No, this post is not about puppies.  The title could be ‘Standing on the Side of Apple Dumplings’, or ‘Standing on the Side of Beautiful Music’  or standing on the side of anything that we all can agree is just wonderful.  I chose puppies to draw attention and to make a point.  The point won’t really need to be stated, though I may try to state it anyway.

     I never know what it’s going to be when I open up my daily paper.  It might be a guest column by a young Muslim at the local college trying to explain the wonders of the Quran and the  way Mohammed and Jesus are , like, the same because the Quran was revealed to Mohammed and the Gospel was revealed to Jesus.  Why, of course, how stupid of me!  That type of thing.  Or something by a First Amendment group about how Barry Lynd has every right to enter my courthouse square with a bulldozer and knock over the granite monument etched with the Ten Commandments.  That type of thing.  Or how I need to come to terms with the fact that, should I choose to wash my car in my non-porous driveway and allow all those toxic soap suds to run off into the gutter and down to pollute the local stream, my grandchildren will be there with recording equipment and the phone number of the local reporting agency.  That type of thing.

So I just never know, and today as I opened up to the ‘Perspectives’ page in the Op-ed section, there it was.  A large half-page illustration of two cardboard cutout, sexless stick figures above two entwined golden wedding rings.  Below that is the body of the article with the title, the beautiful title, “Why I Stand on the Side of …….(ready?) …..Love”.  Now, you know already what the story line is here, just from that much. I don’t really need to explain it in much detail.  Suffice it to say, the piece is an article by a local ‘community minister’  from a denomination that has, shall we say, ‘universal’ membership.  As you may surmise, the piece is a sob story for all the oppressed lovers throughout the land suffering under the abomination and tyranny of the Defense Of Marriage Act.  It has all the themes – discrimination, bigotry, denial of right, denial of benefit, dehumanization, segregation, oppression – yes, all of that and more.  Oh, and it even includes the new theme of ‘family values’.  Extending the definition of ‘family’.  Why, of course.  And to boot, the author tosses in the shameful way immigrants are treated in America, as well.  Yes,yes. show them the love, too.

Yes, all of that.  That type of thing.  Nothing new here.  So why did I feel the need to post a diary and rant about it?  Well, the stated reason for the article is public awarenes of a public advocacy campaign called ‘Standing on the Side of Love’.  This campaign was theoretically inspired by a shooting that occurred a few years back at an outlet of this ‘universal’ congregation that supposedly was prompted by the church’s acceptance of the alphabet soup of sexuality.  Yes, another familiar theme.  “Stop the violence” and “Stand on the side of ‘Love’.”  Okay. We promise to renounce violence and reserve our hatred for global weather.  Again, nothing new here.  Same old liberal media giving same old column space to same old social justice groups for propaganda purposes.  So what’s my beef today?

    My beef is that the very first line of the piece is this:  “Feb. 14 – Valentine’s Day- is National Standing on the Side of Love Day”.  That sentence is a lie, and it is not buried in the article, it is the very first sentence of the piece.  February 14 is indeed Valentine’s Day, a traditional celebration of Love, but it is not  ‘National Standing on the Side of Love Day’   You know that.  I know that.  The author of the piece knows that.  But the author of the piece did not qualify the sentence to explain it is just her tribe that says that day is that day.  And the editors of the newspaper know that.  And there is the rub.  The false premise that everyone has to operate under, from the outset, is that there is a National day of observance for something that a minority interest group is promoting, and whether or not you agree with their mission, it was written that Feb. 14 is National Standing on the Side of Love Day, so get out of the way and get over it, pretty please.

     Again, why the frustration?  People say stuff all the time that’s not true, and anyway it really is a shame that there was a shooting, and we all abhor shootings and, like, oppression and stuff, right?  Yeah, just like everyone adores puppies.  Only this isn’t about puppies.  And it is not about love.  And it is not about puppy love.  It is about changing the definition of marriage.  And nobody is contesting some group’s right to observe a day in each and every one of their congregations, nationwide, or globally for that matter.  But no one has the right to designate that day for ….the Nation.  Neither my congressional representative nor anybody elses, that I am aware of, agreed to that resolution. And the editors have an obligation to note a false statement of fact, even in an opinion piece, especially one so blatant, that might cause the unaware to doff their ball caps, or alter their routines, or otherwise be used to support something they have no clue about.   But no editor’s note here.  Never is on a left-wing diatribe.  Of course, it’s  not just that the author had to lie about ‘the National Day’ but that she had to lie about what she is ’standing on the side of’.  She couldn’t title her article “Why I Stand on the Side of Gay Marriage”.  That  wouldn’t get as many clicks from the gushing puppy-lovers all across the landscape, would it?  They then wouldn’t get the full force and effect of the horrors described in the  body of the article. And to be fair,  note that the idea is not original to this author.  This is a ‘national’ program. The terminology used is a ruse, as most of the social gambits are that I read about in my local press every day.  Only now, it seems it has gone past just  me trying to take it  with a grain of salt, and dashing off the occasional outraged missive.   Now, they tell me, and my unsuspecting grandchildren, we have to ‘Stand on the Side of….Something’, because it’s, like, a National Day, don’tchaknow?  And the reason I wrote this diary is because it’s not just here in in Podunk, Outerwinterbottom.  National means national.  Are you standing for wonderful things where you live?

