Mike Huckabee and Tookie Williams

While no analogy is perfect, enough of the facts are the same to compare the cases of Stanley “Tookie” Williams and Wayne DuMond.

First, Stanley “Tookie” Williams was a street gang member who was convicted of multiple murders and sentenced to death. While in prison, he had a born again experience and gave his life to Christ. As a result of his conversion, he began writing various articles and tried to encourage young people to avoid street gangs. Because of his anti-gang advocacy, many people thought that his sentence should be commuted and the death penalty should not be carried-out. Even many people that normally support capital punishment thought that the governor—Arnold Schwarzenegger—should pardon “Tookie”.

“Tookie” was finally executed about two years ago.

In 1985 Wayne DuMond was convicted of raping Ashley Stevens.

DuMond said that, while he was awaiting trial, masked men burst into his home, tied him up with fishing line and cut out his testicles. By the time Mr Huckabee became governor in 1996, he had met DuMond’s wife and was promising to release him. After advice from medical experts — thought to have told him that DuMond was still capable of rape — Mr Huckabee allowed the decision to be taken by the parole board, which released DuMond in September 1999.

In 2001 DuMond raped and killed Carol Sue Shields, 39, in Missouri and is also said to have been responsible for the rape and murder of Sara Andrasek, 23, who was pregnant. He died in prison two years ago of natural causes.

While the media doesn’t pay much attention to religion, Mike Huckabee’s faith was understood to be an issue in the decision to release DuMond. Many have speculated that Huckabee was convinced that DuMond had a conversion experience in jail and that facts surrounding his rape conviction were politically motivated. (Ashley Stevens-the victim of the rape-was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton.) The conversion, castration and Clinton connection were enough that many pushed for DuMond’s pardon.

The common thread in both cases is the claim of religious conversion as the basis for some type of preferential treatment for those convicted of crime.

I don’t fault the criminals for wanting to get out of incarceration. I do have a problem with ignorant but well meaning Christians that don’t understand the proper role of church and state. Below is a portion of an article that explorers these roles:

Forgiveness Requires Restitution
by David Chilton

The condemned man sat in his cell awaiting execution. James Morgan had been convicted of murder and sentenced to death under the justice system of 17th-century Massachusetts—the Puritan Colony par excellence.

The Puritans have often been stigmatized as narrow-minded legalists, unconcerned about the plight of “sinners” in their midst. To the contrary, the Puritans, as good Calvinists, believed that all people—themselves included—are depraved and sinful, in need of the grace of God and the mercy of fellow men.

Accordingly, the Rev. Cotton Mather and other ministers visited Morgan in his cell and urged him to pray for repentance and forgiveness. To their delight, Morgan heard them and soon gave evidence of a sound, sincere conversion.

The whole Puritan colony joyously responded to Morgan’s change of heart. They held a special worship service, where Morgan testified to his newfound faith. He was embraced and received as a brother in Christ, with all the rights and privileges of a citizen of the heavenly kingdom.

The congregation sang a psalm of praise, thanking God for His goodness to James Morgan, the sinner who had become a saint.

Then they took him to the gallows and hanged him.

Clearly Huckabee has either confused the roles of church and state or doesn’t know the difference. As a former minister, Huckabee clearly has the credentials of being an expert in the role of church in our society. Based on his actions in this case and statements that he has made during the campaign on other public policy issues one can only conclude that Huckabee lacks a core of conservative principles.

Can Evangelicals Trust Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney finally gave “The Speech” about his religious views. I read the transcript and thought it was a wonderful speech. The best line in it was:

Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.

This is the same view expressed in the Declaration of Independence where we are reminded that our rights come from God not government.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . .

This is the watershed issue in our culture. Those that agree with the Founders are Conservative. Those who believe rights come from government are Liberals.

I think this speech will help Romney with evangelicals but I’m not sure that it will be enough. I think evangelicals are haunted by Jimmy Carter, George H Bush and Bill Clinton. We remember “reading my lips” and “never worked so hard for the American people” as preludes to broken promises and tax hikes. We remember Carter and Clinton gutting our military and trying to peacefully co-exist with terrorists.

