Author: Kevan

But do they still respect us this morning?

Super Tuesday created a lot of fun for a lot of people who don’t have better things to think about. Hoopla over the presidency has always seemed to me to be disproportional to its actual importance. The power in this nation resides in the House, where all money bills originate. They can strangle anything and they can limit the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. A president won’t get far without their help.

But the Representatives are not chosen for their conservative stances, they are chosen for just the opposite. Voters, falling for the fictitious idea that everybody can live at the expense of everyone else, vote for the politician who promises them the most loot. And so the nation continues to slide toward that place where all thieves go. And that in a handbasket, to boot.

As for the presidential race, I rather hope that Barack Hussein gets the Democrat nomination. His voting record is even more Communist than Hillary Clinton’s; in fact, it is the leftmost of the entire Senate. If he is elected, at least there’ll be no deception regarding the things he aspires toward. Furthermore, he appears to be on record as a nice person. Hillary, on the other hand, is described by many who have worked with her as the kind of woman who gives witches a bad reputation.

McCain’s victories have folks like James Dobson in tears. I heard him on the Glenn Beck show this morning, so depressed he could hardly speak. I, being a Ron Paul supporter, had no hopes of victory, so I feel fine.

One difference between me and Dobson is that he has been trying to save America. I used to do that. Eventually I came to the profound conclusion that America doesn’t want saving. They’re like Eliza’s father, Alfred P. Dolittle, who said that he was one of the undeserving poor, he liked it that way, and he intended to keep on being undeserving. America, collectively speaking, wants to commit suicide and they are doing it at breakneck speed. Would I step out onto the Interstate to intercept a driverless eighteen-wheeler that was running toward disaster at 95 mph?

I’ll do my part to affect people’s thinking, but I have no hope for the political process. Plenty of us want to be free, but most of us don’t, and that portion of the electorate is too big, too heavy, and rolling at 95 mph at least.

I’ve added a page on my web site listing the books I read this past year. I got this idea from reading the Grub Street Plumber’s web site, although he doesn’t seem to have his lists on his site presently.

I like to read other people’s lists. An old greeting used to be “Read any good books lately?” You don’t hear that one much any more, which explains a lot of what’s on television.

Thirty five years ago tonight I was playing bass in a country band at a party being held at Sonny Look’s Steakhouse in the Sky in Houston. I don’t remember much about it, except that the leader of the band drank too much and was feeding a load of blarney to another band who had played in a party on the same floor that night. Our leader told these other guys that he liked their music and wanted to take them on tour with us through the southwest states: lots of gigs and money and contacts for future gigs and opportunities to record, etc. There wasn’t a word of truth in it, but the guy wasn’t actually lying. He was just so drunk, his mind was running just like someone who was asleep and having a dream. The other band, however, was clueless and swallowed the whole thing. Eventually, of course, they realized they’d been had when they never heard from our leader again.

I was fairly clueless myself back then. I was seventeen years old and making more money in one night than I’d make in a week as a pastor ten or fifteen years later. I had to check with our guitarist to make sure that what we were overhearing was, indeed, empty talk. I didn’t realize that drunks could be so eloquent.

It has occurred to me since then that everybody around me back then knew more about the ways of the world than I did. Whether it was selling a car, socializing in a beer joint, bribing someone, or noticing that someone was stoned on drugs, I never really knew what was going on. Analyzing it, I’d say that my peers knew more about doing wrong, but I knew more about doing right. I didn’t necessarily live up to what I knew, but I did know some things.

In the long run, I see that doing good is beneficial, but doing bad is destructive. There was probably some of that in mind when St. Paul wrote “I would have you to be wise concerning good and simple concerning evil.”  Some people will die accidentally tonight because they tried to have a good time by doing something wrong.  Me, I’ll watch a Red Skelton video with Wonder Wife and retire early.

