Mark Byron

Sunday Musings

Newt's taking his hat out of the ring; he didn't have the stomach for the fundraising game. He can still be an effective ideas guy, even if he had issues that would have been problematic were he to become the nominee.

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What's wrong with this picture? South Florida 6th, BC 7th and Kentucky 8th in the AP poll. That's USF highest ranking in school history, Kentucky's highest showing since the 70s and probably BC's highest since Hector was a pup; I don't think that even the Doug Flutie teams of the 80s got BC that high. [Update 10/1-Yes, they did. They were #4 in 1984; that was the year of the Miami Hail Mary.]

Unfortunatly, Michigan State's perfect slate went bye-bye at Wisconsin.

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They had elections in Ukraine, and the status quo seems to have held. There is a workable coalition between the two old Orange Revolution allies, President Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko; the pro-Russian party got the most votes, but Yushchenko and Tymoshenko together have a majority. If those two can bury the hatchet someplace other than each other's backs, they might be able to move the country forward.

Ministry of Silly Walks

The message at church this morning was on being an imitator of Christ. Almost any football fan of a certain age can do a respectable imitation of How-ward Co-sell. In class this week, I managed to imitate an old man while talking about maturity risk (in bonds) and also a Mr. T imitation in honor of the BA II financial calculator that we use in class; "I pity da fool who doesn't have a financial calculator."

However, imitating Christ is a lot harder; 1 John 1 (NIV) struck a cord.

³We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. ⁴The man who says, "I know him," but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. ⁵But if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: ⁶Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.

I blogged on this passage a year ago in my Edifier, with a punchline being "The sobering verse here is verse six. John's calling out believers to walk the walk, not just talk the talk."

However, what came to mind this morning during the sermon about walks was the old Monty Python Ministry of Silly Walks skit, where they were giving grants to develop silly walks to compete in the global slapstick humor industry with the US and Japan; a grant proposal was turned down for not being silly enough.

Even though that had little to do with the Gospel, the title actually struck a cord. If we have a calling to imitate Jesus to the world, we have to walk as Jesus did. That is going to look silly to the secular world, for we will do things that don't make sense to them; Paul said to the Corinthians "Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God."

To the world, that is a very silly walk. In fact, we have a ministry of silly walks that is foolishness to the modern Gentile. Being joyful in adversity, kind in the face of nastiness, self-controlled in a sea of hedonism is very silly indeed.

We are supposed to be fools for Christ, so keep that silly walk going.

Edifier du Jour-Isaiah 63:17(NIV)

¹⁷ Why, O LORD, do you make us wander from your ways
       and harden our hearts so we do not revere you?
       Return for the sake of your servants,
       the tribes that are your inheritance.

Here's one for a good free-will/predestination food fight. Isaiah's going beyond Geraldine's "the Devil made me do it!" to "God made me do it." It's hard to accept such a passage, since we have a plausible excuse not to worship God; God's personally driving us away from Himself.

I'm finding it hard to square this with James 1(NIV)

13When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. 15Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

However, as I reflected upon this further, we may be looking at two different things. Isaiah may be talking about God pushing us away until we're ready to come into His roof, the tough love of kicking a wayward teen out of the house until they get their act together; or, the dad may let the brat run away and let them hit bottom and be repentant before letting them back in.

The prodigal son comes to mind. At the beginning of the story, the kid is a greedy bum looking for his inheritance in advance; his dad gives it to him. Only after the son has blown his cash and hit rock bottom, slopping pigs (for some Gentile, we can assume, since no good Jew would be messing with unclean pigs) for a meager living, did he come to his senses and begged to be taken back as a hired hand by his dad.

Might Israel of Isaiah's era be collectively that spiritually dense that God drives them away and lets them crater? Then they know to turn to their God whole-heartedly, and not some tepid subservience that makes God want to barf.

God didn't want Israel worshiping Him part time and Baal part time; He doesn't want that for us, either. If you're drifting away from God, check to see if rebellion is acting like a wrongly-charged magnet and repelling you away from God. You need to change the pol-arity, ditch the Asherah pole and trade it in for a cross.

