A Wacky Football Prediction

Okay, it's gonna be Ohio State v. USC for the national championship, right? Well, it certainly looks that way now. But I think something is going to happen this coming Saturday to really mess that whole scenario up.

I believe that UCLA is going to beat USC in the season finale at the Rose Bowl. UCLA opened the season 4-1 and then lost 4 in a row. They have now won 2 in a row, including a big win against Oregon State, the only team to beat USC this season. I think the timing is right for a UCLA upset. The Rose Bowl will be packed, although in a sense it'll be a home game for both schools.

But for UCLA, this is their Super Bowl. They aren't headed to a bowl game of any sort at this point in time. Win, and they keep their cross-town rivals out of the national championship picture, and then at least get a shot at a lesser bowl, such as the Saltshaker Bowl or something like that.

In the past five years, USC has beaten UCLA by a combined score of 221-86. So either I come across looking like quite the prognosticator or this will forever doom my chances of getting a job as a bookie in Las Vegas. My predicted final score is UCLA 31 - USC 28.

A Political Fast

I recently finished a book entitled “Tempting Faith.” The author is David Kuo, who spent a few years as the number two in command of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in the Bush White House.

Kuo left the Bush White House disgusted and disillusioned by his experiences there. He said that while the Faith Based Initiative was a cornerstone of Bush’s campaign, it was never something that came to much fruition. Hardly any monies were put into it, nor did Bush and his advisors care to. In other words, it was a great idea to get them elected, but that was it.

Prior to joining the White House, Kuo also worked with William Bennett, and did speechwriting for, among others, Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson. An interesting passage talked about how speeches were tailor made for the evangelical audience. For example, a candidate may say, “There’s power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people.” To a mainstream audience, that probably sounds a little weird. To a fundamentalist audience, it probably got a huge ovation. Now, of course, speechwriting 101 dictates that you throw in things to connect to your audience, so this isn’t totally unusual, but does highlight how Christians also can be taken advantage of in the political arena.

Kuo closes his book by calling for a “fast from politics.” He does not mean that we stop voting or that Christians in politics start submitting their resignations. He just calls for us to stop being so focused on everything political. Spend more time studying the Word and less time trying to get others elected. Quit giving money to groups like the Family Research Council and give it instead to charities that are out there actually helping those in need. Stop arguing with those on the “other side” and find some common bonds (Kuo admits his guilt on condemning anything and everything associated with the words Democrat and Clinton). Kuo gives some interesting statistics. By the year 2008, a Republican would have been in the White House for 20 of the last 28 years. The vast majority of judges have been appointed by a Republican, as well as 7 of the 9 justices on the Supreme Court. Congress just tilted the other way, but the House was under Republican rule for 12 years, and the Senate has gone back and forth since Reagan took office.

So, have we really accomplished that much by being so involved in politics? Kuo thinks that is certainly up for debate. He cites Billy Graham as one who was very involved with politics, but then a bad experience in the Nixon White House caused him to get back to what he was truly called to do, and look at the respect he has garnered throughout the years. Same for Rick Warren, one of the biggest names in evangelical circles today, but you don’t hear his name much in the political arena.

I’ve taken Kuo up on this whole fast thing. Since the election, I’ve basically stopped watching the political talk shows and listening to talk radio. When I do check back in once in a while, I find out I haven’t really missed much. I still keep up on the headlines, but as for commentary and analysis of why “they are wrong and we are right,’ I’m sort of taking a break from that.

Maybe that’s why I actually had time to finish reading this book.

A Late Night Emergency

Last night, Dorene had to leave at about 11:30 p.m. to meet with a couple people from church. She was out all night and will likely be tied up all day today.

The reason? The stores opened at 5:00 a.m. this morning for Christmas shopping! Yes, my wife is one of those crazy ones that was in line this morning at the crack of dawn to get those bargains. However, she took it to another level. Her and her friend Marcie, and Cheryl (our pastor's wife), figured it would be a good idea to get out there extra early and scope out everything. So, they stayed up all night at Wal-Mart to stake their claims. Yes, they stayed up ALL NIGHT!

I have already heard that she got some good deals on some Play-Do.

What Was Kramer (not) Thinking?

Wow, did you see that clip of Michael Richards totally losing it at the comedy club in Hollywood? I thought maybe he just let slip a racial slur and that was it. But no, he was using the F word and N word quite liberally. When I watched the clip (easily found on YouTube), I was kind of waiting for the moment when it turns out it was just all a performance piece (he was involved in an infamous Andy Kaufman meltdown that was indeed staged). But there was no punch line, just the site of this guy on stage yelling out racial slurs.

He can't say he was drunk like Mel Gibson. He can't say that "the tape didn't tell the whole story." I mean, it's all there. He's yelling at two blacks and saying how he's lucky they aren't being hung upside down with a fork stuck in 'em, like they would've been 50 years ago. He then went on David Letterman via satellite and that had to be one of the most uncomfortable moments I've ever watched. He was just so uncomfortable, and then his apology went off in a different direction and he started talking about Hurricane Katrina (ah ha, it's all Bush's fault!). Pretty lame. Not that Michael Richards really has a career to worry about, but he'll have a hard time recovering from this one. Of course, I'm sure he's doing okay collecting those royalty checks from Seinfeld being in syndication and the DVD sales.

