Sometimes when the air is just right, its invisible ingredients comprising a particular admixture of humidity, pollen, fragrance, and who knows what, it is as if a person has been carried back in time.
The other day I was at the grocery store, grumbling that the house-brand refried beans, 69 cents for quite some time, are now 89 cents, an increase of more than 20 percent. Then I noticed that the house-brand dry-roasted peanuts, $1.99 since forever, have gone up by more than 10 percent.
In the spring of odd-numbered years, it’s my task to upgrade the operating systems on my computers. It sometimes goes uneventfully.
Jason Kettinger looks at the use and misuse of #Woke and #StayWoke and the real issues we need to concern ourselves with.
I suppose I should start with the bad news. No leader at this present time can deliver unity to a people, when the basis for that unity is not known, and agreed upon in common. This is the basis for the skepticism among many concerning the possibilities for actually working together to form a more perfect union.
I rarely write on politics these days, because I am a pastor. While I have strong political opinions, I keep them to myself. I never want my particular take on the best health care system or the size of COVID stimulus checks to cause someone to disregard what I say about Jesus. But, when a large number of Christians put their hope so profoundly in the wrong places that they are willing to lay siege to the capitol to hold on to that misplaced hope, I must say something not to make a political point, but to make a pastoral one.
In his most recent column for Time, David French sounds the alarm under the heading “Only the Right-Wing Media Can Save America From Trump’s Conspiracies.” In fearing the conspiracies of the MAGA-ites, the opposition folks such as French keep creating their own conspiracy theories of sorts that are just as unhelpful. Let’s settle down both wings of the Vast Conspiracy, shall we?
So, here we are. The day after and, much like 2000, with a strong sense of what the end will be but delayed closure on the race. There is plenty of reason to believe when the ballots are crunched and the lawyers’ last shots are fired that there will be a President Biden. That is not the end I wanted – or am even still continuing to hope for – but even if that end comes, I find some solace in two telling aspects of the results we can see.
In terms of civility, style, and substance, this debate was light-years ahead of the presidential contest last week. I suppose we should be thankful, but it feels perverse to reward those who have lowered the bar enough to finally step over it.
Joe Biden could easily take the award for the rudest Presidential candidate in debate in my memory. Put the Vice President up against past nominees and that would be nearly undeniable. Except that he was debating the President, who didn’t want to lose out on that award. Most disturbingly, in that melee, the President’s horrid performance allowed one of the worst ideas ever brought up on a debate floor to slide by and it could easily mean we all lose.