Big Pool o' Money

The GM-UAW strike was short-lived; they settled after one day of striking. Maybe the UAW needed the practice and wanted to make sure how to do a strike.

Here's the interesting part; they are taking their retiree health care benefits off-balance-sheet by setting up a UAW-run investment fund to finance it-

GM and the UAW said they had agreed on a precedent-setting contract that shifts $50 billion in retiree health care obligations from the company to a union-run trust and establishes a two-tier wage system in GM's U.S. plants.
...
The retiree trust is at the core of the agreement. GM will infuse the fund with about $35 billion -- around 70 cents on the dollar -- in return for erasing retiree obligations from its books. The arrangement is expected to translate into a significant increase in GM's credit ratings, resulting in a corresponding decrease in borrowing costs.

That's going to be one large chunk of change to manage. If it were a mutual fund, it would just miss breaking the top 25; per Marketwatch.com, the 25th largest fund had $38 billion in net assets.

However, that's a piker compared with CalPERS, the California state employees retirement fund. Per the Wikipedia for CalPERS, they had $250 billion invested as of 6/2007.

Will the GM fund be active in cleaning up corporate governance like CalPERS has? Will it be politically charged, where they invest in union-friendly businesses only?

However it works, the UAW has a big chunk of change to manage.

The Rally Crashers

Here's an interesting piece on B.O.'s stop in the Big Apple as a place for young liberal singles to find like minded folks. Conservatives go to church singles outings, liberals to post-Obama rally afterglows.

Lindsay Schaeffer, 25, may even skip the rally for the nighttime bash.

"Look, you never meet good guys in a bar," she reasons. "Something like this naturally weeds out the losers for you. You aren't going to get some pickup artist at a political after-party."

Don't count on it, ma'am-

One ardent Obama supporter (who declined to give his name because he works in politics) says he'll attend both the rally and the after-party, and he doesn't expect to be going home alone.

He's confident for a reason.

"Let's face it: Leftie girls are easy," he says.

That's almost a working movie title right there; Geena Davis went from Earth Girls are Easy to Commander in Chief, so there's one political angle. Alternatively, you could have the sequel to The Wedding Crashers; The Rally Crashers. Owen Wilson, your agent's on line four.

Centre of Attention

Here's an interesting passage off of this Reuters' piece on Loonie-US$ parity. The falling value of the greenback makes US stuff less expensive to Canadians, so the standard-issue look-at-the-border-shopping-malls comes into play.

The two dollars hit par last week for the first time since 1976, and Canadian radio stations soon talked of long waits at the border as shoppers sought U.S. bargains.

"It was tremendous," said Patti Crooks, general manager of the Aroostook Centre Mall in Presque Isle, Maine, which has long marketed itself to shoppers in neighboring New Brunswick - even using the Canadian-style spelling "Centre" in its name.

Actually, centre is more British than Canadian; most of the Commonwealth countries will use British-style spellings like labour or colour as well, although the British and American spellings seem to be almost interchangeable in Canada for those two. For instance, when I checked for "CAW labor" and "CAW labour" (CAW being the Canadian analog to the UAW, more on them in a bit), I got roughly the same number of Google hits.

If Bene or any other of my Canadian readers could chime in and confirm that, it would be helpful.

However, centre seens to be standard Canadian. I recall driving through western Ontario a while back and noting that "it's interesting to see centre without someone trying to be pretentious."

That's because it's often upscale or quaint-as-a-style places in the US that will effect a British spelling of centre; for instance, our AAA office in Lexington is on Palomar Centre Drive. You'll also see archaic spellings of shoppe (Willcutt Guitar Shoppe and Jan's Square Dance Shoppe show up on my Google Maps for Lexington) or towne (Olde Towne Antique Mall [double dipping-that's naughty] and Old Towne Sports Grill in metro Lexington, or Arrowhead Towne Center mall in metro Phoenix). If you do more than one, like "The Shoppes at Lancaster Centre," you're laying on the veddy, veddy British affectation really thick.

