Continue reading »]]> This week’s edition of Friday Five starts with a book recommendation, Janet Reitman’s Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion, which provides a fascinating behind-the-curtains look into a cult(ure) few Americans understand. Beginning with an in-depth investigation into the life and times of L. Ron Hubbard, Reitman chronicles the complete history of Scientology from Hubbard’s early science fiction writing through the group’s open-recruitment of Hollywood celebrities, often referred to as the “Tom Cruise years.”

While I’m not one to pass judgment, I always viewed Scientology as one of those “kooky New Age things,” and after reading it I must offer sincere apologies to the New Agers.  What I learned was that Scientology is nothing more than Tony Robbins-like self-help philosophy, tinged with science fiction. My favorite story involved Scientology’s attempts to recruit Elvis–yes, that Elvis. According to Reitman, one of Elvis’ former girlfriends, actress (and Scientologist) Peggy Lipton, tried to convince him to give Scientology a shot. Always known as a devout Christian, I’m sure Elvis never had any intention of joining the group, but he did stop by a Scientology center in LA with Lipton one time. Elvis’ response to the Scientologists? “Fuck those people! There’s no way I’ll ever get involved with that son-of-a-bitchin’ group. All they want is my money.” If you have ever been interested in learning more about Scientology, but were afraid to ask, do yourself a favor and check out Reitman’s book.

By now, I’m sure stumbled upon the Internet thread that supposedly pin-pointed the day Ice Cube’s classic, “It Was a Good Day”, references. Originally, it was deduced that the song had to be in reference to January 20, 1992. But hip-hop scholars have convened and decided that November 30, 1988 instead. I first discovered the addendum on DeadSpin, so that’s the story I’ll link to, but it’s been covered extensively by most major media outlets. If you haven’t gone through and read the entire explanation, you really should break out of your cultural isolationism

Although I don’t eat them nearly as much as I did as a kid, I love Frito Pies. I don’t really know what to think of this next series of stories that Texas Monthly reported on earlier this week. Apparently, the Frito Pie is getting the high-brow treatment in New York City and other exotic ports-of-call. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer an open bag of Fritos, smothered in chili, and topped with fresh sliced jalapenos. It is fun to see other regions embrace our cuisine.

Mitt Romney is once-again the presumptive Republican nominee after winning the Florida Republican primary earlier this week. On Wednesday morning, the media pounced on a phrase, lifted out of context, from an interview he gave in which he said, “I don’t care about poor people.” Standing by itself, this sounds horrible. What Romney mean to say was, the really rich can take care of themselves and the poor have social safety nets to help them out, but the middle-class have no protection, and those are the folks he wants to see represented. The great Jim Pethokoukis did a great job of breaking down Romney’s gaffe and shedding insight on what it means to be “porr in America.”

Finally, this week marked one of the biggest days on the sports calendar in Texas, not just because it was National Signing Day, but also because the U.I.L. announced their realignment plans for the upcoming two seasons. ESPN Dallas ran a very insightful story about the ins-and-outs of the realignment process. It truly is fascinating.

Continue reading »]]> By now, I’m sure you have all seen the replays of the Blake Griffin dunk over Kendrick Perkins. Now I like Blake Griffin. I think he’s a tremendous young talent on the court and high character guy off the court. And I’ll admit; it was a very powerful dunk, but I’ll never understand the reaction Griffin displayed after the dunk. It’s the  “I’m going to jump up and place this ball in this cylinder, then I’m going to stare at someone–anyone, even some random dude sitting court side– until one of my teammates either pushes me, hits me or grabs me.”

Why not simply score the bucket and get back on defense? Why the need for all the dramatics?

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As a Texan, I take football very seriously. At times, my devotion to the game borders on the obsessive, just ask my wife about the superstitions regarding my Cowboys’ game routine. However, I have no shame in admitting my interest in football, at least on the professional level, is isolated to one team–the Dallas Cowboys. If the outcome of a NFL game doesn’t directly impact my Cowboys, the game does not exist in my world.

The last sixteen Super Bowls have been especially tiresome. Not only have they involved teams not named “Cowboys”, but they also have seen the Super Bowl morph into a virtual exhibition game ensconced within a four-hour commercial (more on that tomorrow). Indeed, Cowboys preseason games excite me more than Super Bowls XXXI-Super Bowl XLV.

