vacancies is highly political, and it is of such importance that I do not trust any one person to make that choice on our behalf.

The Rapidly Expiring Honeymoon:
The Blagojevich controversy comes on the heals of a wide-spread malaise in liberal circles. It seems that many, still warm from the euphoria of having the so-called Chosen One actually win, are being slapped in the face with the cold, hard hand called Reality. The fanboys are still fanboys, but there's an uneasiness; a concern that Obama might not do or be what he claimed he would. Many are angered over his Cabinet selections. One blogger, Chris Bower of OpenLeft says, "Isn't there ever a point when we can get an actual Democratic administration?" Backsliding abounds, friends. I really haven't any intention of going into all the instances of Obama's adjustments on Iraq or tax cuts or whatever, but suffice it to say, I find it rather humorous. All those idealists who'll have their hopes and dreams shattered when they realize that Obama's just like the rest: he'll say whatever sounds good at the time. It's called political expediency. This, dear readers, is part of the reason I wanted a Democrat to win. Sue me, I get joy in seeing hopes and dreams crushed.

The flip side is, the fears of many conservatives are likely alleviated to some degree (not fully, of course, he still is a Democrat), but they'll never admit it. They've put too much effort in calling Obama a socialist, etc, etc, to ever back off from those assertions.

I leave you with that. It's time to go play on the beach, where it's sunny and 50 degrees plus already. Life is mostly good. Enjoy your Coffee and your day.

Word of the Day: Dastard (noun): A mean coward.

On This Day in History: Nostradamus is born (1503). The Wright Brothers make their first attempt to fly at Kitty Hawk (1903). The Soviet Union is expelled from the League of Nations after invading Finland (1939). George Bush announces the capture of Saddam Hussein (2003).

"I don't think it would be appropriate for me to comment on the issue at this time. It's a sad day for Illinois." - President-elect Barack Obama on the Blagojevich controversy. Is this the type of leadership we can expect for the next four years?