Is "Aroostook Centre Mall" playing to the visiting Canucks or an affectation that many shopping centers do State-side? Possibly a little of both.

Edifier du Jour-Habakkuk 1:2-4(NIV)

² How long, O LORD, must I call for help,
       but you do not listen?
       Or cry out to you, "Violence!"
       but you do not save?

³ Why do you make me look at injustice?
       Why do you tolerate wrong?
       Destruction and violence are before me;
       there is strife, and conflict abounds.

⁴ Therefore the law is paralyzed,
       and justice never prevails.
       The wicked hem in the righteous,
       so that justice is perverted.

Welcome to the real world, Habakkuk; you weren't the last person to quiz God on his lack of action against evil. We have a fallen world where people freely and frequently exercise their right to be wrong, and an omnipotent and omniscient God is cool with it, or at least cool enough with it to not stop it.

The best that I can think is that God sees something of value in allowing sin to be an option. The area of theodicy is always a tricky one, and this ardent free-will Calvinist thinks that there is some value God sees in at least a modest amount of free-will. Maybe not to the extent of our salvation (the Arminian god looks a bit too aw-shucks for my taste), but that God allows the option of sin in order for the affection and obedience of His Church to be more than pre-programmed robots.

There is a reason for the evil in the world. Why exactly, we'll likely not know in this life. However, rest assured that God knows and that he's "down with it" for the time being.

Edifier du Jour-Haggai 2:20-23(NIV)

²⁰ The word of the LORD came to Haggai a second time on the twenty-fourth day of the month: ²¹ "Tell Zerubbabel governor of Judah that I will shake the heavens and the earth. ²² I will overturn royal thrones and shatter the power of the foreign kingdoms. I will overthrow chariots and their drivers; horses and their riders will fall, each by the sword of his brother.

²³ " 'On that day,' declares the LORD Almighty, 'I will take you, my servant Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel,' declares the LORD, 'and I will make you like my signet ring, for I have chosen you,' declares the LORD Almighty."

That last verse, with the signet ring part, hit me; my memory had that down as what a ruler would use as a seal stamper to attest that some order came from him. I would up hitting Wikipedia's seal entry-

The wearing of signet rings (French: une chevalière, from the word chevalier which means knight) is a longstanding tradition among nobles in European and some other cultures. In contemporary usage, the signet ring is typically worn on the little finger of either the right or left hand...

Because it is used to attest the authority of its bearer, the ring has also been seen as a symbol of his power, which is one explanation for its inclusion in the regalia of certain monarchies.

"[A]ttest the authority of its bearer." In this metaphor, the bearer is God. We're wrapped around His finger, assuming that we can put ourselves in Zerubbabel's place.

However, it's not the classic "ring finger" that holds it, but the pinkie, the better to use it as a stamp. I just put my hand through some paces; it would be easier to use your pinkie as a stamp base, since you can use the force of the other fingers above it karate-style to get a good imprint.

Conversely,  you're not going to be able to get as much force off of your ring finger. That might be why we have the "ring finger" as the place to put rings; it's the least exposed of our fingers and hardest to do any damage to.

God's using us to put his stamp on the world. That signet ring has the force of God behind it, and can put us under pressure; the more we're being used, the more pressure we're under.

Columbia Day, Part i-Faith and Science

Before you light up the comment section, let me take care of the proper pejoratives for Iranian president Ahmadinejad. He's a representative of a rather backward and intolerant form of Islam that needs to be restrained in the long run; in addition, they have a jihadi ethic that has caused us problems in Lebanon and elsewhere. We need to be giving his government the eagle eye and keep them from causing any further mischief.

That being said, there are also some redeeming values in the guy, especially coming from a Christian perspective. If we can contain that desire for the lesser jihad, many Muslims can be an ally on a number of issues, including the intersection of science and faith.