Needless to say, Super Bowl XLVI does not move the needle at all for me. The Giants and Patriots? No thanks, I’d rather watch the sport the rest of the world calls football instead. This year, the only thing I look forward to about Super Bowl week is to see what bits the boys from the little Ticket will pull on the national media gathered at media row.

So, while most Americans gather together Sunday afternoon for Super Bowl parties, I will be hosting my own with a unique spin.

Instead of showing Super Bowl XLVI, I will be showing Super Bowls XXVII, and Super Bowl XVIII, time permitting, which I have preserved on VHS. At my party, there will be no Tom Brady, Eli Manning, Wes Welker, or Victor Cruz. It was time of a much purer NFL, one that had yet to be defiled by Brandon Jacobs and where the best tight end in the league was a simple cowboy from Wyoming.

Even the halftime entertainment at my Super Bowl party will better than those hosting traditional Super Bowl XLVI parties. You have Madonnna? Please, I’ll see your Madonna and raise you the King of Pop. That’s right, my Super Bowl party not only includes America’s Team winning their 3rd and 4th Super Bowls respectively, but also Michael Jackson’s halftime performance from Super Bowl XVII.

My prediction for Sunday–Cowboys over the Bills 52-17 and Troy Aikman as your MVP.

Continue reading »]]> I recently stumbled across some YouTube video posted by an old friend. The following clips comprise a movie he wrote (and directed) for a Spanish class when were in high school. I believe this was shot when we were sophomores, so it would be the 1994-1995 school year. I did not take Spanish; I took French instead (real helpful in Texas), but I do have a part in the film. My car, a black Pontiac Grand Prix, steals the show.

Obviously, we were all huge fans of Cool Hand Luke and this was my friends’ attempt to bring it to a Spanish language audience and get an “A” in their Spanish class at the same time. After Cool Hand Lupe, we would all go on to film Thunder in Bivins, an attempted remake of the Hulk Hogan classic, Thunder in Paradise. Sadly, no known footage of Thunder in Bivins remains.

Without further delay, I present, in its entirety, Cool Hand Lupe. Enjoy!

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Just finished watching Higher Ground, Vera Farmiga’s directorial debut, that gives us a glimpse of the “Jesus People” in their natural element. Farmiga also stars as the main character, “Corrinne”, a lady who, though deeply entrenched in the theology of the “Jesus Movement”, wrestles with her faith on a daily basis. When I saw the trailer for the film, about a year ago at local art house theater, I knew I had to see the film. I’ve long been fascinated with various Christian sects, especially the Christian counter-culture of the 60′s and 70′s.

For one thing, I think you can draw a lot of comparisons of the “Jesus People” and the “post-modern” evangelicals and/or “red letter” Christians of today. Indeed, many of the issue “Corrinne” struggles with in Higher Ground, the heroines of the modern progressive-evangelical movement write and speak about extensively–specifically the role and treatment of women within the Christian church and the ways male-dominated theology has damaged the faith of many women.

In the past three months alone, I’ve read two books that examine this narrative thoroughly–Evolving in Monkey Town by Rachel Held Evans and Alisa Harris’ Raised Right. Not surprisingly, Higher Ground is based on a memoir, that of Carolyn Briggs, who now serves as an English professor at an Iowa community college. While Evans and Harris were raised in a different time, in a different brand of Christianity, there are many similarities in their stories.

A couple of thoughts on the movie:

One, I’m amazed that there is not much out there in the way of film or books on the “Jesus People” or “Jesus Movement”, understanding that they greatly influenced the shape of modern day evangelical Christianity. My first exposure to the “Jesus People” was through the music of Larry Norman and the Thief in the Night series of movies (a much cooler, 1970′s version of Left Behind). In college, I attended a Vineyard church, which sprung out of the “Jesus movement”, on occasion. When I look at the latest fads in contemporary evangelical theology, I see the fingerprints of the “Jesus People” all around.

