Across the Great Divide

The Values Voters Top Ten

The old Contract with America managed to help elect some fringe characters and elevate some particularly nasty ones. Now the same forces are trying again with the Values Voters' Contract with Congress.

"Leaders of values voters [a stellar group of thought leaders, believe me] believe that we need a common declaration of our values and a common plan for solving the problems facing America."

They've just completed a conference in Washington, and now they are raising money to advance their handiwork. I tried to download the convenient wallet card version to share with you, but got a "page not found" error. Here's a summary from the short version of the contract, with screaming type and Gothic initials intact, but without legislative detail:

e are citizens of the United States of America and subjects of the sovereign Creator, acknowledged in the Declaration of Independence as the Supreme Ruler and Judge of the World. We strongly affirm our allegiance to the Constitution of the United States, and are moved by our faith in God to join together now to defend government of, by, and for the people against the greatest assault it has ever faced: the destruction of our Constitutionally-mandated republican form of government by judges who legislate from the bench and, thereby, subvert our liberty and our entire way of life.

n defense of our national principles, our Constitution of self-government, our decent character, and our shared national identity, we the undersigned citizens of the United States come together in support of actions we hereby agree to be right and necessary for the common good of all.

e therefore seek the following:

1. TO AFFIRM the national relationship with God in our places of worship, schools, mottos, and public spaces

2. TO SECURE our national interest in the institutions of marriage and family

3. TO SECURE our fundamental right as parents to the care, custody, and control of our children

4. TO SECURE our God-bestowed right to life

5. TO SECURE our God-granted liberties

6. TO SECURE our God-given stewardship of property

7. TO SECURE an environment of decency that is free from pornography and obscenity

8. TO SECURE just taxes, and end immorally destructive taxation

9. TO SECURE our national borders and identity

10. Judges who legislate from the bench subvert our republican form of government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and threaten all these legislative aims.

THEREFORE, WE URGENTLY CALL FOR Judicial Restraint, and an end to Judicial Activism.

bove every consideration of selfish passion, ambition, or interest, we hold to the ultimate intention of our Constitution: to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. For this purpose, and in support of the beliefs and actions we have herein declared, we pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our faithfulness, so help us God.

You can sign here.

We're Just Enforcing the Law Here

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has banned out-of-state same sex couples from marrying in Massachusetts. Its ruling upheld a 1913 state law forbidding nonresidents to marry in Massachusetts if their marriage would not be recognized in their home state.

Now, why do you suppose Massachusetts passed that 1913  law?

It was a convenient way in a state with an abolitionist history to prevent mixed race marriages without actually saying so. Massachusetts could use the anti-miscegenation laws in the South to do its work.

And why was the law still on the books, since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that banning interracial marriage was unconstitutional in 1967?

Clearly, no one thought it was worth the trouble then, and same sex marriage was not on the legislative radar until the first case brought in Minnesota in 1972.

But it's proven mighty convenient for 2008 presidential aspirant Mitt Romney now. Not to mention all those who have the 2006 equivalent of the 1913 mindset.

One More Reason to Home School

Praying for other people to recover from an illness is ineffective, according to the largest, best-designed study to examine the power of prayer to heal strangers at a distance.

The study of more than 1,800 heart-bypass patients found that those who had people praying for them had as many complications as those who did not. In fact, one group of patients who knew they were the subject of prayers fared worse.

– Washington Post, Prayer Doesn't Aid Recovery, Study Finds

First they attack Creation, then Christmas, now prayer. Next they'll pass polygamy.

St. Kate Lectures on Forgiveness

[F]orgiveness -- if it is warranted here -- should not take the form of a plea bargain. Forgiveness comes after the facts come out, and after the guilty party admits his misconduct and promises to amend his ways. Forgiveness is inconsistent with a claim by the accused that he has witnesses who will testify that the Supreme Court is lying.

I do not happen to believe that forgiveness is warranted here.
— Katherine Kersten, "We need to know who is telling the whole truth," Star Tribune

Wege takes on the entire Kersten column, so I won't bother linking to her here.