CHRISTMAS FOR PLUMBERS

Tall in the truck seat we spend Christmas Day
Driving to houses with slow-running drains
Many good gifts will be opened today
Ours is a flush and some wide-open drains

Ordinary people are off work today
Hugging their children and fixing souffles
I’ll hug the toilets, I’ll fix the mains
It’s Christmas; I’m plumbing for wide-open drains

The drive-thru has my Christmas dinner tonight
Truck’s instrument panel is my Christmas tree lights
Jingle Bell Rock’s all my radio plays
It’s Christmas; I’m on call for wide-open drains

* * * * *

Tall in the truck seat I’ve spent Christmas Day
Driving my cables through slow-running drains
So many gifts have been given today
I gave my all for a wide-open drain
It’s Christmas for plumbers and wide-open drains

— Kevan C. Barley

I encounter this kind of thing regularly, but I guess that today I’m just in a bad mood–so I’ll blog it.  I got an ad in the mail recently, offering a 10% discount at a store if I spent $50 or more.  The big letters on the front of the ad announced “An exclusive offer just for you.”  It was addressed to “Kevan P. Barley or Current Resident.”

Larry Craig maintains his innocence and now his kids are joining the chorus:

All three of Craig’s adopted children said Tuesday they believe their father’s assertions he is not gay and did nothing to warrant his arrest.

Jay Craig, 33, told The Associated Press that he, his brother, Michael Craig, 38, and his sister, Shae Howell, 36, spoke candidly with their father about the June 11 arrest.

“Our conclusion was there was no wrongdoing there,” Jay Craig said. “We understood the direction he was taking (by pleading guilty) and there was nothing illegal that happened there that would even convince somebody what he was doing was illegal. He was a victim of circumstance, in the wrong place at the wrong time when this sting operation was going on.”
There are several facts that fly into the face of this defense.

1. I have read twenty or so homosexual web sites and none of them suggests that Craig’s behavior should be considered innocent or inconsistent with homosexual cruising patterns.
2. Have you ever been sitting on a public toilet and decided to pick up a scrap of toilet paper lying beside your toilet? Me neither.
3. The tape of Craig’s interrogation at the police station shows quite obviously that Craig is a liar so bold, so slimy, so pathological, he could run for Congress. Oh, wait . . .

Certainly he could beat the rap if it goes to court. Plenty of guilty people beat raps every day in our court system. The standard of proof there is much higher than in the world of common sense. But in the court of common sense, it is quite obvious to any informed observer that Craig was soliciting sex in a public washroom, and such behavior is rightly proscribed by law.

I just got back from Texas where I preached a funeral and visited with my sister for a few days. My brother-in law, Joel Butts, died two weeks ago. They only recently discovered that he had heart problems. After surgery and horrible complications, he’d finally made a complete recovery and was feeling fine, going to his construction job every day. Then he woke up one night with chest pain, collapsed in the driveway, and died quickly at the hospital. We don’t know what went wrong.

As you can see from the recent picture, he was a big ol’ guy and only fifty five years old. He was good to me. He was good to everybody. It hurts to see him go. I wish I knew more people like him.

I heard a story once about a man who came into a country store and asked “Where’s Earl?” and the worker behind the counter answered “Earl don’t work here no more.” So the man then asked “Well, who’s filling his vacancy?” and the answer came back “Earl didn’t leave no vacancy.”

Joel left a big ol’ vacancy. He had no enemies and his friends loved him dearly — but none so much as my sister. She’ll recover one day, but for now she’s overwhelmed by grief.

Bloggers are currently covering the Internet with writings about Senator Larry Craig (R-ID). The charges against him and his denials are well known, so I’ll skip all that and just proceed.

Back when I was just a little right-wing extremist, Larry Craig was one of my heroes. We’re talking 1983-86 here. I knew nothing about him personally. I only knew that he voted the way I wished all legislators would vote. To my knowledge, he has continued to vote that way.

But a public servant has a position of leadership and responsibility that goes beyond the way he votes. As a representative, he stands in the place of his constituents. That’s why we have ethics committees in the House and Senate. Soliciting sex in a washroom is not consistent with public office.

I never knew Craig as a moral example, nor did I know him to go around telling others how immoral they are. He voted in ways that are good for America, even if he lived in a way that wasn’t. He is a liar (for denying it), but I don’t see him as a hypocrite. Still, he needs to be out of office, along with a slew of others who are just like him or worse.

Ron Paul is the most consistent conservative running. He articulates his principles here. There are other good men in the race, such as Duncan Hunter, but none understands constitutionalism so well as Paul, nor does any have the will to be as consistent. And none is so slandered and misquoted.