Romney’s problems with evangelicals are not really theological but ethical. We are asked to trust that he is a conservative—one of us—but his track record as a politician and his words as a presidential candidate do not agree. What is his epiphany? What caused the change? Evangelicals happily acknowledge that God has the power to do this in the hearts of men but Romney does not credit God with the change. According to Romney he has been consistent the whole time to his faith in God. Both he and Harry Reid are LDS and they are polar opposites on political and social issues yet both in good standing with the folks in Salt Lake City.

Another reason that trust in Romney is thin is our experience in California with Arnold Schwarzenegger. We threw a known conservative—Tom McClintock—under the bus and went with Arnold because Arnold was a fiscal conservative that told us he could work with Democrats. Now Arnold is counted as the eighth most influential Liberal in the United States and has sold-out to the homosexuals and environmental extremists. Arnold has papered over the debt in California by transferring obligations to 30-year bond measures instead of correcting the structural issues that created the deficit spending. Furthermore, while Arnold Schwarzenegger has raised over 120 million dollars for his campaign coffers the Republican Party in California is bankrupt and two million dollars in debt!

Conservatives want to be charitable with Romney. We need converts to our cause to change the direction of our country. We need the children of the ‘60s to embrace the values of their fathers. Jesus told us to forgive our brother if he offends us even seven times seventy times. Conservatives went way beyond that number a decade ago and still we want to forgive. We just want a measure of assurance that Romney will govern with the same values he wants to campaign on.

Gary S Paxton

Gary S Paxton may not be a household name but his work is widely known. He has produced a variety of musical hits since the 1960’s. His music hits span Top 40, Country and Gospel. Today, his best know hit is probably the Monster Mash, which was recorded in 1962.

He has won Grammy Awards and hits that he has produced have sold tens of millions of copies. He was inducted into the Country Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 1999.

His personal life has been a roller coaster of substance abuse. Paxton has a history of drug and alcohol abuse. In 1973, he converted to Christianity. In 1975 he started his own recording label and he did very well until 1985 when he lost the business due to bad business decisions and problems with drugs.

In 1980, he was shot five times in the head by hitmen hired by a country musician that Paxton was producing. Amazingly, he survived the attack.

Paxton has started his life over again in Branson Missouri.

Gary S Paxton sees the world differently than most folks. Like many artists, he can see the wonder of mundane everyday things and he also can glimpse into the future and see what’s lurking just over the horizon. Some of his songs are serious and sober and others are satirical and fun. Paxton’s music, like Bob Dylan, is and acquired taste. His songs will stick in your head and rattle around long after you’ve shut off the music.

What makes his music stand apart from that performed by others is that each song that he writes has a little piece of himself in it. From what I know of his life, it is safe to say there are two Gary S Paxtons. One is the partying hell raiser and the other is the saint touched by God. Much of his music is one Gary looking at the other.

There are pieces of Gary S Paxton all over the Internet but not in one central location. Even his entry on Wikipedia is spotty. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_S._Paxton

Gary has two different websites that each host unique content. Each is incomplete but overlapping.

The main page at http://www.GarySPaxton.net and http://www.GarySPaxton.org are the same but as you drill down each menu item you will find differences. The music link on each page goes to different music offerings. These choices are not duplicated.

If you follow this link and click of CD covers, you hear samples of songs offered on these CDs. http://www.garyspaxton.org/Music/index.htm

His new wife Vickie has two sites
http://www.TimeForJoy.com was used at one time but now just links to the .org site mentioned above. Paxton’s e-mail is listed as garyspaxton@timeforjoy.com
More recent activity and biographical information can be found at http://www.urban.ne.jp/home/koa7/newsletter.htm

Discography http://www.ymg.urban.ne.jp/home/koa7/garpax.htm
Discography of NewPax Records http://www.bsnpubs.com/word/newpax.html

Update

Gary died  July 17, 2016

Matthew Ward: Toward Eternity

Matthew Ward is best known for his part of the 1970’s trio known as The 2nd Chapter of Acts. The group often toured with Keith Green, Phil Keaggy and Barry McGuire. During his time with 2nd Chapter, Ward released his first solo album, Toward Eternity. Toward Eternity was one of the best Christian rock albums of the period. I have many fond memories of hanging out at the campus radio station play cuts off this LP on Friday nights.