I was thumbing through Ahmadinejad's Columbia speech last night; the core of it, if Christianized a bit, could have been given by Pope Benedict, and that's not a slam on the Pope. Ahmadinejad understands that reality transcends the physical. Here's an interesting passage that strikes a positive cord on the Christian side of the aisle.

In our culture, the word science has been defined as illumination. In fact, the science means brightness and the real science is a science which rescues the human being from ignorance, to his own benefit. In one of the widely accepted definitions of science, it is stated that it is the light which sheds to the hearts of those who have been selected by the almighty.

Therefore, according to this definition, science is a divine gift and the heart is where it resides. If we accept that science means illumination, then its scope supersedes the experimental sciences and it includes every hidden and disclosed reality.

One of the main harms inflicted against science is to limit it to experimental and physical sciences. This harm occurs even though it extends far beyond this scope. Realities of the world are not limited to physical realities and the materials, just a shadow of supreme reality. And physical creation is just one of the stories of the creation of the world.

Human being is just an example of the creation that is a combination of a material and the spirit. And another important point is the relationship of science and purity of spirit, life, behavior and ethics of the human being. In the teachings of the divine prophets, one reality shall always be attached to science; the reality of purity of spirit and good behavior. Knowledge and wisdom is pure and clear reality.

It is -- science is a light. It is a discovery of reality. And only a pure scholar and researcher, free from wrong ideologies, superstitions, selfishness and material trappings can discover -- discover the reality.

That's a tad Gnostic, but it underscores the idea that modern science has blinders on if it discounts a spiritual dimension to reality. If you exclude the supernatural from the discussion, you're excluding a big chunk of reality; a hard-to-quantify and hard-to-experiment-upon chunk, but a chunk nonetheless.

Muslim countries haven't been on the cutting edge of science and engineering as of late, but their early history had them pushing along science while Europe was in the Dark Ages; one reason we can joke about "the dreaded terror group al Gebra and their weapons of math instruction" is that we get the word algebra from Arabic. Since they see a god of order and rationality, they expect to see an orderly and rational universe, as we do; that gives them a heads-up from cultures who don't have a rational God in the mix.

We still may have to parking-lot a nuclear facility or two in Iran down the line, but there may be more common ground with the Muslim world that some would think. That common ground doesn't include wiping Israel off the map or quietly becoming good dhimmis in the Caliphate, but there are grounds for cooperation if we can put the geopolitical differences behind us.

Easier said than done.

 

Edifier du Jour-Luke 24:36-43(ESV)

³⁶As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, "Peace to you!" ³⁷But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit. ³⁸And he said to them, "Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? ³⁹See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." ⁴⁰And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. ⁴¹And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, he said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?" ⁴²They gave him a piece of broiled fish, ⁴³and he took it and ate before them.

Verse 41 was what hit me; "disbelieved for joy" didn't quite make sense. The NASB has the first part of 41 as "While they still could not believe it because of their joy and amazement" and the NIV merely adds an "And" in front of the NASB's take.

It almost sounds that "too good to be true" would be a fair translation into modern English. Let me take my 41 lashes with a wet noodle from the Bible purists and see how The Message does 41. Yep, Mr. Peterson is on my wavelength-"They still couldn't believe what they were seeing. It was too much; it seemed too good to be true."

OK, let's get the Jackson brothers Too Good to Be True earwig with the falsetto "tell me I'm not dreaming" part out of the way.

Done with the gloved wonder? Good.

Jesus is "too good to be true." At least if you have a naturalistic mindset; not only can someone not be so selfless, but He topped that by coming back from the grave.

Back in the 70s, our AAA folks had a "Bring 'em Back Alive" bumper sticker. The joke from my teen years along side "as funny as a screen door on a submarine" was "as funny as a 'Bring 'em Back Alive' sticker on a hearse."

Jesus was the one person for whom that wouldn't be a joke; yes, they didn't have hearses in His day in the flesh, but he did get brought back alive.

He was too good for the world's true. His truth transcends that of the world. That should have you jumping for joy; we're often too jaded by hearing the news for decades, but it should make you joyful.