Zimbabwe has become something of a weekly sitcom with Mugabe as the leading clown. According to Telegraph.co.uk, Mugabe’s government has printed so much worthless money, the inflation rate is 4,500%. This means, of course, that someone holding a loaf of bread on his store shelf has to charge forty-five times more than he used to in order to keep pace. But since a worker’s salary hasn’t yet been raised to forty-five times what it used to be, the rising prices are a hardship.

This governmental method of stealing (counterfeiting money) is as old as money itself. First Mugabe drove off or murdered the white farmers and put their land into the hands of nonwhite incompetents, then the resulting mismanagement caused widespread poverty which Mugabe addressed by printing up truckloads of money. Having inflated the economy with the counterfeit money, Mugabe has now blamed the storekeepers for the resultant rising prices and has mandated price controls.

Price controls always, without fail, produce shortages of goods and services, which in turn produces hoarding and black markets, which then evoke police repression and violence. Any ninth-grader can follow the logic in this economic chain of cause and effect.

But that doesn’t stop folks like Mugabe from waddling around and blaming it on shopkeepers who are working to foment civil unrest as part of a British plot to topple him.

So I wake up on my birthday and what do I see in the weather forecast? “Thunderstorms possible.” What a revolting development!

We’ve had a drought in Memphis this year. There was almost no rain in May, and not much to speak of before that. But the last couple of weeks in June saw it rain “right smart” now and then, so things are looking up. (“Right smart” is an expression I learned in the woods of northeast Mississippi.)

Who likes thunderstorms? Well, farmers do. You know, the guys who make it possible for us to eat and not starve to death.

Therefore, on the day when we customarily look back and ask “How did my life turn out this way and will it ever change?” I have to acknowledge that the forecast is, indeed, possible thunderstorms. They’re ugly, they’re sometimes dangerous, but they’re the only way to stay alive. So bring ’em on.

It’s true. I am now a network engineer.

The lesson for us all, do not flush your underwear down the toilet.

Yesterday I received more details about the theft of the air conditioning units at my church. It was only six units that they hit, and they didn’t take the entire unit, but only the coils in it (scrap copper). What’s left behind is worthless, though.

The estimate for the replacement costs was in the neighborhood of $26,000.

Last night they came back and hit the remaining units. That’s probably about $45,000 more in replacement costs, but that’s just my guess right now. (They were different sizes than the first ones.)

Our property is covered with security cameras, so we have video footage of the thieves coming and going. You’ve seen such images on, say, news coverage of a bank robbery. You can clearly see that the suspect has two arms, two legs, one head, etc.

It’s Monday and I am reminded of one of my favorite one-panel cartoons. Two old black men wearing overalls are sitting on the front porch of a house in the country, guitars across their laps, and one holds up a tiny object and complains to the other, “It’s this *&^% Prozac. I ain’t had the blues in weeks!”

I’ve never understood “blue Mondays” or other excuses for being miserable. Oh, I understand being miserable all right. I used to do it whenever possible as a teenager. I wore sunglasses, even at night. I slumped. I wrote sad stories and I played sad songs. “Poor me.” One day I realized that nobody cared that I was so miserable. I thought that they should see me, feel my pain, commiserate, pet me, and admire my nonconformity. Instead they just went on about their lives and I found myself ignored. What a revolting development.

So I grew up, and I find that it’s much better up here. Now I wake up happy that I have another day to live in, and on Monday I’m happy that I get to start another week. Even though the week began yesterday, I have the same clock in my brain as everyone else and I tend to “start” on Monday. Who feels bad on Monday? I can’t understand it.

The morning’s work and study are done. A French-pressed cup of High Point coffee is smoking on the computer desk, and I’m about to hit the road and solve plumbing problems for people who need it badly. (That’s a tautology. By definition, if you need a plumber, you need him badly.) And they even pay me money. The temperature in Memphis was 72 degrees this morning and it’s 73 now. The air was ionized by some front that came through last night. It’s close to paradise.