From Mark Driscoll to Rob Bell, from Brian McLaren to Leonard Sweet, from Shane Clairborne to Donald Miller–the leading theological minds of the 21st Century–men (and, yes, they are all men) deemed as trailblazers by their followers–are simply recycling the thoughts of the “Jesus Movement”. The only real difference is the maintenance of the facial hair.

Yet, there is very little out there on the “Jesus People” or “Jesus Movement”. It’s as if it’s a movement that never happened or, if it did, had very little impact on Christianity. When I set out on  a Google search for “Jesus People” and “Jesus Movement”, I expected to find hundreds of scholarly books and essays from theology students and the spiritually curious. Instead, I found only a handful of articles and books from the 1970′s and hardly anything published after 1980.

Why has this particular movement been ignored?

One final note, the soundtrack features many “old time” religious  hymns (the Methodists call them the “Cokesbury hymns”) and Southern gospel favorites. Many of them are sung by this terrific female talent. I waded through all of the credits, just to get to the soundtrack information to see who the voice belonged to. Turns out, its the voice of Amy Helm, the daughter of the great Levon Helm of The Band fame, and who was immortalized in Elton John’s classic, “Levon”. Ms. Helm has her own band, Ollabelle. Their first eponymous first album is filled with many gospel classics.

Continue reading »]]> I am introducing a new feature this week to Geoausch.Com–The Friday Five, a sort of “Week in Review” of my favorite things on the Internet. With the State of the Union Address on Tuesday night, this just happens to be a politically heavy week, but that won’t always be the case.

1.  We start out with a piece, “Ailing Economy Needs Self-Interest, Not Sacrifice”, by Jonathan Hoenig, writing for the The Wall Street Journal’s “Smart Money” blog. In it, Hoenig provides the perfect rebuttal to the President’s SOTU polemic, exposing, among other things, the unsustainability of an altruism-based economy.

What results is a society built not on mutual benefit, as with capitalism, but mutual contempt, whereas one is endlessly forced to sacrifice for “the public” with the only hope that one day others will be conscripted to sacrifice themselves for you. Social Security and Medicare are just two examples of this multi-generational feudalism.

Capitalism protects individuals’ self-interest, collectivism kills it. So in a free country, why doesn’t the President simply give his unneeded “hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional income” over to the struggling parent, autoworker or whomever he feels is deserving of it? Why must his sacrifice become a national suicide?

Please, do yourself a favor, visit “Smart Money” and read the full article.

2.    While the Republican candidates have been campaigning in the media for almost a year now, the Democrats have been quietly replenishing their war chest in preparations for an expensive general election cycle. I came across this piece by Jeannie DeAngelis on Big Hollywood about the fashion world’s contributions to the President’s reelection campaign. It’s poorly written and extremely biased, but it does illustrate the hypocrisy of the Left. They demonize Republicans for being “wealthy” and “out-of-touch” with middle-class America, yet the world’s most famous wealthy people all seem to be Democrats. Like the article points out, these are all attempts by super wealthy people to sell overpriced goods to a group of consumers that can’t afford them.I have no problem with wealthy people supporting Obama and certainly have no problem with them donating what ever amount they want to their politician’s campaign, but let’s cut the hypocritical bull shit. If any party is out of touch with the middle-class, it’s the Democrats.

3.  On a lighter note, looks like Dwight might be getting his own TV show. Writing for DeadlineHollywood, Nellie Andreeva broke a story on Wednesday that NBC is working on a spinoff of The Office that would focus on Dwight Schrute’s beet farm. I don’t know if this is the right move, but The Office needs something. It is definitely getting a bit stale. That said, it’s still one of the best shows on network television and Rainn Wilson’s character is a major reason it succeeds.

4.  Americans have been trying to legalize marijuana for nearly one hundred years, so legalization stories rarely register on my radar. However, folks in Colorado are taking a different approach. Instead of marching around shouting “legalize it”, they are pushing a ballot proposition that seeks to “regulate marijuana like alcohol.” This is genius. This way you proponents can compare marijuana to another (successfully) controlled substance, “these measures help us effectively control the consumption of alcoholic beverages and the world hasn’t gone to hell. Marijuana is much safer. Let’s apply the same standards to it and move out of the  Dark Ages.” Of course, the writers at the Times have a much more eloquent way of saying this than me. Check it out!

