How bout that?

Maybe this is true everywhere, but West Virginia politicians tend to get braver the closer they come to retirement or mortality.

WV Governor Earl Ray Tomblin, who isn't eligible to run again for that office, has shown courage on more than one occasion, including last week or so when his administration announced that it would take another look at the health impacts of mountaintop removal mining.

The very latest example is his veto of a bill that would have allowed West Virginians to carry concealed firearms without getting a permit and taking a gun safety class. It even made  the NY Times online with the headline "A Governor Faces Down the Gun Lobby." He should have plenty of political cover, however, as a recent poll found that over 80 percent of respondents opposed the bill.

All I know is it led to quite a few wisecracks in the halls of the capitol, some of which my have been uttered by me.

Come, mister tally man

Here's my quick tally of the best and worst of the WV legislature. Note: I'm speaking only about issues I worked on.

Really good:

Increasing minimum wage by $1.50 over two years.

Passing the Pregnant Worker Fairness Act.

Good:

Several bills that should help reduce prison overcrowding and make it less likely that WV will ship inmates (and money) out of state to private, for profit prisons.

Mostly good:

Passing the Future Fund, except the House threw in some unfortunate amendments. If they hadn't, I would have put it in the really good column. It will take more work to make it really reach its potential.

The water bill. I talked with several people who were very active in the fight that occurred in the wake of the chemical leak and most were fairly pleased with the bill. That is to say, they seemed to think it was as good as could have been gotten from that legislature at the time.

Unresolved:

The state budget and especially restoring cuts to family violence and early childhood programs.

Really bad:

Killing Move to Improve. Shame on the House Education Committee.

Killing the bill to make non-tamper proof pseudephedrine a prescription drug. The meth lobby has more clout than the kids lobby in the House.

I was not directly involved in two high-drama issues, which involved abortion bans and guns. I will say that Senator Erik Wells, husband of Secretary of State and US senate candidate Natalie Tennant, nailed it when he courageously observed that

"We want to focus on gays, abortion and guns, and I have to wonder when that's going to change. We will never get past 50th if we worry more about the next election than the next generation."

Gazette columnist Phil Kabler had this take on the session in today's paper.

Strange priorities

Winding down the week, I think Bill Clinton gets the award for best sound bite:

"A great democracy does not make it harder to vote than to buy an assault weapon."

Happy Labor Day! And please remember what it means.

Three for the road

My word-horde, to use the language of Beowulf, is running a little low at the moment. Fortunately, that is not the case with everyone.

THE ZIMMERMAN VERDICT. Here's a response from the New Yorker.

GROWING FROM THE MIDDLE. President Obama made the case this week for growing the middle class-and thereby growing the economy. Aristotle would probably agree. So would several economists discussed here.

MORE FUN AND GAMES WITH THE WV AG discussed here.

Good weekend wishes to one and all (mostly).

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A wild night and day

With headlines spilling over the media and web about the disaster in Texas and the chaotic times in Boston, I'm not even going to try to comment. I can't even keep up with events. My friend Ken Ward at the Charleston Gazette made a couple good points on Twitter that can help put headlines in perspective. Here's one:

...Saw comparison of gun deaths vs terrorism deaths-30,000 gun deaths per year in US, 3,400 terror deaths since 1970.

Here's the accompanying link.

He added the following:

...Keep in mind: 4,500 deaths per year in workplace accidents, 50,000 per year from occupational diseases.

And here's that link.

Speaking of Twitter, when I first heard of it, it made no sense at all to me. However, when there's something going down that you want to follow, there's probably no quicker way to get information, even though some of it is going to be noise rather than signal.

Here's hoping for some slow news days. Meanwhile, here are some things to check out:

UPPER BIG BRANCH. Also from Ken Ward, here's an interesting article that suggests former Massey Energy executives and board members may be targets of criminal investigations.

A GOOD PIECE ON GUNS from someone who knows a thing or two about them here.

MEDICAID EXPANSION. It looks like Arkansas is going to do it, albeit with publicly subsidized private insurance. Better than nothing though. Still waiting to here about WV...

THAT "OBAMACARE" TRAIN WRECK dissected here.

ON A STRESSFUL DAY FOR THE COUNTRY AND WORLD, it might be good to look at some calming images. Check out these of bat-eating spiders! Who loves you?

DON'T EVEN ASK ABOUT THE GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL

This is what happens...

...when 20 odd turkeys sleep in a redbud tree.

(In case the picture is unclear, the horizontal tree used to be a good bit more vertical, no thanks to this guy and his buddies.)

CHILDREN IN AMERICA fare worse than those in most Western nations.

ON THIS DATE 101 YEARS AGO, members of the United Mine Workers began their historic Paint Creek/Cabin Creek strike that marked the beginning of the Mine Wars--and eventually inspired the writing of the song Solidarity Forever, which has become the international anthem of the labor movement. Too bad people don't know the verses better than the chorus...

CALLING OUT THE SENATE. This op-ed by Gabrielle Giffords is getting a lot of attention.

AND AGAIN, this time by WV native Michael Tomasky.

AYN RAND WOULD NOT BE AMUSED. According to a new poll, most Americans think the distribution of wealth is unfair and that the federal government should do something about it.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The doors of the temple stand open

The theme here these day is the life and thought of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the focus at the moment is on his 1838 Harvard Divinity School Address, which stirred up so much controversy that he wasn't invited back for 30 years.