Except for one thing: thieves came and stole the air condtioning units at our church last night. As I remember, we have about twelve. Well, we had about twelve. We’re at zero presently, and today is the first day of summer school at our K-12 Christian school. I guess if I were over there, I wouldn’t be in such a good mood. Those big honkers cost oh, $3,000 apiece, plus labor (I’m guessing). But that’s how the world has always been. Wherever anyone has been happy, he has been near others who were suffering.

A Rasmussen poll indicates that 30% of Americans would consider voting for a third party in the ’08 presidential election if that party made immigration enforcement its top priority.

Although I favor the enforcement of existing laws and the improvement of our system, I can’t bring myself to say that it should be our top priority. I am encouraged, though, to see the positive attitude toward third parties. To me, they parallel my own status as an independent plumber. When customers break away from the large plumbing shops with their high overhead and their self-centered philosophies, those customers can actually get what they want instead of what the powerful shops tell them they must have.

I voted for the Constitution Party in the last election and will probably do so again in ’08.

In yet another tribute to the triumph of Communism over the evil white rulers of Rhodesia, the New York Times has reported “Zimbabwe’s government on Wednesday announced 20-hour daily electricity cuts for households across the country as supplies are shifted to irrigate the crucial winter wheat crop amid persistent food shortages.” This country used to produce far more food than it needed, and it exported to other nations.

I suspect that Air America has figured out a way to blame this on President Bush.

Upon the death of Jerry Falwell this week, the editorial cartoonist for the Memphis newspaper dashed off a drawing of Tinky Winky welcoming Falwell into Heaven. The cartoonist, who is well known to be a good artist and deadeningly devoid of creative thinking, was alluding to the uproar of vitriol that was directed at Falwell in 1999 when his magazine stated that Tinky Winky was a homosexual cartoon character.

The magazine was right, and anybody who cared to research it knew that it was right. But nobody cared. They just wanted to hate and vilify Falwell. It’s a lot like the crucifixion of Rush Limbaugh when he said that Donovan McNabb was being overrated (at that time) because the sports media establishment was anxious to see a black quarterback do well. Rush said nothing racist, but it was called racist thousands of times. So with the ridicule of Falwell.

Ann Coulter’s column this week (May 16) gives the quotations and documentation for the mainline media’s statements that Tinky Winky was homosexual. (Of course, they quit saying it when the Falwell business hit the fan.) For instance:

Michael Musto of The Village Voice boasted that Tinky Winky was “out and proud,” noting that it was “a great message to kids” not only that it’s OK to be gay, but the importance of being well accessorized.”

More info appeared in an article on Newsbusters.

It’s bizarre. It’s Orwellian. It’s like trying to write by looking in a mirror instead of at your hand.

Coinciding with Cinco de Mayo, the illegal aliens in America are staging a nationwide protest, calling for reform of immigration laws. They complain that their current status is a major problem for them. Their familes are torn apart. Congress is doing nothing to remedy the situation. When immigration officials round up illegals, it makes them afraid to speak out in public.

It’s crazy. An intruder breaks into your home, commandeers a bedroom, and begins living off your shelter, insurance, utilities, appliances, and furniture, and then starts complaining that the police are hassling him and you’re not doing enough to get his family moved in with him?

Y’know, I have a solution for these problems they’re complaining about . . .

I often do plumbing for an organization which promotes, among other things, “peace and justice.”  One of their slogans (you see it on buttons, bumper stickers, etc.) is “Stop the Violence.” Someone there asked me once why I wear a sidearm. I told him “It’s sort of a fundamentalist version of ‘Stop the Violence.’  If somebody starts some violence, I intend to stop it if I can.”

This past Saturday night I discussed carrying with a friend and mentioned that, once you get used to it, you feel somewhat vulnerable whenever you happen not to be armed.  Philosophically, I oppose the existence of places where only criminals are armed, and I mentioned schools as an example.  It is not legal for me to be armed on school property. He and I both agreed that shooters would gravitate to such places, knowing that they have a free hand against their prey.

And so thirty-six hours later we hear that a shooter went to Virginia Tech and blew away over thirty kids.  I am literally horrified when I think of what the students endured while this evil murderer casually snuffed out one life after another.

If a trained handgunner had been present and armed, the murderer would have been summarily stopped and most of those kids would be alive today.