I have been checking periodically for many years to see if Toward Eternity would ever be released on CD. I’m still waiting. On the Matthew Ward website, there is no mention of Toward Eternity on the Store page on his site. However, on the Music page you will find a list of all the solo projects that Matthew Ward has done. On this page is a box that looks like an ad. It lists many songs in alphabetical order. If you play around with this box you will find that it is in fact a way to play and download mp3 files of songs by Matthew Ward.

Songs that have been purchased previously appear in italics. Note that songs are not listed by original LP or CD. By scrolling up and down on the music page you can figure-out which songs belong to which recording. Setting-up an account on Snocap is easy and doesn’t require selecting the songs over again. Be warned that there is no confirmation screen prior to purchasing the songs. Once purchased you need to either install a download manager from Snocap or right-click each song title and select save to download.

Matthew has a great duel on the Donna Summer album She Works Hard for the Money. Look for the track called Love has a Mind of It’s Own. He also has a great duet with Leslie (Sam) Phillips on her Dancing with Danger CD called By My Spirit.

Matthew Ward’s music is a real treasure. I’m glad he has found his way into the digital age.

Halting Hillary & Huckabee

I was browsing the Internet last night and happened to be at the main page of the Drudge Report when my three year old jumped into my lap. He asked me who was that lady in the photo. I answered that she wants to be President of our country. He then responded, “I don’t like her.” Wow! No wonder his middle name is Reagan.

As we enter the final stretch to Iowa, Mrs. Clinton is blasting Barack Obama on the wedge issue of how long Obama has wanted to be president. Why a kindergarten class in Indonesia counts I really don’t know. I bet there was a time when he wanted to be an astronaut too.

In the last several weeks, Hilary has repeatedly stated that she wants to be President again.

Meanwhile Obama is campaigning with all the enthusiasm of a child that is overmedicated with Ritalin. He doesn’t seem to want the nomination very badly.

On the Republican side, Mike “I need a miracle” Huckabee is being touted by the media as the new maverick of the party. I think the media really views him as a spoiler that is undercutting serious candidates that might have a chance of beating their favorite Democrat.

I have heard comparisons of Huckabee to candidate Jimmy Carter in 1976. Many evangelicals voted for this southern governor because he was a “born again” Christian. As we later found out with Carter, Baptists are notoriously antinomian and their faith rarely influences their views of government and public policy.

If elected, Huckabee would drift aimlessly from issue to issue buffeted by the trials and tribulations of a Democrat controller legislative branch until he was swamped by the maelstrom and had his administration smashed on the rocks. In other words, without core values and conservative principles Huckabee can never be an effective President because the Democrats will roll him at every opportunity and render him ineffective.

Obama and Huckabee Iowa Surge Dubious

In the latest polling for the Iowa caucus, both Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee are moving ahead of the pack and challenging the long-standing front-runners in their respective parties. This sounds really interesting but is it hype or reality?

I think that polling is not the “science” that it used to be. Consider the obstacles to the modern day pollster.

First, most polling is done by telephone. It is the cheapest way to have two-way conversations with potential voters. From voter data such as that available from your county clerk, a pollster can know how often that you have voted in past elections and want your party affiliation is. This information coupled with the demographics of your neighborhood can give them a good idea of who you voted for in the past. There are many questions that they ask in the course of a poll to verify their guesses by comparing actual answers with their predictions.

Part of the challenge to pollsters is to get a statistical cross-section of the electorate. Their model assumptions about voters are important to the accuracy of the result that they get. Have you ever wondered how 1,200 people are polled and in a headline the next day we are told with certainty what 300 million Americans think about presidential popularity or Hillary’s latest healthcare idea?