Go Big, Go Long, Go Home!

Thus, in a nutshell, according to a recent Pentagon report, are our three options for dealing with the situation in Iraq. We go big by sending in a lot more troops to end the insurgency once and for all. We go long by reducing the number of troops but committing to be there a while. Or, we just go home.

I think that by going big, we just send more troops in to fight a battle that military might has no chance to win. This battle of trying to secure neighborhoods and going house to house just isn't ever going to work. If we go long, then we're just leaving more of our troops exposed to the insurgency.

I say, let's go home! Bring 'em all back. Yeah, yeah, I know the whole "that region will be flung into chaos" theory and that we'll be more unsafe than ever before. But I really don't think that will happen. Yes, there will be civil war, and the long-suppressed Shiites will be very cruel to the Sunnis. Maybe it'll all divide up like Yugoslavia did. It'll get pretty ugly at first. But our presence there, whether big or small, is always going to be a detriment.

We've failed there, plain and simple. It's not going to get better, it just isn't. Maybe 'W' will decide to be a hero and bring everyone home. Maybe the Democrats will stop being scared of being called unpatriotic and vote to end the war. I don't care about who gets credit for it, let's just bring the troops home.

Lesson Learned?

One good thing about the Republican massacre at the recent elections is that they know they now need to change leadership. No more bringing out the old school leaders like Trent Lott. Nope, they now have the opportunity to . . . wait, what's that? They DID bring back Trent Lott?

Oh, never mind.

Another Undefeated Season (thus far) for the Colts

Like they say, it's deja vu all over again. This season the Colts are sitting undefeated at 9-0, so the talk again turns to, "can they do it?"

Last season, they teased us at 13-0 before losing at San Diego and then dropping another game before dropping out of the playoffs. So, which is better, go ahead and lose now and get it out your system or go for the undefeated season. Hey, you gotta root for the 16-0. They still have their work cut out for them. Fortunately, their two toughest games are at home, between Philadelphia and Cincinnati (and those two teams are struggling). Their road games are against Dallas, Tennessee, Jacksonville, and Houston. Those should be easy games, but for each of those teams, they will be gunning for the Colts because their seasons are gone, so this would give them a chance to redeem themselves.

If the Colts are 15-0, then guess who they end against? Yep, they play at home against the Dophins on New Year's Eve. So, they could go for history by playing the last team to go undefeated. That could be quite the game.

Undefeated or not, it'll all be for naught if Peyton Manning can't get the Colts to the Super Bowl this year. We've seen what they can do in the regular season, but it's time to take it to that next level.

The Mid-Term Elections, Part III: Post-Script

So, the predicted Republican bloodbath did indeed come to pass. I actually thought it was going to be much closer, but it wasn't. The message was loud and clear. People are tired of the current leadership and want change. I think this is well and good. My prediction that the Republicans would hold on to the House wasn't wishful thinking, it was just what I thought was going to happen. But the Republicans did everything possible to ruin things the past few years, and now they can sit back and decide how they can return to power. It could be a while. Republicans today feel like Democrats did in 1994.

I was at Republican headquarters last night watching the election returns, and it wasn't exactly an upbeat evening. We heard about a dozen concession speeches, from a variety of local and state candidates. The final concession speech was from Chris Chocola, who got creamed by Joe Donnelly, in what was expected to be a very close race. Funny thing though, I don't think there was any love lost with Chocola. Not exactly a resounding ovation when he took the stage. He gave a brief speech where he gave the usual thank you's to the volunteers, his wife, etc. Then he simply left. At that point, the entire room fell totally silent and people started to leave, now knowing that the Republicans were well on their way to losing just about everything. I didn't vote for Chocola, although I kept that little tidbit silent since technically I was an invited guest of the Chocola campaign.

One bright spot was that Jackie Walorski held on to her State seat, so she can continue to annoy B. Patrick Bauer (she got a huge ovation, obviously a star within the Party). Bauer handily beat my candidate Kevin Mitschelen. Kevin got 32% of the vote, which with everything against the Republicans this year, was not a bad showing. Mark Souder also won fairly easily and didn't get swept up like most of the other Indiana Republicans in the House.

Now Bush has a choice. Be stubborn and have a miserable final two years, or return to his Texas governor's style and reach out to the other side, which he was very good at doing (that was his whole "uniter not divider" thing). Clinton had to do it, and that's what saved his presidency. It could be quite the ironic footnote if it's the Democrats who end up saving the Bush legacy. But if Bush wisens up, he could have a very productive final two years and could leave office on quite the high note. It's his call.

The Mid-Term Elections, Part II: Election Day

I must say, I am glad we’ve finally arrived at election day. Weeks of hearing about all the different polls, and listening to spin after spin after spin as to who will come out victorious has gotten a little old. Time now to just turn it over to the voters and watch Tim Russert and his dry erase board telling us which races to keep an eye on as the night progresses.

