Beyond Opinion

Today I heard of an interesting development in the controversy over Chesterfield County's administrator's hiring a Lear jet for $18,172.12 (I saw the exact amount on television) to get to Chesterfield stat to deal with the Ed Barber sex scandal crisis (that is a story in itself, which I will not get into here). The Chesterfield Chamber of Commerce paid for the flight, paying the County today. The Chamber of Commerce got the money from 30 businesses in Chesterfield who donated money to the Chamber to reimburse the county.

This isn't right at all. There should be only one donor to reimburse the county, and that should be County Administrator Lane Ramsey. Now because of this payment today, when I patronize any of these 30 businesses, I indirectly pay for Ramsey's wild Lear jet ride. If you believe that Ramsey should have flown commercial for $303 instead of a Lear jet for $18,172.12, then don't patronize these businesses. I call for a boycott of all of the businesses that contributed to pay for the flight. As of now I don't know who those businesses are. I hope the list shows up soon in the public media. If it remains out of public view, then I call for a boycott of all businesses in Chesterfield. I may very well go to Richmond, Petersburg, and Colonial Heights for my business for the foreseeable future.

I also call for replacing all of the supervisors at the next election. Dickie King, for instance, actually was a passenger on that Lear jet, and other supervisors supported the decision.

Right after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush and his administration said that we are in a long, perhaps neverending, war against terror. He keeps talking about it a lot. He invents color-coded systems to warn of terror and helps create ridiculousnesses like the one where just one wrong-way passenger can close a huge part of a major airport. He even came up with slogans such as "If you fund a terrorist, you are a terrorist.", a recursive statement which makes most of us into terrorists, including himself (the statement implies that anyone who gets gasoline at a gasoline station for his vehicle is a terrorist). Everybody has been harping on security a lot now, and Bush was said to have an advantage on security issues in the 2004 election.

Now it looks like Bush has done a big U-Turn. He wants to have approved a deal that would turn six of our largest ports over to a Dubaian company, even though hijacker money went through that country and two of the hijackers on 2001/9/11 were Dubaians. If he is talking security, why does he want this deal approved? Even Republicans in Congress are turning against him now. You can't have it both ways, Bush. You can't snoop on who Googles what or what we check out at libraries and at the same time turn our ports over to Middle Eastern companies with links to the 9/11 attack. The picture I get of Bush now is the one that Michael Moore paints: someone who hobnobs with the Arabs and oil companies.

Actually, John Nichols has what I think is the best answer: no company should be entrusted with our national security, no matter its nationality. The objectives of a port are to enable safe shipment of goods to and from foreign countries. He says the US Government should administer them. I agree with him. Reject the Dubai deal and put all the ports in the United States in the hands of the government of the United States of America.

An interesting story out of Chesterfield County, Virginia, is that of the plane trip of Lane Ramsey, the Chesterfield County administrator. Just before New Year's Day, Ed Barber, the Chairman of the county Board of Supervisors, and its lone Democrat, was indicted on two sex-related charges. This caused a media fury in the county.

At that time, Mr. Ramsey was in Scott City, Kansas, on vacation. According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, he was driving through the city at the time when he received a call saying that Mr. Barber had been arrested and that he needed to get back immediately. According to the paper, he looked all over for a rental car and could not find one. He found that the nearest airports were Denver and Colorado Springs in Colorado, and Wichita, Kansas, all about 300 miles away. So he rented a Lear Jet for $18,000 to get back to Chesterfield County. Now the taxpayers in the county are upset about it.

$18,000 does sound like a lot. Dorothy was able to get out of Kansas for much less than that through tornado power. Ramsey's boondoggle is more like the balloon trip that the Wizard of Oz took to get from Omaha to Oz. To me, there was a lot of the story that seemed to be left out. Yesterday (2006 February 21) in the Richmond TD, for instance, it was stated that he was driving through Kansas, but he couldn't get a rental car! If you are driving, you have a car, so why do you need to rent one? And there isn't an airport in the area. True, Scott City, Kansas, appears to have no airport. But Garden City, KS, is a 40 mile drive down the road. From there he could have flown to Richmond for $303. He would not have returned to Chesterfield as soon as with the Lear jet, but is an arrest of a local county official so urgent that he needs to spend $18,000 instead of $303?

This morning's paper gives more detail. It turns out that he was not driving, but was a passenger in a large truck that was going to haul sheep back to North Carolina. He thought it was infeasible to drive the truck back to Chesterfield. Why? The truck drives as easily as a car and could have taken him back to Chesterfield in 24 hours (excluding sleep time) and to Garden City in less than an hour. The whole things seems Alice in Wonderland (not Wizard of Oz) to me; weird things are happening in Chesterfield.

I am reminded of a song by Greg Greenway called "Runaway Train" which depicts a trip, presumably by auto or train, through the Great Plains. I am especially reminded of the verses "Back where the sun rises over the ocean, I gave my promise, I made my choices." And " They say this is an ocean, wind waves in the wheat fields. But it only reminds me how far away I feel...". The song is about driving endlessly through the great expanse of the prairie, trying to get back to the East, to the place where the sun rises over the ocean. Yes, Mr. Ramsey, it is a long, long drive across infinite prairie. But it is not far away enough to spend $18,000 to hop out of Kansas.

On this Presidents' Day of 2006, how does the Presidential race for 2008 look? It depends on oil and this year's midterm elections. Allen Lichtman, a professor of history at American University, has written a book The Keys to the White House, in which he states 13 keys (statements) such that if 6 or more are false (the keys fall), the challenging party wins else the incumbent party wins.