Midday Musings

I have the new laptop on the Web at work; the IT guy at Sullivan should get combat pay for working through Vista's security quirks, but the job was done. My first day class at Sullivan is at 2PM; I had to swing by the mall to get a tie, since I had lost my tie somewhere in the apartment, and they like the male profs to wear a tie during the day.

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At least I'm working; the same can't be said for the GM shop-rats, who went on strike today for the first time in 31 years; according to this BBC piece-"[i]t is the first time that UAW has held a nationwide strike during contract negotiations since 1976." GM's trying to dump retiree health insurance cost on the union, and the union doesn't like it. The Loonie parity story from last week, hitting par with the greenback for the first time since the fall of 1976, must have gotten the UAW folks longing for the disco era as well.

GM has a big inventory to work through, so they'll have supply for quite a while. If the UAW is still out by Halloween, then would be the time to start fretting about GM.

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My tax dollars at work-

The head of the state's Alcoholic Beverage Control agency, arrested on a drunken driving charge over the weekend, has apologized and intends to resign, a state spokesman said.

Chris Lilly, who was appointed executive director of the ABC last year, was arrested Saturday night, according to a police citation.

Lilly, 51, of Nicholasville, was pulled over on U.S. 27 south of Lexington because his Ford Explorer was missing a headlight, and because he was weaving and driving slowly, the Nicholasville police citation said. Lilly smelled of alcohol, lost his balance during a sobriety test and recorded a Breathalyzer reading of 0.181, the citation said.

Not quite the 0.26 that Jim McMahon blew a few years back, but not what you want to see from the people overseeing the booze trade; you could say he was getting into his work a bit too much.

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Weird college football year. Rutgers, Hawaii, South Florida and Kentucky are all in the top 20. Kentucky's probably the biggest surprise of the four; Rutgers was a national-title contender last year, South Florida was starting to hang with the big boys last year, going into Morgantown and beating West Virginia, and Hawaii has Heismantrophycandidatecolt Brennan.

Kentucky showed that beating Loiusiville was no fluke by going in and beating  Heismantrophycandidatedarren McFadden's Arkansas club in Fayetteville. A coupon more wins like that and UK quarterback Andre Woodson may have trek down to the Fayette County clerk and change his first name to Heismantrophycandidateandre.

Michigan State cracked the top 25 in the USAT poll, but will have to go into Madison and subdue a group of Badgers before they'll get their AP props.

Michigan State is 4-0 and Michigan and Notre Dame is a collective 2-6; when they have to get at least one by playing each other, that is a mind-blower. Michigan's win over Penn State will get the monkey off of Lloyd Carr's back for the moment and set them up for a Rose Bowl run. Keep the Subway Alumni away from sharp objects, however.

Edifier du Jour-Proverbs 39:7-9(NIV)

⁷ "Two things I ask of you, O LORD;
       do not refuse me before I die:

⁸ Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
       give me neither poverty nor riches,
       but give me only my daily bread.

⁹ Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
       and say, 'Who is the LORD ?'
       Or I may become poor and steal,
       and so dishonor the name of my God.

This is an interesting passage that seems to play into a suburban middle-class mindset; you don't want to be rich and think you don't need God and you don't want to be so poor that you can resort to crime.

How much money is too much money? This Davie D. post on the 10th anniversary of Rich Mullins' passing was striking, since he seemed almost like a evangelical monk. Darlington notes that

...Mullins trusted others with the financials, while paying himself a "worker's salary" in the mid-$20 thousands and giving the rest away. In addition to his St. Francis-inspired asceticism, Mullins spent his time teaching music to children on Indian Reservations in the Southwest when not touring.

I'm making well more than that right now, but am paying back a lot of outstanding debt, so I'm yet to be living a professor's lifestyle. Would I have that courage to, once I zero my debts out, give away half my money and live a simpler lifestyle? I hope so, but I also have a wife and possibly some kids a bit down the line, and might wind up saving more money in the name of looking after my family than I should.

