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Dan Popkey raises the dead

I read today's column by Dan regarding the Keep the Commandments leaders in Boise and the fine they paid.

His column simply misses the mark....it doesn't work. It paid too much attention to the issue.

Recently, I blogged on the issue, myself, and wrote from a position of having been arrested in that case. My bottom line was that until the Supreme Court makes their decision, the issue is dead...so quit bringing it back to life.

And Dan brings it back to life...AGAIN...agghh!

Then he beats them to death...again.

It's the Night of the Living Dead, again and again. "More brains....."

The good thing about the piece is his last paragraph. He's apparently made a decision to focus on more centrist characters in our community. I think that's a good idea. 

I've long ago learned that the edges of a painting do not a landscape painting make...so quit focusing on them.

But that's just me...
Den

Ready for an adventure?

                                                     Ready for an adventure?

Thanks to all of you who connected with my comments on the recent post regarding ex-inmates and jobs. The MSNBC article WAS awesome.

With all the bad financial news on banks, stocks and such...some have asked me how to gain a return in a recession-proof business....hmmm...how 'bout crime?

What? Well, let me explain.

I suppose it'd be better put by saying how 'bout financially supporting efforts to see folks come out of jail/prison and start their lives over anew....and having a piece of the business that helps them succeed, at the same time. Believe it or not, helping ex-inmates is recession-proof....and can be a great blessing.

There are lots of ways to do it via loans, etc, just email me at Dennis@DennisMansfield.com and I'll connect you with the key person in our firm who does that sort of thing.

Don't be down-in-the-financial dumps...fly high, baby...fly high.

Den

Bill Sali's Sprint

Those who read this blog know of my support for Bill Sali. He and I have been friends for almost 18 years. When he was first elected to the Legislature, I met him there, when I was a lobbyist with Focus on the Family's Family Policy Council in Idaho.

We hit it off well. When Helen Chenoweth ran in the successful 1994 Primary, I was her Campaign Committee Chairman. When she honored her Contract with America, I was endorsed by Bill Sali as I ran for her seat against then-Lt. Governor Butch Otter, who ultimately prevailed.

Six years later Butch Otter decided to give up the seat and run for Governor. I looked at the Congressional Seat and considered running for it once again.

I met with Bill at a dinner with our wives at their work's Christmas party and we discussed the possibilities of either of us running. He asked me not to run. I considered his request and I honored him. When he won the Congressional Seat, other than his family, I was the one most proud of Bill Sali.

So what I have to say, regarding his 2008 race against Walt Minnick should have some weight to it.

Bill Sali needs to sprint to November. Not run. Sprint.

The 1st CD race victory trophy will go to the candidate who maniacally runs to the finish. Like Eric Liddle, the main character in the film Chariots of Fire, the head has to be tipped backward, the hair flowing and the arms flailing...wildly.

No one in DC will really care whether Bill Sali pulls off a successful race. Too many seats are in flux. They say they care, but not really. Freshmen are proven fodder for "the guns of November".

But ALL of Idaho will care. D's and R's.

Walt Minnick is a businessman. Odds are he will run a methodical race...well timed and not-too-innovative. Break a sweat? Maybe, but more to the point, he'll look a little like Thomas Dewey in the '48 Presidential Race. Calm collected and confident.

However, to wildly mix metaphors (at the even worse expense of combining an Eric Liddle proven-saint and a Harry Truman stubborn-political-mule), Bill "Give 'em Hell" Sali, may have to do just that....in order to break that finish-line tape in '08.

Den

Here's the Wall Street Journal article by Justin Sheck that just came out July 15th on the race:

Idaho Is No Longer a Lock for Republicans

By JUSTIN SCHECK
July 15, 2008; Page A3

SANDPOINT, Idaho -- Bill Sali is defying the political odds by making Idaho's first-district congressional race competitive. That isn't good for Mr. Sali: He is the incumbent.

A 54-year-old Republican from Kuna, 18 miles from Boise, Mr. Sali represents one of the most heavily Republican electorates in the U.S. The district hasn't elected a Democrat to the House since 1992; in the 2004 presidential race, 69% of its votes went to George W. Bush.

But through slow fund raising and a combative reputation, Mr. Sali has become vulnerable to his Democratic challenger, Walt Minnick, a businessman with little political experience.

Idaho Republican Bill Sali has become suprisingly vulnerable in his House re-election race through slow fund raising and a combative reputation.

This presents an unexpected problem for the national Republican Party, which is eager to maintain its 199 House seats in the November race. Republicans are depending on strongholds such as Idaho for easy victories so they can focus resources on districts with divided electorates.

A month ago, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report said Mr. Sali was safe; now, Cook analyst David Wasserman says the race for his seat is contested. Conservative pundit Robert Novak recently said Republicans "need to worry" about the seat.

Mr. Sali said national Republican leaders assumed his victory "would go on autopilot," until he called attention to his situation. Now, he said, they are paying attention and offering fund-raising help. Federal reports in May showed Mr. Sali had raised about $200,000 less than Mr. Minnick. Data from Boise Republican pollster Greg Smith show 26% of likely Republican voters in the district's two most-populous counties rate Mr. Sali "very unfavorable."

Hand Cuffs? How 'bout Idaho French Cuffs?

Huggy Bear repeatedly reminded Starsky and Hutch that "It's another plan perpetrated by THE MAN to keep the brothers down".  But who is THE MAN?

Well, based on what market place economics are proving, we can sure see who HE is NOT.

THE MAN ain't "bidness"...

Read the CrimnalBuilder.com...er CareerBuilder.com/ MSNBC article below and see what I mean.

Along that path, we have started Renaissance Group Services in Idaho- employing the unemployable.