The race I’ll be watching is one that is very much under the radar. This is the race for Indiana State Representative, District 6. I was campaign treasurer for Kevin Mitschelen, who decided to take on B. Patrick Bauer, who has been in office since Nixon’s first term. Our first campaign meeting took place in Kevin’s living room and we took it from there.

It was refreshing working on this campaign, especially in light of what has been a truly nasty campaign season. This was grassroots campaigning at its finest. At any time, there were about 8-10 of us involved. We met every other week to plot out strategies and decide how to spend our money. This was not a big time campaign. For the pre-primary report I had to submit, we reported a total of $100.00 in contributions. No, I didn’t leave out any zeroes. It was just one hundred dollars. For the last report, our grand total that we took in was about $7,200, which is about the cost of having two pictures taken with President Bush when he was in town campaigning for Chris Chocola.

The way we spent our money was something I’m proud of. When we got a $25.00 contribution, we were ecstatic. We truly pinched every penny we had. There was absolutely no waste and I will be sending a letter to all our contributors outlining where their money went. Sometimes a check was written to pay for stamps, sometimes to pay for some business cards and flyers. Our biggest expense was for yard signs. Then there was the $27.50 to pay for pizza for volunteers going door to door. This past weekend, in our last door to door effort, we ran out of campaign literature, having used every piece we had printed.

If Kevin has a good showing against Pat Bauer, it is because he truly earned it. Every day before work, he got up and distributed literature door to door. Every weekend, he was out, sometimes pulling his kids in a wagon, going door to door. He was truly out there meeting those in his District. Do I think he can win? No, Bauer is too entrenched to take him out. But we’re hoping we can shake him up a little (for him to lose would be sort of like Ted Kennedy suddenly getting ousted). If we have a good showing this time around, then this may bode well for Kevin in the future.

Kevin is the real deal. He is a committed Christian first, and then politician. We made it a point not to go negative on this campaign, and we didn’t. I’ve known Kevin for many years. He met his wife the same place I met mine, at a single’s group at Trinity Evangelical Free Church in South Bend. Kevin ran for a county office 8 years ago and then decided to take a break before venturing out there again.

Another real deal is Jackie Walorski, who is running for reelection for Indiana State Representative. I heard her speak at a Missionary Church a few years ago and she is absolutely phenomenal. This was before she ran for office, so it wasn’t a speech to appeal to the evangelicals. She talked about her and her husband’s experiences in Romania, which they have had a real heart for. Her husband is a long-time friend and colleague of Dorene’s, as both are local music teachers. Keep an eye on Jackie, I believe she’ll go national one of these years. Her campaign was one of our biggest contributors (a whopping $500.00).

It’s been fun. This is politics as it should be. Spending the people’s money wisely, not attacking the other candidate, and truly getting out there to meet the people. We had a fundraiser, and it cost all of $15.00 to come (not one of those $500 a plate fundraisers). The Republicans have really messed things up in Washington. But there are still some good ones out there. I haven’t given up on the party that I’ve been associated with for so many years, but I do think they need a wake-up call.

So tonight, I’ll be with Kevin and the rest of the volunteers at GOP campaign headquarters in downtown South Bend watching the returns. Chris Chocola will be there, along with his hundreds of staff and volunteers. But sometime during the night, as the national returns are coming in, there will be local results scrolling across the bottom of the screen. When we see that name “Mitschelen” come up, win or lose, it will be a proud moment for all of us that we gave it the best shot we could, and that we can walk away feeling good about the kind of campaign we ran.

Say it ain't so, Ted

Here we go again, another prominent evangelist taking a fall. This one's a little different. Not a certified wacko like Swaggart, Roberts, et al. Not this time. Ted Haggard is the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, a very prominent organization and also pastor of the mega New Life Church in Colorado.

At first he denied everything and it looked like that maybe this was a smear campaign against him with the upcoming election.

But no. Ted has admitted to buying meth from a gay escort and receiving a massage. He's denied any relationship with the escort and says he didn't use the meth, only that he was tempted (insert your own Clinton "I didn't inhale" joke here).

This isn't good. Nope, not at all. There will probably be much more to come, and it won't be pretty.

You sir, are no Comedian

Some people just aren't funny, and when they try to be funny, it just get's worse. That was basically John Kerry's problem. I know he wasn't intentionally slamming our troops. He had a joke that one of his staff wrote out, and he botched it in a big way. Then, to make things worse, he goes on the air and goes with the right wing conspiracy defense and brings up Rush Limbaugh. Dude, Rush isn't running for office.

I was watching David Gergen on CNN, and he basically said Kerry should shut up and "go dark" until after the election. Furthermore, he said had Kerry immediately apologized, the story would have gone away, but his ego wouldn't let him do it.

This isn't Dukakis in the tank, but it did give significant unwanted diversion from the issues the Democrats would prefer to be talking about. I still feel the Republicans will hold onto a very slim majority in both houses. Today, I sent an e-mail to my fellow co-workers urging them to keep me in their thoughts next Tuesday as I attempt to save the Republican Party from extinction. Of course, I received several sarcastic replies.