5. Cyberbullying. We hear a lot about it and it sounds bad, but are some of the measures schools are adopting to deal with it going too far? My good friend Brian Cuban stopped by the NBC 5 studios in Dallas to discuss this issue last night. Some might consider this a shameless plug for a good friend, but I really think Brian has some great things to say about an area of the law that is constantly evolving.

Flashback Friday

My pick this week in “Flashback Friday” is Jeff Buckley’s posthumously release of live recordings, Mystery White Boy. I first discovered Buckley’s music shortly after his untimely drowning. For almost a decade, it was something special I shared with other hardcore music fans. Here was the ultimate independent musician who worked himself up from playing coffee shops in the Village to recording the perfect album. He spent two years touring promoting his perfect album and then died tragically. Hollywood could not script a better rock star story than the life of Jeff Buckley. Mystery White Boy gives you a good taste of Buckley’s original, while also given you a sample of his covers, including the one cover that almost ruined Buckley for me–”Hallelujah”. After the song was used on American Idol, and every Dick and Jane was downloading Buckley’s music, I put Mystery White Boy away, rarely listening to it. Well, this week, I decided to take it out my iPod exile and give it another chance. I cannot tell you how much I missed this album, but word to the wise, the album was compiled using taped recordings, so the quality is not terrific. To get the full experience, listen to it with a good set of headphones or on a good set up speakers. This is one album where it actually makes a difference.

Continue reading »]]> I’m normally not big on Internet quizzes, but found this one rather interesting. Over the past three years, I’ve had several arguments with my left-leaning friends regarding some of my rhetoric of President Obama’s policies. One of my harshest critics, my best-friend from high school suggested I break out of my “cultural bubble” and socialize with people outside my own socio-economic circle. I don’t claim to be most diverse person in the world–I do live in a part of Dallas known as “The Bubble”–but I am very different from my neighbors. I’m rather proud of my score, proves I’m not monolithic after all.
How about you? How did you score?

How Thick Is Your Bubble?

In other words, even if you’re part of the new upper class, you’ve had a lot of exposure to the rest of America.

Continue reading »]]> While I consider myself politically (hyper)active, the divisive rhetoric of both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have soured me on Presidential addresses, so much so that I have not listened to a State of the Union Address since 2002. If you’ll recall, this was the State of the Union address immediately following 9/11 where President Bush used the speech to exploit the fears of our nation and eventually led us into a decade long war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ten years later, President Obama engages in the same brand of political opportunism, but instead of attempting to sell our nation on the prospect of conventional warfare, Obama and his handlers attempted to sell our nation on class warfare. I’m still too cynical to listen to this President deliver the State of the Union, but I’ve found a copy of the transcript and thought I would invite you to read through it with me.

After telling us about his grandparents (maternal presumably), Obama begins to lecture about the American Dream–”the basic American promise that if you worked hard, you could do well enough to raise a family, own a home, send your kids to college, and put a little away for retirement”–an inherently conservative principle, which it appears he will frame his entire speech of wealth redistribution on. How ironic!

Before we go any further in his speech, I think it’s important to remember, the American Dream is the AMERICAN dream because it is achieved independent of any government body or elected official.

Obama posits that “we can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.” I think we all want the second example, but we differ on how to achieve it. The President could have used this as the starting point to lay out his plan for prosperity, but individual prosperity is not part of the Keynesian plan, so instead he engages in liberalism 101–create a schism among the populace by trying to convince them that poor people are poor because rich people are rich.

Preach the gospel of income inequality incessantly, when necessary manipulate facts.

For example, in speaking of the collapse of the housing market, Obama remarked “we learned that mortgages had been sold to people who couldn’t afford or understand them.” True, mortgages had been sold to people who couldn’t afford them, but what he neglects to tell you is that banks were forced to make loans available to unqualified buyers because of equal housing lending measures. Yes, Democratic leaders are as much to blame for the housing collapse as unqualified buyers and greedy speculators.

As Obama launched into the meat of his speech, he did his best to channel the spirit of the late, great Billy Mays, whose legacy was being able to get people to buy stuff they didn’t really need. Obama attempted to build the case for the need for more government in manufacturing, more government in education, and more government in housing. This brings Obama back to his main thesis. We must punish the rich, so that we can expand the Federal government.

