Michael Bryan 060205_white_blossoms_2jpg Originally uploaded by byways. I caught this wonderfully soothing photo from a local Flickr user off the new Zeitgeist tool at the bottom of the right hand column. The zeitgeist displays the latest postings of 90 members of the local Tucson, AZ Flickr group. This tree is just one of a row … Read more
Nancy Barto was selected by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to
replace LD 7 State Representative David Burnell Smith, who was forced
out of office for campaign finance violations. Although Burnell Smith
was one of the six nominated by the LD 7 PCs to replace himself, the
PCs were wise enough not to select him as one of the three names to
forward to the Board.
The Board selected Mrs. Barto, who was the LD 7 Chairperson of the
Republican Party, over Howard Levine and Howard Sprague. Her selection
is about as close to re-selecting Burnell Smith as they could get
without actually trying that stunt, however. Mrs. Barto is a staunch
supporter of Burnell Smith in his fight with the Clean Elections
Commission and the courts to keep his job. Mrs. Barto claims that there
is still strong support for Burnell Smith in the district, as well as
strong animosity toward the Commission.
Barto said, “I’m disappointed that they [the Commission] would go this
route. I don’t think they have the authority to overrule the voters of
this district.” The Arizona Supreme Court and the voters of Arizona, in
adopting and continuing to support Clean Elections, disagreed.
I have been reading a lot about Christianity lately. I recently
finished reading “The Five Gospels: What did Jesus really say?” by the Jesus Seminar. As a complement, or in some cases an
anodyne, to this fare I also watched the documentary film The God Who Wasn’t
There and skimmed “Holy Writ as Oral Lit : The Bible as Folklore” by Alan Dundes, both of which postulate the idea that
Jesus was not a historical figure at all, but rather a construct of
folklore. In addition, I am currently halfway through listening to the
audio edition of “The Gospel of Judas” by Simon Mawer
about the discovery of a previously unknown account of Jesus’ life from
the viewpoint of Judas Iscariot. In sum, I have of late been steeped in
blasphemy.
I didn’t have any particular program or goal in mind in digesting this
material, I just felt that I hadn’t taken a good look at biblical
scholarship of late, and there might be something of interest in either
fiction or non-fiction. With the runaway success of essentially
heretical biblical scholarship in “The DaVinci Code” I thought I would
get ahead of the curve and see what might be next to hit the Christian
cultural zeitgeist.
There has been some talk about differences between two key Arizona Democrats, Napolitano and Grijalva, over strategy and policy concerning border reform. The dust emanates from the AZ Daily Star’s recent interview with Grijalva and some comments made to Bajo El Sol. I wasn’t very clear on what the hubbub was about, so I went back and read the interview more carefully. Because I overlooked some of the implications, I thought it might be useful if I posted what I found for others.
Grijalva is clearly very annoyed, but it is because he is concerned that the Governor’s proposal could harm efforts at comprehensive border reforms, not so much because he opposes her specific policy. He sees a prominent border-state Democratic Governor stepping up with a purely enforcement policy as a betrayal of the political goals of the Hispanic community. He clearly thinks she went off the Democratic message of comprehensive border reform. Let me quote at length from the interview.
Not surprisingly, I was quite unimpressed by Bush’s State of the Union. He started with the lie that our Union is strong, and didn’t stop with the lies and half-truths and terrible ironies throughout. The high point was when Bush alluded to his defeat on Social Security ‘reform’ and the Democrats gave him a standing ovation. The rest was Bush’s characteristic jive of taking our highest ideals and traditions and shitting all over them for the low and corrupt ends of his ‘base’.
But I don’t really want to talk about the SOTU. It is never politically significant, anyhow. Most years, Bush’s ratings have fallen following his SOTUs. And while he didn’t drop any real clinkers this year, such as addressing the use of performance enhancing drugs in professional sports, neither did he say anything that will have any resonance or ring true outside his base. What I thought was really interesting was the Democratic Response.