At the present time, in my opinion, these 5 keys are likely to stand and favor the incumbent Republican party:

2. Nomination Contest. There are lots of candidates out there, and the race for the Republican presidential nomination will no doubt be initially a free-for-all. But recent evidence (Democrats in 1988, 1992, and 2004) seems to show that one candidate, who we don't know as yet, will eventually pull out way in front of the others.

4. Third Party Candidate. Is there a third party around? I don't see any.

8. Social Unrest. I don't see much of a chance of this happening unless peak oil gets really bad.

9. Scandal. Lots of sparks but no conflagration. So far the President has not been implicated, and only sporadic minor officials here and there have gotten into serious legal trouble.

13. Challenger Charisma/Hero. If the Democratic candidate has charisma, he or she is unknown to me now. Ms. Clinton is kowtowing as much to the "center" (really the hypermedia) as Kerry did in 2004. Barak Obama shows some promise, but first of all we are going to have to learn about him.

These keys are likely to fall, favoring the Democratic candidate:

3. Incumbency. Bush can't run again. Please don't impeach Bush. That will put an incumbent in office and give the Republicans a key.

7. Policy Change. What has Bush done, except make departments that make messes out of hurricane disasters?

10. Foreign or Military Failure. Another day, another soldier dies in Iraq. This is a failure. Insurgents and fighting factions keep us tied down to a quagmire. Bush has had his success for this in 2004. Now it is a failure.

11. Foreign or Military Success. With all of his troops tied down in Iraq, how can Bush make a success elsewhere? Most likely, he will do nothing in the foreign arena; if he tries something, he is likely to fail and make a mess of things.

12. Incumbent Charisma/Hero. John McCain may have been imprisoned for 5 years in a POW camp, but he has nowhere the stature of Grant or Eisenhower in getting this nation out of a crisis. Arnold Schwarzenegger is charismatic, but he can't run for President. No other Republican around seems to have charisma.

That leaves these three keys:

1. Mandate. All the Democrats need is a 4 seat gain to fell this key. I am not sure how likely that is to happen. Some say it will happen, but elections are unpredictable. I want to wait until later this year before declaring this key down.

5. Long Term Economy. The economy is going great now. Sooner or later, the running out of cheap oil is going to sour it. Will this happen by 2008? The ASPO say this is the year that Peak Oil will happen. If it does, this key will fall, else it will stand.

6. Short Term Economy. Same story as with Key 5. If peak oil causes a recession in 2008, this key will fall, else it will stand.

Keys 5 and 6 will fall if peak oil occurs before spring 2008, and will stand otherwise. Therefore, if the Democrats gain at least 4 seats in the House (the Senate doesn't matter), then they will win the Presidency in 2008; else if Peak Oil arrives before 2008 March, then the Democrats will win else the Republicans will win.

My guess is that Peak Oil's gasoline lines and crises will strike sometime in 2008, so I think the Democrats will win.

The latest thing in the world is Muslim anger and riots over the printing of some caricatures of personages in the Muslim world such as God and Mohammed, especially the latter. A Danish newspaper printed the images, and other European newspapers have reprinted them. This has caused Muslims to riot against Danish and other European embassies, and in some cases to destroy consulates. In so doing, they have damaged the Chilean embassy in Damascus. What's Chile got to do with it? They demand an apology from the Danish Government. What? They didn't do anything. The newspaper did. The Danish government is not responsible. They should be talking to the newspaper and writing letters to the editor of that newspaper. They will publish them.

As a matter of fact, what right do the Muslims have to complain in the first place? They insist that any depiction of God or of Mohammed is forbidden. In the case of God, or Allah, I can see part of their point. People have attempted to depict God many times; for example in the Sistine Chapel. Such depictions are meaningless. As soon as you represent God or anything else that represents the Ultimate, you haven't. The Sistine Chapel does not depict God. For by definition, the Ultimate is so much greater than us, that any attempt by us to describe it is insufficient. The god you draw is not the Real God. The Muslims believe in this, and for that reason they even forbid drawing God in the first place, for fear that people will worship the depiction. They even forbid drawing Mohammed, for fear that they will worship that depiction, even though Mohammed is not God, but rather was one of us human beings.

But that doesn't mean they go around the world and prevent everybody from making such depictions. If they want to forbid such depictions, fine. But then forbid it only for practicing Muslims. I am not a Muslim, for instance, and I resent having Muslims telling me what I can or cannot draw. If I want to draw Mohammed as a donkey, that is my prerogative. It may be demeaning, and maybe people will want me to stop drawing such things. I probably would not want to in the first place. But I still maintain my right to draw it. That is freedom of speech. It is freedom of speech that keeps people free, and one of the first things that the citizens of a country can do to preserve that freedom is to stop intrusions on that freedom, like the ones that Muslims are trying to impose on us.

They are even wrong on the idolatry score. It's not just depictions, Muslims. Verbal descriptions of God, and human recitations of stories of God are idols, too. They do not describe God, for God is so much beyond human representation, even in story. That's right, Muslims. The Quran is also an idol, and if you feel that way about idolatry, then forbid reading of the Quran. At least concede that the Quran is simply another idol. Also so are the Ka'aba, the city of Mecca, mosques, and imams. None are God, and all are idols to one extent or another.

In any case, respect other's right to speak out and to live the right they choose. Muslims need to stop the rioting and the burning of embassies and consulates now.