Here is the link.  Enjoy.

http://www.thestarpress.com/article/20110206/OPINION/102060317/Why-I-stand-on-the-side-of-love

     Pleading today for the elimination of local government, Mitch Daniels makes the point that there are just a heckuva lot of trees out there: “It’s an unfortunate irony that Indiana, with our reputation for keeping government lean and accountable, is awash in elected officials (emph. mine) and layers of local administration.”

  Some of you may know that there is currently a push, a big push, going on in Indiana to eliminate township governments and to streamline and consolidate county governments and service units, such as fire departments, public schools and libraries.  This is of course not unique to Indiana.  Other states are jumping on the progressive modernization bandwagon.  There are just too doggone many elected officials out there duplicating services, clogging up the system, engaging in cronyism and nepotism and a….decent respect to the opinion of progressives everywhere, demands that we stamp them out and get in the 21st century, or so the theory goes.  See the link below for Mitch’s latest offering on the subject.

So that we are clear on our objectivism here, Mitch Daniels was probably the best thing possible to come along for the State of Indiana in 2004.  Without a doubt, he kept the Ship of State afloat in perilous times, especially in the runup to and during the recession.  Much like G.W. Bush was a rock for America at a crucial juncture.  However, as has been tossed back and forth on these pages and others, there is some concern about Mitch’s (he gives us leave to call him that) stance on social issues and the concept of ‘big government’.

Well, who knows what is in his heart, but everyone should know by now that Mitch is a budget guy, a wonk, and administrator, an “executive”.  Oh, and how we did harp on Barry’s lack of “executive experience” in the 2008 campaign!  In retrospect, maybe that should have been way down on our list.  At any rate, what is becoming more and more apparent is that the narrative is being controlled, in many venues, by the ‘trucers’.  What is happening is the ‘budget trumps all’ argument is winning, not only on the national scene but here in formerly conservative Indiana, to the point that not only are social issues cast aside, but apparently, from the rhetoric of Mitchell B. Daniels, your republican form of government you formerly thought so much of is negotiable as well.  Yes, indeed, my fellow Hoosiers, says Mitch, the Constitution of 1851 is a relic, and we are ‘awash’ in elected officials.  Note that Mitch doesn’t say we are ‘awash’ in bureaucrats, ‘awash’ in policy wonks, ‘awash’ in lobbyists.  No, we are ‘awash’ in elected officials, here in Indiana.  This is not just a minor item in his agenda.  He has joined forces with the Press and the Professors to make this an all-out crusade.  He established a Commission with the expressed goal to reform local government in Indiana and the willing accomplices came out of the woodwork to sign up.

     So why should you care?  “About time for those hick Hoosiers to get with the 21st Century,” you might say.  Well, maybe.  Indiana has 92 counties containing 1,008 townships.  Boy that’s just a lot of government isn’t it?  No; it’s a lot of people in local government, but there’s not a lot of governing going on there.  There’s a lot of lookin’ out for the folks going on there.  Our issue today is not debating particular constitutional constructs.  It is bringing the question of the outlook and governance-view of Mitch Daniels to the fore and suggesting that its apparent Progressive bent might be instructive as we evaluate him for national office.

     Mitch Daniels can balance a budget.  Mitch Daniels can make the daring executive decision when it comes to finance. Mitch Daniels  has been in Washington in the thick of the bureaucracy.  Yes, he was there…in the thick of the ….bureaucracy.  He was right in the middle of it.  A whole…..forest of bureaucrats.  Yet a major problem in Indiana, as Mitch sees it, is a ….grove? …. of elected officials.  Just too many elected people getting in the way, inefficient and outdated, outmoded.  Can be replaced with maybe just a few elected  people with the power to appoint people to do the actual work of governing, or, shall we say, ruling?

