The Christian Left  

There is a little bit of buzz over the Capital One commercial where the Galactic Emperor is designing his credit card with kittens and his aide asks if he wants War Kittens, to which the answer is no, cute kittens, baby cats.

This is all well and good, but I want to see a picture of the war kittens, perhaps dressed in the same uniform as the commercial's characters. While I would not get a Capital One card again (since the day the statement arrives is remarkably close to the due date to avoid late fees), I would like to see the War Kittens image.  I might even use it on an ad for the show.

For a while I have been exploring an astrological publishing project.  You may ask the following:  Why astrology? Isn't it unscientific?  Isn't it devil worship?

No. Here's why. It is scientific fact that the Sun is affected by the planets. The sunspot cycle is related to the orbit of Jupiter, etc. We don't understand all of these relationships, but we just started looking in the last fifty years with real equipment. One of the things we have found is that the solar wind, which is affected by the planets, rains onto the earth's magentosphere, which causes fluxuations in the ionosphere. According to findings by Ryan Aviation, these fluxuations resonate in the same range as the Alpha rhythems of the human brain, which are present when we sleep or watch television.

Some scientists object to Astrology because of its use of pagan imagery. They assume that it is merely a holdover of pagan religion. This shows a misunderstanding of paganism. For their objections to be true, there would have actually had to have been pagan gods which have somehow been displaced. That would be silly. Instead, paganism is a form of humanism. The pagan gods are archetypes of various aspects of human nature, which were likely informed not by simple story telling but by an understanding of Astrology. In other words, the gods were not used to create Astrology. Astrology was used to create the gods. Understood this way, the objection of scientists evaporates. The religious objections having to do with Astrology's pagan origins also evaporate with this understanding.

The more glaring scientific error is to reject Astrology because it cannot be explained (although as you can see from above, it now has been). Astrology is a social science, not a physical one, and is based on millenia of observation of human clients by their astrologers. Most scientists who object to Astrology have never studied it. The integrous thing to do in this situation is to be silent, not condemn what one does not understand.

The other way to try to understand science is to buy Astrology for Dummies and cast your own natal chart. If there are inconsistencies, consult an astrologer, who will then explain them to you. There are also online horoscope calculators, such as the one found at astrology.com. Use the chart provided to go to such references as the Astrologer's Handbook and see for yourself if astrology works.

There are other potential experiments. One is to try astrological matchmaking. Carl Jung found that stable marriages can be explained astrologically by Moon Sun conjunctions between the couple. That is actually one that is active in my relationship with Moira, as well as a tasty Mars Venus conjunction in Scorpio (along with my Moon and her Sun in the same sign and her Rising sign and my Sun in Sagittarius). Usually a good Mars -Venus connection also leads to a degree of psychic connection. If you wish to find someone who completes your sentences, look for a mate with whom you have this aspect. One fruitful experiment would be to create a speed dating service using these conjunctions to control who sits with whom. Comment below if you are willing to give this a shot and we can get busy matching people and making a little money. Nothing says proof like profit.

The other potential experiment is to publish a more precise horoscope, writing horoscopes for each Sun-Moon and Sun-Ascending combination. If you are interested helping with this experiment, comment below. Eventually, with enough trained astrologers and enough committed clients, it will be possible to cast for each Sun-Moon-Ascending combination - which can be more complicated because the house placements of the Sun and Moon may vary, impacting the client personality and thus the horoscope. However, casting for each of these combinations for each year of birth can result in some amazingly accurate annual forecasts, which would only be practical with extreme market share. We aren't there yet, but if we get there, it will be proof that there is something to this astrology thing. As Yogi Bera says, nothing succeeds like success.

In what is now ancient news, the AP reported last week that even with Florida and Michigan, Senator Clinton is behind in the delegate count, albeit in a closer race. Let's do the math.

First, the pledged delegates:

Obama 1596, Clinton 1439

Then, add the 17 Edwards delegates to the Obama total.

Obama 1613, Clinton 1439

Give Florida all its delegates and count its primary, but give Obama the Edwards delegates.

Obama 1693, Clinton 1544

Next, honor the Michigan party proposal to give Clinton 69 and Obama 59.

Obama 1752, Clinton 1613

As you can see, including these delegations only closes the gap by 35 votes.

Now add the Super Delegates:

Obama 2045, Clinton 1885

Adding back Florida and Michigan in this way makes the number needed 2182.

For Hillary Clinton, that means she must pick up 297 delegates compared to 137 for Obama. If Obama wins Oregon tomorrow and wins even a quarter of the Kentucky vote, the math is pretty insurmountable - especially if the Superdelegates decide enough is enough.

Obama has already stated he will not declare victory on Wednesday. He doesn't have to. We can count. While the Superdelegates can always change their mind until August, they likely won't, especially given the likely victory by Obama in the pledged delegate race. It will be up to the Senator from New York to state the obvious.

E.J. Dionne opines in todays Washington Post that it is good that the majority will ultimately vote on the California Marriage issue and hopes that they vote to affirm it.

I don't share his optimism on the ability of legislative majorities to respect the rights of minorities. Some things should not be put to a vote. Ultimately, this will turn into a federal equal protection question - I am frankly surprised that it has not already.

Should the California voters not agree with E.J., the matter will eventually go to the Supreme Court. When it does, even Justice Scalia will have to agree that equal protection is equal protection - especially in the California case, opening up the spectre of a federal marriage amendment or even the call to a constitutional convention on a variety of conservative hot button issues from taxation to abortion.

Time will tell.

Jackson Diehl writes in today's Washington Post about how John McCain's "League of Democracies" has liberal roots. This concept also has its Neocon roots in the work of Aaron Wildavsky and Max Singer in their book The Real World Order. They propose an almost Bismarkian hybrid of representation by population and representation by a factor of GDP and would give democracies much greater weight. I have a different proposal along these lines, but it goes a bit farther than a league of sovereign states.

First, I would create regional governments within the larger nations in NATO (the U.S., Germany, France, UK) and give each region a great deal of autonomy on taxation, spending and regulation. The national and later allied government would coin and print money, suggest economic policy to the regions, homogonize regulation by regional consensus, regulate joint military affairs with a singe commander-in-chief and executive, deal with environmental issues and oversee equal protection rights vis-a-vis regional and sub-regional (state and provincial) governments, as well as human rights violations by employers. It would have an allied judiciary and directly elected legislators - 2 per region. The chief executive would be chosen by an Allied College consisting of the legislature and the chief executives of each region.

Most importantly, nations would not be allowed to join unless they actually adopted the same level of individual liberty as found in the U.S. and Europe. In essence, we would be joining the EU as 7 member states and insisting that it adopt a more federalist government than it currently has.

I don't think McCain will go that far - however I am not sure the rest of the alliance has much patience for the U.S. and NATO if we do not eventually go down that road.

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