It’s Friday night, and I’m not feeling especially insightful. The kids are in bed, and I’m sitting out on our front porch, drinking a beer enjoying some nice weather. We haven’t had much of it, and rumor has it this weekend won’t be all that great either. The air is a little cool, and the smell of fresh cut grass is in the air. Sometimes you have to take a pause from the continuous bitch-fest that tends to be the blogosphere and admit that things aren’t half bad sometimes.

My Pandora Radio selection just spit out a song by the Dropkick Murphys with pretty compelling lyrics:

Yeh, this one’s for the workers who toil night and day
By hand and by brain to earn your pay
Who for centuries long past for no more than your bread
Have bled for your countries and counted your dead

In the factories and mills, in the shipyards and mines
We’ve often been told to keep up with the times
For our skills are not needed, they’ve streamlined the job
And with sliderule and stopwatch our pride they have robbed

[Chorus:]
We’re the first ones to starve, we’re the first ones to die
The first ones in line for that pie-in-the-sky
And we’re always the last when the cream is shared out
For the worker is working when the fat cat’s about

And when the sky darkens and the prospect is war
Who’s given a gun and then pushed to the fore
And expected to die for the land of our birth
Though we’ve never owned one lousy handful of earth?

[Chorus x3]

All of these things the worker has done
From tilling the fields to carrying the gun
We’ve been yoked to the plough since time first began
And always expected to carry the can

At the risk of mindlessly jabbing other Hoosier bloggers, I wandered over to the right wing blog, Hoosier Access to see what was going on – just grabbing the first few posts:

1. Will the Obama endorsement hurt Donnelly? My answer: no. Democratic Congressman endorses Democratic Presidential nominee after the race is over — not really explosive stuff.

2. Democrats have increased a .5% tax increase on some taxpayers. Or, as Reverent & Free puts it: Democrats are figuring out how to pay for stuff. Meanwhile, referring to the right wingers: “Hopelessly adrift in failed economic policies and directionless wars, all they can do is point fingers and dishonestly criticize.”

3. Rumor about Ed Delaney stepping down and potentially being replaced by David Orentlicher. Good blog fodder, no comment.

4. Donnelly aligns with “uber liberal” Obama. Eek! Scary, scary Obama! Didn’t work in Mississippi yesterday; I don’t think anyone in IN-02 is going to panic over Obama.

5. Endorsement by Josh Gillespie Craig Dunn of Jon Costas for AG. Then, somewhat incongruously, he launches into how Mitch Daniels saved us from the smoking wreckage that was apparently Indiana from 1988 to 2004; indirectly slagging the Senate Republicans of that era.

6. Commentary on the retirement of Bob Meeks. The commentary is basically that Democrats won’t pick up the seat. More important to me is that Meeks struck me as a devoted public servant – a bit of a curmudgeon who seemed to really enjoy his job. It’s unfortunate that poor health is forcing him to step down.

So, anyway, that’s what’s going on over there.

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an article by Sylvia Smith entitled “Hoosiers split on revised farm legislation.” At this point, I have almost gotten to the point that the best policy will be the direct opposite of whatever President Bush recommends. But, without knowing a great deal about the guts of this farm bill, I have to agree with his sentiment as conveyed in the Journal Gazette story. Threatening a veto, Bush said:

“Farm income is expected to exceed the 10-year average by 50 percent this year, yet Congress’ bill asks American taxpayers to subsidize the incomes of married farmers who earn $1.5 million per year. I believe doing so at a time of record farm income is irresponsible,” Bush said.

There has to be a catch somewhere — Bush isn’t usually a voice of fiscal responsibility in the face of government checks going to rich people. Senator Lugar also opposes the bill. Souder and Pence are officially uncommitted but, from the article, it sounds as if they will vote in favor of the bill.

The farm bill is usually a good example of how full of crap the political process can be. Loads of politicians and constituents who normally purport to be in favor of free markets and against welfare routinely support taxpayer “subsidies” to various agricultural interests.

O.k., nothing serious. Abdul has a post criticizing Thomas’s criticism of the latest Daniels ads. I’ll butt in, just a bit – I don’t have time for thorough analysis.