When Mitch was in Washington, in the middle of that forest of bureaucrats, perhaps there were just too many ….elected officials…clogging his view.  Heavens, wouldn’t maybe just one or two Congress critters from each state be enough to consent to what the executive has in mind?  Is Washington ‘awash’ in 535 ‘elected officials’?   Is this an apples-oranges argument?  Are we trying to balance a budget or are we trying to save the Republic?

     There are too many ‘layers of administration’ in Indiana, Mitch says.  And one of those ‘layers’ are people who are ‘elected’, out there in the hinterlands, by people who know them.  We are right now in the middle of what almost every thinking observer realizes, at least in our Republican circles, is a near constitutional crisis over the issue of Barry’s use of the bureaucratic apparatus to thwart the will of the people by doing end-runs around Congress.  And Mitch is positioning himself to be considered by the people of America by ranting about being ‘awash’ in a sea of ‘elected officials’ here in his home state?  Well, yes, perhaps America should consider that.

www.indy.com/posts/146159 

       As we go to bed tonight, still angered and saddened by the scorn and abuse hurled at decent folk and decent opinion the past week, we learn that it is getting cranked up yet again.  The inspiration this time comes from the writing of Ron Reagan, Jr. in his book My Father At 100.  In it, he reportedly posits that his father was in the beginnings of his Alzheimer’s as early as the first term of his presidency.  As we post this evening we read that Junior will be appearing on ABC’s 20/20 to plug his book and, presumedly, to further advance the notion that his father started stumbling, mentally, in 1984.

This story broke this afternoon.  We first heard it on the evening news and it is now breaking out all over the blogs.  One excerpt from the book has Reagan, jr. recounting how in a 1984 debate with Mondale, his father’s stumbling in a debate with Walter Mondale left him (junior) in fear and nausea at the thought that his father’s advancing age was going to mark his second term.

Medical professionals interviewed so far, including some who were around during Reagan’s second term, have said that there was absolutely no indication of Alzheimer’s during the time Ron Jr. references, but the younger Reagan assures us that we all now know that the onset of Alzheimer’s can be years before being medically discovered.  Well, sure.  And we are not here challenging Junior’s apprehension in 1984, for that is impossible to ascertain.  What we are challenging is both the propriety of this, shall we say, “bombshell” being offered at this moment,  or at all, and the callous disregard, if indeed it is disregard, for the ways in which it will be used.

      We have in the past wondered at the antics of the young Reagan, his seeming mockery of the tenets and values his father championed.  Once his father had definitively slipped into his affliction, it seemed Junior felt free to hack and hew at the traditional values the elder Reagan had always espoused.  Politics is politics and lifestyle is lifestyle, but there is such thing as respect for our sires and dams, even if their comprehension wanes.  We have not, of course, read the full text, nor will we.  Professionals will flesh this out and we defer to their expertise. And in the end perhaps it will be just an honest bleak spot in an otherwise respectful work issued in this, the 100th anniversary of Reagan’s birth.  But why was it led with?  And who led?  Was it Ronnie or the dark and vengeful media?  And is there any separation there?

     And of course there is more disgust to be had than just at Ronnie for what we perceive to be an unnecessary anecdote in his book.  It is his book and it is his father.  But for millions and millions of Americans, Reagan was something of a father figure, doubtless because of, not just his maturity, but the fact that America was during his tenure as President trying to emerge from a nonconformist, nihilistic adolescency, and a very destructive and dangerous one at that.

     And more.  Many of us had grown up under the cloud of the uncertainty of the continued existence of civilization as we knew it.  Oh, yes, we had our rockn’roll and our Davey Crockett hats and our tricked-out cars and our cheeseburgers.  But always in the background, and sometimes bubbling to the fore, was the specter of Mutual Assured Destruction.  Now, real historians and journalists have written volumes on brinkmanship and leadership and real threats and imagined threats.  No need to hash it out here.  Suffice it to say that few did not acknowledge Ronald Reagan Senior as the Senior Partner in the Keeping the World Safe for Freedom Corporation.  He may not have been your hero, Ronnie, but to millions laboring to pull free from domination during those times, he surely cannot now be cast as just a senile old man.

Again, as we retire tonight, Stephen Lowman blogs in the Washington Post: “President Reagan suffered from Alzheimer’s while in office, according to son.”  And the comments.  The comments are awful.  Politico is on the story. Others.  Some of the comments are against The Right.  Some personally against the former President. Speculation already begun on “Who was really running the show?”, et cetera.  Wikileaks and Jared Loughner will now take a back seat.  As will honor, decency,  respect, history and, quite probably, truth.