May 21 = End Of World

It's the end of the world as we know it...do you feel fine?

There's even a big billboard on a highway leading into Des Moines, Iowa proclaiming it...May 21 will be the end of the world. And there's a number of people who believe it.

My pastor, David Staff, tackles the issue and identifies the key problem:

In all of this, there is a tragedy. It is that the credibility of the gospel message re: Jesus the Christ (which is truthfully certain) is unhappily wedded to doomsday predictions which Jesus himself specifically forbade to happen. "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone." (Matthew 24:36). Jesus did say that conditions on earth will be similar to those that were present in Noah's day. But he insists no one can know "the day or the hour."

As Pastor Staff says: wait, but don't predict.

Midweek odds and ends

Most days, I try to find some time over lunch to skim through Google Reader. As I do, I right-click stories and open them up in a bunch of tabs. Throughout the rest of the day, I click through one by one as I find time.

Today's tabs are an unusual mix--and probably could lead into several blog posts. However, I want to take tomorrow off to go to Tulip Time in Pella with Jeff, and that means I need to focus today!

So here are the tabs. Have fun!

1. Local Ames, Iowa, Girl Scouts are granted a provisional patent for an assistive hand device for a toddler without fingers. (Go Flying Monkeys!)

2. Politico contributor Bill Schneider says that Obama needs to watch out for the "passion gap" as he prepares for 2012.

3. Olympic gold medalist Shawn Johnson tells a Des Moines crowd that her plans for the 2012 Olympics in London are on track.

4. Nobody really wants to eat at Sbarro.

5. The excellent Science Museum of Minnesota (where daughter Lauren and I once met Dr. Jane Goodall!) is mummifying a chicken in their parking garage (for science, of course). Mummification takes a LONG time and smells worse than the staff expected, they've learned.

6. Jesse Bering, at Scientific American's "Bering in Mind" blog, shares an idea for "green burial," inspired by his experience of planning his mother's funeral.

Nothing I could say about bin Laden...

is as meaningful as what this local couple had to say.

Leading From Behind

On a day when folks are waving flags and chanting "U-S-A!", Victor Davis Hanson's May 1 column on American exceptionalism is well-timed. Hanson is citing a New Yorker piece on President Obama's approach to foreign policy which, apparently, is meant to be complimentary to the President's "leading from behind" view.

Hanson believes that this approach stems from the view that America is in decline. That, however, is not a view that voters share with our leadership. Hanson points out that the state of decline is a choice, not an inevitability.

President Obama, listen carefully. By every benchmark, this should be an American century. Our known fossil fuel reserves are soaring, as new finds of coal, natural gas, oil, tar sands, and oil shale keep growing, not shrinking. Demographically, we are expanding; Europe, Japan, and China are shrinking.

We do not have the strikes of Europe, the violence of the Middle East, the state oppression of China. India has religious, social, and caste tensions unknown in the U.S. American farmland is the most productive in the world, its farmers the most gifted and innovative. We inherited a vast, developed infrastructure; out duty is to improve and expand it, not, as our ancestors had to, start from scratch building a Hoover Dam, intercontinental railroad, or port facilities in Oakland.

At a restaurant this weekend, I saw a vintage poster released in the middle of the last century that urged its viewers to "GO COMPETE." We need that attitude back.

The Politics Of Inevitability

I am just as jubilant as anyone in regard to the death of Osama bin Laden, but I was a little surprised this morning to see some of my Democratic and Republican friends declaring President Obama's election as inevitable following bin Laden's death.

That would be true if the death of bin Laden leads to lower unemployment and gas prices while jump-starting the housing market and holding inflation in check.

But I can't blame the activists for holding out some hope. Even the most veteran operative is looking for what I call a "moment of political inevitability" when supporting or opposing a candidate.

That's an event which ensures that a candidate or President will be elected or defeated. Reagan's opponents hit him with Iran-Contra, while Bill Clinton's opponents had Monica Lewinsky. President George W. Bush faced an investigation into his service in the National Guard and the release of his DUI charge.

President Obama now has the "birthers" who had hoped to prove that he wasn't eligible to be President.

Why do activists hope for these moments? Because the ongoing work of persuading voters and defeating ideological opponents is HARD. A single "knock-out" blow is so much more attractive.