Her quest for the whole truth, of course, is selectively applied. It would be nice if she would go after the whole truth about the movement to put the marriage amendment on the ballot, for example.

I'm more interested in her notion of withholding forgiveness as some sort of interrogation technique.

Forgiveness in my book is not about the other. It's about me. Forgiveness is about letting go of anger,  blame and resentment. Not about granting absolution.

Try it, Kate. You'll feel better.

Which is Worse?

Comedian George Lopez gets a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame ... or the Star Tribune runs a three-column picture of the tired Chamber of Commerce stunt.

I mean, George is a funny guy, but does he belong in the ranks of Queen Latifah, Jim Ladd and um ... whoever they are?

Worship services are now open.

Cafeteria America

At the Byerly's service counter, a familiar face was chatting up the clerk.

"You just have a few things?" she said to me. "Go ahead. I'm in no hurry."

"You used to work in the Honeywell cafeteria, didn't you?"

She had run a cash register in the headquarters cafeteria when I worked there in the '80s. You did not get a tray past her with only the price being exchanged. She was mouthy in a world-weary way that let you know she was smarter than this job, but funny about it, not bitter.

Even young, she had the voice and manner of a watering hole waitress, like the old girls at the Little Wagon, before they tore it down and stuck a more hygienic version back in a parking ramp. She simultaneously disguised and accentuated her features — penciled-on, arched eyebrows, off-color lipstick on rubbery mouth, Earlene hair. The total package included a marathoner's frame, but it was a body honed in the smoker's lounge.

Today, they would say she was being her own brand.

"I still work there, God help me. I don't know why."

She went on to lament how a good company had been been turned into a different kind of workplace.

I saw the changes coming nearly 20 years ago and left to start my own company, because what was happening there was not unique to Honeywell. Those changes have intensified in so many places. Work is not always fun, but it should not be always not fun.

The Honeywell annual report came in the mail yesterday. The theme: "Where it matters." For five years, I wrote it, gathering all the company's global complexity into some kind of story for the small shareholders and employees. For the big money managers, it was all ancient news and not very relevant to what they cared about, but one year we were picked the best annual in the country when it still meant something.

Today, I can hardly read any of them, though I still consult with public companies on how to tell their stories. Sausage making, you know. Too often, annual reports are no longer about putting lipstick on a pig. Companies are putting lipstick on the sausage. That's their job.

You can't be a CEO and put a glum face on things, but neither can you ignore the weight of unfunded pension obligations and health care costs and global competition and saturated markets. Although they'd never admit it, a lot of those boys pulling in the big paychecks are not having fun at work, either.

But if you can just keep a smile on your face, it's impossible to puke.

I'm still a Honeywell shareowner. I've worked for good companies and for a lot of very good, honest people in corporate America. Even the one executive I knew who was indicted for price fixing I believe was actually a victim of forces much larger than his company. He just picked the wrong way around the big boys who were squeezing him and his competitors.

It's not just capitalist enterprise where I see the frazzled, the distracted, the stressed, the disaffected. They're in our public schools. They're in non-profits. They're in our Fifth Congressional District office. They're all looking to move, but where?

For all the happy talk and red-blue debate, there's precious little political discussion of what's real in people's lives, of applying good public policy where it matters. We're all still working in Cafeteria America and, God help us, we don't why.

Question He Hopes Never to Hear Again

"What are you benching, buff guy?"

I'm guessing Jack Abramoff would prefer not to hear this question for the next 5 years and 10 months.

Or if he does, it's from the same guy who asked last time.

Meet Ellison & See for Yourself

Rep. Keith Ellison, candidate for Martin Sabo's 5th Congressional District seat, has his first fundraiser this Friday, March 31st. It's from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at J.D. Hoyt's, 301 Washington Avenue North, Minneapolis.

We have no shortage of candidates who support gay rights, but no one else who comes at equal rights the way he can. Here's Ellison on the marriage amendment, excerpted from a column in Insight News:

Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X (not to mention Nat Turner) were preachers. Their priorities were clear: "Let Justice roll down like a mighty stream."  They both took instruction from that section of Matthew 25:44 which enjoins believers to feed the hungry and thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, heal the sick, and visit those in prison. So, in light of this tradition, where should we rank banning gay marriage on our list of priorities?