Den

Getting Out of Prison and Into a Job

   

      Federal, local governments offering tax incentives to hire parolees    

       

                         By Eve Tahmincioglu, MSNBC.com careers contributor        

               

       

       

                          

Clayton Smalls has come a long way since he was holding up tellers behind bank counters.

Today he works as a deli man behind the counter of a Fairway Market in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y.

Smalls, 49, who got out of prison in October 2007 after serving 17 months for selling marijuana, has spent most of his life in and out of jail for everything from robbery to drug dealing.

But he's finally ready to change his life, and the job he landed -- thanks to help from America Works, an employment agency that trains and finds jobs for hard-to-place candidates like ex-cons and welfare recipients -- has gone a long way in motivating him.

"I get to work every day an hour early," he says proudly. "The store manager has high hopes for me. He's teaching me how to cut salmon."

"This job is the most important thing in my life," he adds.

There's a growing desire in this country to get ex-offenders jobs as a way to keep them out of jail. The federal government and some municipalities are doing what they can to help parolees get job training and offering employers incentives to hire former prisoners, spurred by skyrocketing incarceration costs and exploding prison populations.

Back in the Saddle, Again

From what the front page ot the Idaho Statesman shows today, we are in a heap a' trouble, financial that is, as a state and as a nation....

or are we?

There's no doubt that an undercurrent of "something" is happening throughout America. Most polls show two things: that people are fearful of the economy tubing....AND that their own lives are doing moderately well.

So what's the something?

Well, let's see....by most estimates a total of almost $700 million will be spent between now and the first Tuesday in November by both parties, super-sizing every little financial, personal or familial problem. Every hurting person becomes a trend...or could become one. It's crazy.

Look at your life. Look at your family. Look at your savings and/or investments. To suddenlty feel like collapsing in fear is wrong. Declining stock percentages by Banks do not a "bank run" make...nor should those figures be used to drive "fear" into folks...to MAKE a "bank run" occur. Stocks rise and fall. It's a financial gravity thing.

The fear-mongers are wrong. America's financial position is strong. Like a sloped and landscaped hillside, supported by a million small plants, whose root sytems shoot out tens of millions of rooted lifelines, keeping the plant healthy and the hillside stable, so are the millions of small business owners in our country. Success is always within our grasp. It's our call if we extend our fingers and embrace it.

That's what America faces right now, come Obama or McCain.

Den

OK, so God's not REALLY a black woman.....

Spent a long weekend w/family in the mid-west, all the while reading (that is: experiencing) an amazing book, The Shack (www.theshackbook.com).
It was an inconvenient time to have such an equally inconvenient book leave its HUGE imprint on me. My perspective on things-Christian was deeply challenged - almost painfully so.

Think of these bullet points:
* WWJD - No, are you kidding! No, it's not "WWJ do?"...it's "How are we to be?"
*Religion, politics and economics are the 'Trinity of Terrors'...hmmm, so how do we REALLY change the world?
*Jesus to a main character: "I am not a Christian". (Hmmm...that ought ot challenge a whole boatload of folks...)
*Declaring independence will result in evil..SAY WHAT?
*God has no expectations of us at all.....wow.....who thinks like that?
*Forgiveness does not create a relationship......

Much, much more....check out the site.

Headed back to Boise tonight.
Den

Jackson/Obama: Hot Mic=Cold Truth

  Here are Den's thoughts all the way from the heartland of Kansas City, Mo. while eating at Arthur Bryants' BBQ on Brooklyn Avenue:

Jesse Jackson's attack against Barack Obama shows the true color of his character and it does not line with Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy of the color of their skin. Jackson, a twice failed presidential candidate, made a patently obvious comment to the casual observer that Barack Obama is not black enough for him. Thinking his mic was off we heard the cold truth: that Jesse is not relevant to the political debate of this new generation. He may have stood on the balcony where MLK was assinated, but he is no longer in the same universe King dreamed about.

I'm a conservative replublican and always have been; I've added to my resume the term progressive conservative. Why? Because in all aspects of the political debate the key for all of us it to adapt and change our thinking patterns to see what works and what doesn't work. I've said this now for the last 4 years; the problem with Jesse Jackson or for that matter Jesse Helms, is their decaying ideas do not speak life into our culture.

Somebody's private parts were impacted yesterday and today, but they weren't Barack Obama's. Political self-mutilation is a terrible thing to behold, but maybe in this case, Jackson's vitriol should perish from the earth. Sound biblical? "One generation passes away, and another generation comes" Ecclesiastes 1:4

In case you missed the audio/video...

God is a middle-aged' heavy set Black Woman

Bait and switched you from my 'last' posting. Here's why:

I'm right in the middle of William P. Young's book 'The Shack'...and it's blowing my mind. For everyone who has had "evangelical" theology stick in the throat like a giant fish-bone....go read it. No kidding! I'm halfway thru it and it is TERRIFIC. If you don't trust the Jesus you think Jerry Falwell worshipped, grab this book. If my brand of "Christian" creeps you out, get this book. Read it. Meet God..."she's" amazing. Curious? Run to "The Shack". No more blog postings from me for a few days, now, I promise! Read Lee's stuff on this site. He's smarter than I am anyway tee hee. Den

Band on the run...

Goin' to Kansas City... Headed to see my son, who's doing great. Livin' life there w/pro teams, real diverse neighborhoods and a great gal. In my place these next few days I've asked Lee Gaupp to blog. He's my webmaster and bosom friend (to quote Anne of Green Gables...hmm). Please feel free slap him around...tee hee. BTW: I've had too much fun lately, w/Zombies, Hancock and Obama.

I will leave you with the words that often greet visitors in KC: " get outta da car...this is a carjack..." Den