It would be one thing to tick off a bunch of foaming fundamentalists with a little free ranging thought, but Ralph even managed to alienate relatively laid back Unitarians, who were more closely aligned with traditional Christianity then than now.

One thing that got him in trouble was his characteristic assertion that truth is not something once received and thereafter believed but rather something each soul must directly intuit. He believed that the same sources that inspired Jesus and other prophets and seers can inspire us today if we only let it.

If it sounds like he'd been hanging around with and reading about Quakers, he was. He was also learning or intuiting as much as he could about the religious traditions of Asia--so much so that the sounds Buddhist and even Zenlike in his insistence that every person must directly experience insight rather than merely accept some religious tradition:

...the doors of the temple stand open, night and day, before every man, and the oracles of this truth cease never, it is guarded by one stern condition; this, namely; it is an intuition. It cannot be received at second hand. Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true in me, or wholly reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing.

That's kind of how a 19th century American might express the Buddha's advice to "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense." It also is reminiscent of the teachings often attributed to the Zen patriarch Bodhidharma, who was believed to have spoken of

A special transmission outside the scriptures;
No dependence on words and letters;
Direct pointing to the mind of man;
Seeing into one's nature and attaining Buddhahood.

Such ideas are pretty commonplace now. You can find some reference to them in almost any bookstore and in popular culture. But they were a bit over the top back then. They'd still upset quite a few people today.

SPEAKING OF PEOPLE WHO WOULDN'T LIKE EMERSON, here's an article about the fortunes of fundamentalism in the US and around the world.

WHAT WOULD FREUD SAY? WV legislators have gone gun crazy lately. Would Sigmund say it was castration anxiety or are they just trying to compensate for something?

CAN I HAVE ONE? This NRP story about an Indonesian zoo breeding Komodo dragons has me all excited.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Holiday wishes and other stuff

Sorry about irregular posts lately. The Spousal Unit and I are on the road visiting relatives, dodging storms and such. I always get a bit nervous on the road given possible calamities that can happen at or around the farm...until I recall that they can happen when we're there as well.

One such already happened when the Aged Parent had a fall and banged up her face.  Fortunately, I think she's going to be OK. I hope there's less drama on the animal front.

Re: current events, how 'bout that NRA? I kind of like a saying going around the internet that calls for putting a teacher in every gun store.

WORTH A LOOK. Here's a NY Times story on how class and inequality can play out in a college setting.

HERE IT COMES AGAIN. Meanwhile, it's that time of year again. Regular readers may recall that this is when I bring out the annual Christmas quote from Hamlet:

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say,  no spirit dare stir abroad,
The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.

So have I heard and do in part believe it. May it be so this time around.

This and that

The most interesting tweet I've read for a long time is this one written in response to the carnage in Connecticut:

One guy tries to use a shoe bomb = everyone at the airport takes their shoes off. 31 school shootings since Columbine = nothing we can do.

The carnage was so bad that even longtime NRA supporter Joe Manchin thinks something has to give.

RACHEL WEEPING FOR HER CHILDREN, Holy Innocents, weapons, and nonviolence are discussed in the latest edition of the Rev. Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree.

MORE ON CLIMATE CHANGE here.

URGENT TWO-TONGUED VENOMOUS PRIMATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Like the swift flight of a sparrow

The English church historian Bede, from a 1493 illustration.

The theme here lately is Beowulf, although you will also find links and comments about current events below. One of the interesting things about that poem is the light it sheds on religion in the Anglo-Saxon world.

It would seem that when these Germanic tribes invaded or migrated to England in the 500s, most of them were pagan and held to some variety of Norse religion, which survives in such places as the names of several weekdays (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are named after gods). An effort to convert them to Christianity got into high gear around the year 600, give or take a few.

Unlike in other places, it seems to have taken place without much in the way of martyrdoms on either the Christian or pagan side. Maybe one reason why Christianity appealed to them was that it offered a less dark view of the world than the old religion. In Norse mythology, gods, humans and the whole shooting match were expected to go down in a cataclysm known as Ragnarok.

According to the Venerable Bede (circa 672-735), an early chronicler of English church history, a pagan priest was consulted about the new religion and he was fairly open to it. Bede says that he described the human condition thus:

The present life man, O king, seems to me, in comparison with that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter amid your officers and ministers, with a good fire in the midst whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door and immediately another, whilst he is within is safe from the wintry but after a short space of fair weather he immediately vanishes out of your sight into the dark winter from which he has emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space but of what went before or what is to follow we are ignorant. If, therefore, this new doctrine contains something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed.

If that isn't one of the world's best analogies, I don't know what is. But if I was the sparrow, I'd have stayed in the mead hall.

THIS IS OUR CONCERN, DUDE. Some economists warn that spending cuts and freezes advocated by President Obama and his "friends" in Congress could be the real job killers. Here's another take on it while we're at it, along with Dean Baker's response.

ROADBLOCKS. Here's Jeff Goodell, author of Big Coal, in a Rolling Stone article on the 12 politicians who are doing the most to block progress on dealing with climate change. West Virginia's senior senator made the list, which makes me wonder if our junior senator is jealous. One startling change from the past is that Don Blankenship didn't make the list this time. The former CEO of Massey Energy appears to be taking a time out. Thanks to Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo for the heads up.

WHAT I'M SCREAMING. WV needs to modernize its unemployment system now.

GOOD TO KNOW. Legislators in Utah may soon make the M1911 the official state gun.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE, optimism in America is at a four year high (which may not be saying much).

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED