Call me crazy, but I actually enjoyed Governor Granholm’s speach this past Tuesday (29 Jan. 2008). After an applause-mongering, internally-conflicted, content-free, blather session with the GWB the day before, Granholm’s focused, practical vision was refreshing. She named names and legislation from both parties, she detailed real initiatives and plans for transitioning Michigan’s economy, and above all she made a valiant attempt to move beyond the “partisan rancor” that defined the previous year (it was about the time that our state’s government shut itself down and went sheep hunting in Russia that I completely gave up hope).

A quick, and obvious criticism of the speech and her plan is to ask where the money is going to come from (there was lots of talk about $200M here and $400M there), but I think that would be missing the point. The new budget proposal will detail a lot of that, but what she is doing is looking at the bigger picture. Sometimes a problem can only really be solved by taking a step back and searching for root-cause. Michigan’s economy needs to transition into something viable 10, 20 and 50 years from now, and someone needs to start that transition now. There will probably be squawking over details (as there probably should be), but if the legislature can’t swallow their pride and the squawking becomes cock-fighting, I might be tempted to send my representative a punch-in-the-throat-a-gram.

My hope is that our law-makers will take up the vision and fight for the people of Michigan, but the realist in me says that they should probably keep some neck braces handy.

The GWB delivered his final State of the Union address on Monday (28 Jan. 2008), and I was so enthralled that I almost didn’t finish my Milwaukee’s Best and bag of pork rinds (almost). In case you missed it, here is a quick executive summary (block quotes were garnered from the White House’s transcript).

Vague references to the state of the economy - it’s not so good, but it’s not so bad either:

Wages are up, but so are prices for food and gas. Exports are rising, but the housing market has declined. At kitchen tables across our country, there is a concern about our economic future.

Throw around really huge budget numbers that make us all think that every member of congress wipes their ass with dollar bills (we’ll cut $18B, but still won’t have a surplus for another 4 years):

Next week, I’ll send you a budget that terminates or substantially reduces 151 wasteful or bloated programs, totaling more than $18 billion. The budget that I will submit will keep America on track for a surplus in 2012.

Extol congress to solve the problems of the world while offering little advice or direction as to how:

Congress [...] [t]onight I ask you to pass legislation to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, modernize the Federal Housing Administration
[...]
The Congress must also expand health savings accounts, create Association Health Plans for small businesses, promote health information technology, and confront the epidemic of junk medical lawsuits.
[...]
So I ask Congress to double federal support for critical basic research in the physical sciences and ensure America remains the most dynamic nation on Earth.
[...]
And so I call on Congress to pass legislation that bans unethical practices such as the buying, selling, patenting, or cloning of human life.
[...]
I ask members of Congress to offer your proposals and come up with a bipartisan solution to save these vital programs [Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid] for our children and our grandchildren.

Support public education… uh sort of:

[...] No Child Left Behind Act [...] Now we must work together to increase accountability, add flexibility for states and districts, reduce the number of high school dropouts, provide extra help for struggling schools.
[...]
We must also do more to help children when their schools do not measure up. [...] help liberate poor children trapped in failing public schools.

Keep up the funding for Team America, World Police:

Since 9/11, we have taken the fight to these terrorists and extremists. We will stay on the offense, we will keep up the pressure, and we will deliver justice to our enemies.

Solve centuries of culturally ingrained hatred, violence and intolerance in just a few short months:

[...] I assured leaders from both sides that America will do, and I will do, everything we can to help them achieve a peace agreement that defines a Palestinian state by the end of this year.

Insert at least one statement to take the edge off the Team America, World Police statements:

America opposes genocide in Sudan.

Be sure to contextualize the previous statement, keeping veiled references to Team America:

We support freedom in countries from Cuba and Zimbabwe to Belarus and Burma.

And end with a bang:

So tonight, with confidence in freedom’s power, and trust in the people, let us set forth to do their business. God bless America.

If anyone has any ideas of how we can keep this guy occupied for the next year (buying baseball teams, kissing babies, playing fetch) please speak up before we find ourselves at war with no less than two Middle-Eastern countries, paying for health care in Loonies, and printing money as a homework assignment.

It’s only a few days before Thanksgiving here in the U.S. and the only vestige of the holiday that I can find is a small paper turkey sitting in the corner of the receptionist’s desk here at Gentex (my employer). Have we forgotten about that pesky holiday that comes between Halloween and Christmas? The way I see it, Thanksgiving is one of the most American holidays we have (probably relinquishing the most-American-holiday designation to Veteran’s Day or President’s Day), and we’ve relegated its significance to a place holder. Oh yeah, Thanksgiving - that’s the day before Black Friday (the biggest shopping day of the year that puts retailers in the black), right? Do kids still learn about the pilgrims, and how they celebrated their first harvest in the New World, or do we just tell them that Christmas is coming and their parents will only buy them what they want if it’s in the After Thanksgiving Day sale?

Christmas trees went up at Gentex last week. Big Christmas trees. Fifteen-foot, meticulously decorated Christmas trees with toys-for-tots boxes next to them. There were no corporate Thanksgiving decorations. I did receive a notice on my last pay stub that checks will be distributed a day early due to the up-coming Thanksgiving holiday. That’s nice of them. It’s hard to call that Thanksgiving spirit though. But what is Thanksgiving spirit? When was the last time you overheard someone talking about getting into the Thanksgiving spirit? Probably never because holiday spirit seems to be reserved for the Christmas season, and Thanksgiving day is just that - a day, no more, no less. Eat your turkey (or at least watch the over-weight, obnoxious football announcers eat their turkey), enjoy your day (or two) off, and be sure to overspend on Christmas gifts on Friday.

I guess we don’t really have time to be thankful for our things if we’re too busy wanting more of them. Come to think of it, that’s probably the reason we call it Turkey Day… and the reason we trample people the very next day just to save a few dollars. Maybe if we all took a step back and asked, “Do I really need that $50 laptop, and is it worth the black eye I just gave that little girl?” we could start to appreciate how much we have already, or even how much we ate the day before. Maybe we could even appreciate the heritage we’ve been given by men and women who worked so hard that they decided to set aside a whole day in appreciation of the fruits of their labor, the camaraderie and cooperation it took to produce those fruits and the God that gave them the strength and capacity to enjoy it all.

Happy Thanksgiving.

So after a somewhat safe political blog entry, I am for some unknown reason compelled to dive into the deep mysteries of life. I hope not to mire my (as of right now brand-new) readers in unsightly and numbingly philosophical musings too often, but the occasional side-path can be enlightening and insightful. If you are not in the mood to think right now, go here and come back when you’re ready - I’ll wait…

I have been ruminating quite a bit lately about the Nature Of Things™, and a good part of this process has been a reflection on the existence and nature of God. I have visited several websites decrying the existence of God many of which have some interesting things to say, but this post is directed at one particularly irksome site: http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/ (WWGHA) which posits the question, “Why won’t God heal amputees?”

While I highly encourage direct dialog concerning religion and the supernatural, I have a hard time swallowing nonsense / irrelevant arguments from angst-filled individuals. After reading much of this website I get the impression that the author was either deeply hurt by a conservative religious up-bringing or extremely bitter from past experience(s) with “fundy religious nut-bags” (as a friend of mine once called them). While this site points out some interesting facets of a Christian world-view (the “optical illusion” argument for instance) which should be engaged and discussed thoroughly, the main line of argument used throughout the site is basically a subtle re-wording of the omnipotence paradox.

Let’s make this a little more clear. First, the basic paradox can be summed up in the following question, “Can an omnipotent being create a stone which is too large for the being to lift?” In creating the stone which cannot be lifted, the omnipotent being would then lose its omnipotence which then calls into question the initial omnipotence of said being. Hmmmm. That’s a Tuffy^®. Fortunately a lot of really smart people throughout history have weighed in on the matter (more on this later).

The WWGHA website poses their problem in the following way: God is all-powerful (omnipotent), therefore regenerating a leg is trivial. God is perfect, all-knowing, all-loving and ready-and-willing to answer prayers. God has no reason to discriminate against amputees. If he answers prayers for people like Jeanna Giese, we have no reason to believe he won’t answer prayers for a deserving amputee. But he doesn’t, and won’t for the foresee-able future.

At first glance the argument is clever, but ultimately it says a big heaping pile of nothing. First of all, simply because science never definitively illuminated the ultimate reasons for Jeanna’s recovery doesn’t preclude an explanation rooted in natural processes. Furthermore, a natural explanation for Jeanna’s recovery wouldn’t read, even slightly, on the nature of God and his ability to answer prayer - the topics are unrelated. Second, the question, “why won’t God heal amputees” can be re-phrased to read, “why can’t God create a world with rules and natural laws, and then break those rules?” Huh, sounds like we’ve made it back to the omnipotence paradox and in that case it’s about time to call in the heavy-weights.

I’m not going to delineate the opposing sides of this paradox here. Instead, I’m going to encourage you to read the Wikipedia article, and do some homework on your own. What I do want to point out here is that what the WWGHA website seems to dismissively pass off as a straight-forward question with a simple answer (leading quickly to the seemingly logical conclusion that God is imaginary) is actually a discussion about nothing with underpinnings in a well-explored philosophical paradox. Just because we can formulate a question doesn’t mean it’s worth answering: “Why won’t Whole Foods buy me a new house?” To quote C.S. Lewis:

God’s omnipotence means [His] power to do all that is not intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to His power. If you choose to say, “God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it”, you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words “God can.” It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives — not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.

(The Problem of Pain)

Now there is some kool aid worth drinking.