The biggest challenge to this model is technology. A large percentage of people under age thirty have only cellular phones and not a landline. These folks are not listed in Ma Bell’s directory. People also have IP telephony and other means of communicating that are not listed. This coupled with traditional unlisted phone numbers on landlines makes contacting a cross-section of voters even more difficult. The only thing that is saving their models of the electorate is that many in this age group are not high propensity voters. Older, high propensity voters tend to have traditional phones.

Another challenge is who is actually answering the phone? Most times that a telemarketer calls my phone, we hang-up on them. Due to the number of polls done in modern political campaigns and the small population of a state like Iowa, I think many folks are burned-out answering their phones too. Are the results showing shifts in the candidate preferences of Iowa voters accurate or are the number on non-responding folks causing results to be weighted differently to keep the pollsters in business?

Most people made up their minds months ago and it would take a big event to change their preference. Neither Obama nor Huckabee can point to such an event. (Yes, some might argue that Hillary and driver licenses for illegals qualify but we will have to see.)

If given my assumption about the lack of a big event, the logical place to go to explain any shift in voter preferences is that the “undecided” are finally settling on their choice. My problem with this is two-fold. First we must ask is this “undecided” voter who up ‘til now has not been paying attention really firm in their commitment to a candidate and second, will they actually go to the polls and vote?

Lastly, going into the holidays will detract from campaigning. This is a season for family and the sacred not secular. This will result in committed people voting and those with little interested getting distracted and not making the extra effort to vote. I doubt anyone knows how to model this because it has never happened before. The timing of Iowa is an unquantifiable variable that should not be minimized.

I could go on but I think I have made my point. The polls are entertaining but should not be trusted. There are too many variables that make Iowa difficult to call prior to January third.

MPEG2 Error C00D11B1 in Windows Media Player

My three-year-old abuses to heck out of our family’s DVD collection. After he handles them a few times, they won’t play. The disks are covered in yogurt, fingerprints, apple juice and who knows what else. Anyway, the poor lasers in the players don’t stand a chance against him. I frequently have to wash the DVDs with soap and water to clean them before he can watch them. Many are also accumulating scratches and it is only a matter of time before they will be unusable.

As a result, I have decided to download as many of his favorites as I can into my computer for him to watch. This will allow us to watch a copy of the disk and reduce the abuse to which they are subjected. I also am doing this because the wife and I are considering purchasing an XBOX 360 for the kids’ big Christmas gift. With the XBOX, they can watch the movies on my computer—via the Windows Media Center—on their television. (I wired the house for computers and the eventual purchase of the XBOX last year.)

As an experiment, I ripped a few DVDs using the Roxio Easy Media software. I selected the MPEG2 format. I tried to play the resulting files with Windows Media Player and got an error.

The same file plays fine using Media Center and several other software applications in my computer. I was determined to find a solution. Media Player has never been able to play an MPEG file from any source on my Vista computer.

I started at the beginning. Did I have the proper codec to play this file format? I thought so but my research found that support for MPEG files is only partially supported natively by Microsoft. They support MPEG1 but not MPEG2. MPEG2 is the format used on DVDs and requires a third party solution. I downloaded and installed the software at a cost of about $15. As I found out later, I already had the codec and this was a waste of money.

I searched on the Roxio support forum and found a thread that seemed to hold some promise.

There were all sorts of great sounding ideas. These included codec diagnostic programs, quotes allegedly from Microsoft TechNet and purchasing new codec packages. None of these worked.
I tried the Microsoft website and found a thread on error C00D11B1.

This tread starts out poorly with a bunch of BS about Samsung software for cell phones causing this problem and then goes on to suggest changes to settings in Media Player and even registry hacks. My experience with this is that it is nonsense, not troubleshooting. However, on the fourth page of this thread you get to the payoff. Buried in the bottom one post you will find the following nugget:

Anyway, while i was typing that essay, i found a solution!

http://www.codecguide.com I simply download that codec pack, and everything worked perfectly. It installs another media player called Windows Media Player Classic, but i checked, and the files work using the regular media player too.

The codecs on this page are free. I tried the full package and took most of the default settings. However, I kept the MPEG2 codecs that I already purchased and told the install program to replace my DIVX codecs, and on the bottom of the second screen, I checked to box to create a setpoint before installing.