I’ll just note Abdul’s paragraph:

Daniels’ claim is that he balanced THE STATE’S budget without a tax increase, which is accurate. The Governor did not raise state taxes. His adminstration held the line on spending. Daniels’ opponents argue that he did that by balancing the state’s budget on the back of local governments by holding back property tax replacement revenue which led to the massive increase in last summer’s tax bills. Actually that was only part of it, fundamentally what led to the increase in tax bills was the assessments and local government spending, which is where 99 percent of your property taxes go anyway. And that sales tax increase was to help pay for property tax relief and the state’s assumption of a number of levies such as child welfare and police pensions.

My hackles go up whenever I hear the property tax blamed primarily on local government. Because:

Only about 25% of the 24% average increase (6% then, I suppose) has to do with local tax levies. The remaining 18% of the average increase has to do with a shift in the tax burden (from State to Local and from Business to Residential).

A knife fight broke out at the Faith Baptist Community Center in Lafayette, injuring five. The incident is notable for the location – the community center of a church and for the number of injuries. The discussion from last night was quick to focus on the fact that numerous outsiders use the community center; though it’s not entirely clear yet that those involved were, in fact, outsiders. Other themes showing up are the notion that Lafayette’s going to hell because of gang activity imported from Chicago and that this incident would have had a better result if more citizens were armed.

The Gangs of Chicago theme caught my eye since I was having a discussion on Monday where a fellow lawyer was talking about reports that some of the Section 8, HUD housing eligible apartment complexes are advertising in Chicago where wait times for such housing are much longer. There is some concern generally in Lafayette that we are bringing big city problems into our smallish community. How well founded these concerns are, I do not know.

The more guns theme seems to crop up anytime there is an outbreak of violence. Columbine? Need more guns. Virginia Tech? More guns. Touch of the flu? More guns. I’m not anti-gun; I think they serve a useful purpose in terms of checking potential tyrants — and, useful or not, the rights are enshrined in the Constitution. However, I have serious doubts about whether more guns would be useful in this situation. One response in the comments was that instead of the headline, “knife fight ensues, 5 injured” we’d have a headline “gun fight ensues, 5 dead.” Is there evidence that more guns floating around a community deters violence, or is this just speculation?

I had been meaning to do a post on a book I’d recommend to anyone who is interested in religious history: A History of God by Karen Armstrong. It’s a readable book that takes a close look at the history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I have to confess that I bogged down and stopped reading when she got into 14th century Islamic philosophers and the like. The places and the people involved became too foreign for me to really internalize; at least for a book I was reading casually.

I found the bulk of the book to be excellent, however. I was reminded to post about it today after reading Dispatches from the Culture Wars quoted DaveScot:

My position is that in the ordering of baby killing God was wrong and therefore cannot be a trusted source of moral absolutes. If the Old Testament is a true accounting of God’s interaction with the world then I have no choice but to conclude that my morals are superior to His. But rather than believe that I choose to believe that the Old Testament is not a true account of God’s interaction with the world but is rather, at least in part, a rather destructive immoral human fabrication created during a much more barbaric, violent time and place in world history when the sword was more respected than the olive branch.

I was raised as a Presbyterian and wrestled with a lot of these questions in my younger years. Eventually, I came to be agnostic and would place my money on atheism being correct if I were a betting man. In any event, I have not seen any reason to believe that Christian myths are any more likely to reflect reality than the mythologies of countless other civilizations and religions that came before and after. Had I kept on being a Presbyterian, I would have been doing so only because my parents are Presbyterians — which seems like a silly, yet common, reason to embrace a particular religion.

If you believe that Jews and early Christians were writing the books of the Bible rather than God himself, it gets you out of a lot of these philosophical tangles. However, that comes with a price, since the Bible stops being the inerrant word of God if it’s written by flawed humans.

Armstrong’s book does a good job of describing the historical contexts in which the various books of the Bible are written. For example, some of the early ones are written when there wasn’t a particular belief that their God was the only God that existed. Rather, they took the somewhat unusual step for the time of having a jealous God who looked dimly on the other Gods who were acknowledged to exist at the time such as Baal. The books of the Bible reflect a transition as Yahweh turns from one of many Gods who actively intervened in the world and made good on direct promises to his followers into more of a solitary, non-anthropomorphic, Platonic ideal that remained aloof from the world. Along the way, Yahweh turns from primarily a militaristic God into a God who has a broader skill set such as fertility until he becomes the only God.