Avid readers of this blog will remember my post from October 9, 2011, “Deconstructing the Republican Worldview“, in which I wrote:

At the core of the Democratic Party’s platform is this innate desire for a radical egalitarian transformation of society, using the Federal government has the instrument to control the transformation. In short, Democrats seek to use the Federal government to create a heaven on Earth, where no one has more money than their neighbor, more material goods than their neighbor, more success than their neighbor, more power than their neighbor, etc. Of course, those in the ruling class would hold all the wealth and power and be able to control us all, but Democrats never have been big on thinking out their ideas all the way through.

Over the past three years, Obama has tried to like hell to implement this “radical egalitarian transformation of our society” and it has failed–miserably–yet he is trying to feed us more of the same. This State of the Union speech should be used by the remaining Republican Presidential candidates to unite behind a common message–government can now fix the problem it created.

Without a doubt, Barack Obama is the coolest man to ever occupy the Oval Office and may well be the most intelligent man to hold that office, but he has proven that outside of academia, he has no real solutions to the problems that face our nation.

Continue reading »]]> By now, I’m sure you know that Mitt Romney has released some of his tax returns and every left-of-center media outlet is crying about his effective tax rate, trying to convince Main Street America that we should despise the guy because of his financial success. Barack Obama will certainly use Romney’s tax return as proof that we need a more effective means of wealth redistribution in our country, and to stoke the fires of class warfare.

But what do these tax returns really tell us?

Well, for one, Mitt Romeny is a very wealthy man. Over the past two years, he has reported over $43 million in income. I applaud the man on his success in a down economy.

We also know that he paid over $3 million in taxes each of those years. Yet many who pay no income tax, or known tax cheats like the disgraced New York Congressman, Charles Rangle, will tell you Romney’s not doing enough. Yet Romney has paid every penny that he owes to the I.R.S.

On top of the $6 million in taxes, Romney has also donated $7 million to charity. Now this is what really irks Democrats. The fact that Romeny have given more to private charity, including $4.1 million to his church, than to the Federally run charity we know as the I.R.S.

What this tells me is that over the past two years, through his donations to his church and private charities, Mitt Romney has done more to promote the cause of “social justice”–to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and help aide the sick–than Barack Obama has done in his life of “community organizing” and a the Democrat controlled Senate, which has gone 1,000 days without passing a budget.

Continue reading »]]> When asked in exit polling about the “most important candidate quality,” 51% of those who voted for Newt Gingrich selected “can defeat Obama.” By contrast, only 37% of those who voted for Mitt Romney selected that choice. Some of Romney’s detractors have tried to use this as evidence that Gingrich is the best GOP candidate to face Obama, but that is not at what this number tells us.

Instead, it tells us only that a majority of Newt Gingrich voters really like their candidate’s odds against Obama. It tells us nothing about the feelings of the Republican base, outliers or political independents. The number still fascinates me, because I cannot believe there are people out there, so blinded by their own political ideology, that they think Newt Gingrich is the Republican’s best shot at beating Barack Obama.

I understand that a lot of Republicans might like Gingrich more than Romney, but again, that’s different than saying he stands a better shot  of beating Obama. We know that in 2012, give or take a percentage points, one third of the electorate will vote for Barack Obama, one-third of the electorate will vote for the Republican candidate, and one-third will be undecided as we approach the election in November. In order to defeat Barack Obama, Republicans must develop a strategy  to winning more independent voters than Obama.

Nothing that Newt Gingrich has ever done in his political career says he has the ability to appeal to independent voters. On the contrary, Mitt Romeny has shown that he can appeal to the independent voter, time and time again. That’s not to say his message won’t tweeking. Romney is going to have to find a way to relate to the middle-class, as most independent voters consider themselves members of that economic class. It’s an anti-prosperity, anti-capitalist argument that Gingrich used to his advantage in South Carolina. In order to combat it, Mitt needs to expose the hypocrisy of Gingrich, in the primary, and Obama, in the general, of launching this argument.

For now, I want to hear from Gingrich supporters. Convince that Newt is our best shot at defeating President Obama.