As I was researching this problem, I had seen many comments that blamed newer DIVX codecs as the likely cause of the problem. Strictly speaking I know that trying two different repairs at once is not proper troubleshooting technique but by the time I got to this point in the process I wanted results and a good night’s sleep. The bottom line is that it worked.

I hope my experience will save others some heartache. Happy computing.

iTunes Bug Kills CDs in Vista

Recently I upgraded my Windows Vista computer to iTunes 7.5. After starting the program I was greeted with a message that my DVD/CD burner was unable to be used by iTunes. Why? It works for everything else I want to burn!

Upon further investigation, I found that iTunes is not compatible with my 64-bit operating system and I needed to download a third-party driver so that this piece of Apple software could work as advertised with my burner.

I found this on the Apple website in one of their support threads:

I don’t understand why Apple support doesn’t react on this, as the solution is ridiculously easy.

You need a 64bit version of the driver, install the one you find here:
http://www.gearsoftware.com/support/drivers.cfm

Use “Driver installer for AMD64 and Intel EM64T processors”.
Works like a charm.

This is my third bug this year with Apple software in the PC world and the second I’ve encountered with iTunes.

On my windows XP Pro system, I had to physically remove the CD-ROM from my computer because iTunes can’t tell the difference between a CD ROM and a CD Writer. I had both in the computer peacefully coexisting until I wanted to burn a CD using iTunes. Theirs is the only burning software I have ever encountered that can’t make this fundamental distinction.

The error message from the iTunes program basically said PCs were crap and we can’t function in your box because it is built different that a Mac (only they used engineering sounding words to more politely insult the 90 percent of the world that doesn’t do things their way).

My third Apple bug this year is in QuickTime Player. I can only play movies from external hard drives. Any movie I play on my local hard drive will crash due to buffer error within seconds of activating “play”. I found a website claiming to fix this error if I will install four downloads and then re-start my computer.

DirecTV On Demand Service

Yeah! In addition to rolling out more HD stations this fall, DirecTV is Beta Testing an on demand service. Apparently, you select the program and it gets downloaded to your DVR and then you watch it like any other program. There is no press release about this on their website yet.

Dobson Should Embrace Rudy

Conservatives are once again poised to assemble their famous “circular firing squad” and should Rudy Giuliani emerge as the Republican presidential candidate, they plan on pulling the trigger.

James Dobson and a group of other evangelicals are threatening to throw their support to a third party candidate—to be named later—if Rudy is the nominee. This is the result of Rudy’s longtime support of legalized abortion. This smacks of the Ross Perot effort in 1992, which resulted in the election of Bill Clinton. Clinton won with 43 percent of the vote.

This presidential cycle will likely see a credible third party challenger from the Left due to the dissatisfaction of the anti-war fanatics. Dobson’s gambit will likely be a pale imitation of their efforts. If Dobson and company put up a third party challenger, it will be to the detriment of evangelicals and when it fails, it will justify the marginalization of social conservatives in future public policy debates.

Rudy is better on the war than any of the Democrats. If we are dead or in economic ruins, then all the social policies that we spend so much time fighting about won’t matter because we won’t be here to have the debate. Our national existence is on the line in 2008. Once the Sword of Islam is dealt with then we will have to time to look at these other issues.

Furthermore, should Rudy appoint the kind of judges that he says, we might end-up with Roe v Wade being gutted regardless of what Rudy said on the campaign trail. Why? Simple really. The kind of judges that support the War on Terror and law & order issues will tend to be the strict constructionist judges that would favor curtailing the overreaching intrusion of the courts beyond the limits of the Constitution.

Rudy certainly couldn’t pick any worse than did Reagan and Bush senior. Republicans have a terrible track record of picking justices for the Court. Picking judges reminds me of the old joke about marriage. It has been said that marriage is like fishing, you don’t really know what you caught until you get it in the boat. Ditto for Supreme Court judges.

The irony of Dobson’s position is that to get the result he wants, his best chance is to join with Rudy.