When the religious conservatives come knocking (and they will), inviting the Black church to join in the ecumenical multi-racial opposition to gay marriage, then I hope our ministers ask: How does picking on gays help us to fight for justice, to set the captives free, to rebuild the wasted cities or to feed the hungry? Would a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage help us to welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, heal the sick, or visit those in prison? Will it save one heterosexual marriage? Will it cause one couple who is living together to go ahead and jump the broom?

If not, then I hope our ministers tell the religious conservatives that we just don't have the time. We're busy.

Seeing Ghosts

Wege lists his profession as resume writer. The rest of the time, he's blogging resumes for the world, which is a much bigger job with worse pay. Right now, I'm working on an op/ed that will appear under someone else's name. By "working on," of course, I mean writing this instead.

Resume writer or ghost, we are stitching up another's experience into a semblance of order and truth. Although it takes discipline and craft, this kind of writing isn't brain surgery, or even plastic surgery. At best, it's the work of a cut man who quickly stops the bleeding enough for a fighter to get back in the ring. Or of the beautician readying a client for the ball.

Of the Mexican gardener presenting a facade to the street — or the Lake. Of the car detailer, the lobby granite buffer, the dry cleaner.

We are not breaking our backs or breathing fumes, but like the others we disappear behind our work so others may be exalted.

Which brings me to David Brooks.

In a recent column, All Politics is Thymos, Brooks writes about thymos as a frame for understanding political behavior:

Plato famously divided the soul into three parts: reason, eros (desire) and thymos (the hunger for recognition). Thymos is what motivates the best and worst things men do. It drives them to seek glory and assert themselves aggressively for noble causes. It drives them to rage if others don't recognize their worth. Sometimes it even causes them to kill over a trifle if they feel disrespected.

Plato went on to point out that people are not only sensitive about their own self-worth, they are also sensitive about the dignity of their group, and the dignity of others. If a group is denied the dignity it deserves, we call that injustice. Thymotic people mobilize to assert their group's significance if they feel they are being rendered invisible by society. Thymotic people mobilize on behalf of those made voiceless by the powerful. As Plato indicated, thymos is the psychological origin of political action.

It's also the origin of much blogging, though we may hide behind handles and ironic poses. Unlike the ghostwriter subsumed in the client's identity, we live for discovery.

My Downtime Requirements

The Smoking Gun published Dick Cheney's Vice Presidential  Downtime Suite requirements last week and the joke faded pretty quickly.

There's nothing untoward or rock starry in there. Even the stipulation that the TV be tuned to Fox News isn't that bad. You know how annoying it is trying to find a certain cable channel in a strange city. Besides, maybe he was looking for some balance. A handwritten notation requested the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and local paper — along with extra lamps.

This means he was actually planning to read.

We should celebrate the good news: That he didn't instead ask for the Washington Times, New York Post, Manchester UnionLeader, Field and Stream, Argosy Weekly, and the TV tuned to the XXX movie channel.

As for the other stipulations, they seem more instructive than demanding. Even the desk with chair request, which does seem a trifle elementary, wouldn't necessarily be found in the type of hospitality suite where Cheney might park for a few hours.

As a former hotel sales guy, I guarantee you that the memo was useful to the staff. Otherwise, most would've engaged in overkill trying to please the veep.

Overcome by this sudden wave of moderation, I started thinking about my own downtime requirements. Would they look ridiculous if I set them in writing? Or would they be as mundane as Cheney's?

You decide.

• Fully loaded Macintosh with active internet connection
• Vintage guitar in standard tuning and playable condition, obscure brand or model preferred
• Selection of current graphic novels and zines
• Map of local bookstore locations, non-chain
• Bowl of peanut M&Ms. Hide the bag...

Nope, even that feels pretty high maintenance to me. I could settle for just the extra lamps.