Also part of the process was the “discovery” of Deuteronomy by the High Priest of the Temple in Judah which, at the time, was undergoing quite a bit of political stress. The northern Hebrew kingdom of Israel had been destroyed and Judah’s larger imperial neighbors were bearing down. The High Priest presented this new document to the Judean King. It was purported to be lost sermons of Moses with a particular emphasis that Yahweh should be worshiped exclusively. King Josiah, who had permitted worship of deities such as Baal and Asherah in the Temple, became convinced that this faithlessness was the reason for these troubled times and presided over a series of reforms requiring Yahweh to be worshiped exclusively which presumably enhanced the power of the priest who “discovered” those lost sermons of Moses.

So, anyway, blasphemous as it may be, viewing Yahweh as a story who evolved with his story-tellers is much more interesting to me than trying to engage in metaphysical acrobatics trying to reconcile the eternal truth of the Bible; the frequently cruel and jealous military God of the early Hebrews; and the mostly detached, loving, omniscient/omnipotent God of modern Christians.

Indiana is trying to capitalize on its relationship to Abraham Lincoln. Gov. Daniels, accurately I think, refers to Indiana as the “forgotten stepchild” in the Lincoln legacy. Kentucky seems to have promoted itself as the place where Lincoln was born and Illinois has dubbed itself “the Land of Lincoln.” With Indiana, it’s always been more like, “oh yeah, he lived there too.”

According to Gov. Mitch Daniels, the Indiana Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Mother’s Day Celebration will begin to correct the oversight of Indiana being the “forgotten stepchild” in the Lincoln legacy.

. . .

In his remarks, Daniels said Indiana has been too modest and passive regarding its Lincoln connection.

“This is where his character was born that saved the nation,” he said. “A year from now no one will doubt the credit Indiana deserves in the Lincoln legacy.”

Daniels termed the event “a great celebration for our state.”

Asked afterward why he noted Lincoln as the “greatest American,” Daniels said, “Because of his moral courage, his willingness to endure almost unimaginable criticism to do what was right — he suffered enormously, both physically and emotionally.”

Of course, if enhancing the state’s Lincoln cred is really one of the state’s priorities, a first step may have been trying to keep open the Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne.

According to this Lincoln family time line, Lincoln was born in Kentucky on Feb. 12, 1809; he moved to Indiana in 1816 where he lived until 1830 — basically from age 7 to age 21.

The New York Sun has a column by Patrick McIlherhan of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about Indiana’s Voter ID law. It contains arguments I view as specious. But, that’s not why I’m writing this. That battle is over, the good guys lost. No help for it now but to elect different legislators and change the law, preferably to impose a duty on the government to actively work to get ID into the hands of its citizens.

No, the reason I write is to congratulate Indiana Barrister’s Abdul for his recent apparent promotion. That’s Professor Hakim-Shabazz to you! (Though, I confess, I haven’t checked his identification or other credentials to verify his elevation to a professorship at the unspecified Indianapolis law school.)

“There’s always some incidental costs to voting — you can’t come to the polls naked,” an Indianapolis law professor, Abdul Hakim-Shabazz, who served on the task force that wrote the rules, says. The remarkable thing is that for all the talk of disenfranchisement, Indiana has had seven elections since, and those challenging the law have yet to turn up a plaintiff who credibly can say the law stymied him, Mr. Hakim-Shabazz says. (A dozen nuns, give or take, notwithstanding — Doug)
. . .
There is a decent trade-off to be made between access and security, and Indiana seems to have found it. “I never thought Indiana would be the model for the country of how to do anything,” Mr. Hakim-Shabazz says. It isn’t, not yet at least, but it ought to be.

More seriously, there was a task force for this? On which Abdul was a member? I missed that completely.

Looks like some tight races here in Indiana. Lake County is delaying its results, reportedly because it’s counting absentee votes and won’t release results until those are counted. My skeptical side figures that, even if Clinton is winning the state, someone in Lake County figures to jam up her ability to claim victory until after most folks go to bed. She’s up by about 4% but Lake County could possibly erase that advantage.

The Governor’s race is tight, tight, tight. Schellinger appears to be up by a percent or so. Andre Carson has won in the 7th with about 46% to Woody Myers 24%. Dan Burton fended off his challenger 52 to 45%.

Obama won North Carolina in convincing fashion.

Good times.