When you're doing well, you sometimes forget that we're supposed to ask for our daily bread, not a month's supply; the manna that the Exodus folks came in daily allotments, with a double dose on Friday pre-Sabbath. Today, we get it in twice-a-month or weekly paychecks. I still need to pray for this day's PowerPoint when I'm just keeping up with my classes, but rarely do I have to pray about having enough to eat.

We're not supposed to focus on material things; the rich focus on keeping theirs and the poor focus on getting theirs. We need to find some sort of middle ground where we can focus on God rather than stuff.

 

 

Sunday Musings

Prime Minister Fukuda; or at least he will be shortly when confirmed by the Diet, since the LDP just tabbed him as party leader. Be careful typing that one; if the angry youngster at Colorado State was a bit more witty, they could stated it as Fukuda-Bush.

Fukuda's a bit less hawkish than outgoing PM Abe-

Mr Fukuda has promised to stay away from Tokyo's controversial Yasukuni war shrine, seen by many in Asia as a symbol of Japan's past militarism.

He wants to pursue a more conciliatory approach with Japan's neighbours China and North Korea.

He has also said Japan's relationship with the US will continue to be the "cornerstone" of his foreign policy.

That's a mixed blessing. A less hawkish Japan is less help on the international stage, but is also less likely to give us the middle-digit salute if they start feeling their nationalistic oats. Japan is much better as a good cop than as a bad cop.

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I've passed on commenting on the MoveOn-NYT discount story, but this is interesting; the public editor of the Gray Lady is blasting the decision to run the ad at all, let alone give them a discount.

Here's an interesting quote from that same CNN piece from Ms. Clinton

"This debate should be about the president's failed policies," Clinton said. "The Republicans are very good at coming up with political strategies, but unfortunately, they don't seem to have a very adequate grasp of military or geopolitical strategies that will forward America's standing, position, values and interests in the world."

Sounds like the pot calling the kettle black from here, unless fine tuning how best to bug out of Iraq counts as a forward-thinking geopolitical strategy.

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Demand might spike for the Marcel Marceau Greatest Hits CD now that he has passed on. His death is sad, since a mime is a terrible thing to waste.

 

Federalism or the Right Things to Do

We've got a little backyard brawl going on in my pundit corner of the Blogosphere revolving around Fred Thompson's hyper-federalism that is uneasy of pulling rank on the states on issues like same-sex-marriage. Fred backer Joe Carter is uneasy with his guy's stand, hearkening back to the Catholic construct of subsidiarity and the neo-Calvinist construct of sphere sovereignty; there are proper levels to do things, not all of which is on the state or local level.

Fellow Mike Huckabee backer Jason Steffens concurs, and urges him to come over the Man from Hope 2.0. He sited Henry Neufeld, who stated that “social conservatives see their socially conservative goals as more important than the constitutional form of government and the 10th amendment in particular.”

That may be overstating the case a little bit. One can be for the Constitution and differ on which things should be done on the state level and what things should be done on the federal level. The debate that gets Thompson in trouble is that he merely wants to amend the constitution to allow states to not recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere (barring the Supreme Court from mandating national recognition somewhere down the line) rather than banning them nationwide, as more conservative folks are striving for.

On the other side of the fight is Joe's fellow Blogs For Fred cohost Josh Claybourn. FDT? He'd have to get elected President and do something noteworthy to get to be acronymed in my book, sir. Right now, that looks more how to send flowers nationwide than the next president.

Josh is in favor of keeping the federal government out of those decisions, on the grounds that more federal power is bad across the board

There are countless reasons to support federalism, not the least of which is that the founders intended it to be the governing philosophy. But it also maximizes freedom in a large and diverse nation where, without it, states are governed in ways which are not ideal for its unique population, economy and culture. This freedom ensures choice and competition. In many cases, such as education, it can also ensure efficiency.

Yes, if the federal government screws things up, it screws it up nationally. That's a good reason to be cautious on what gets done nationally and to test it out at the state level if possible before launching it on a federal level.

However, federalism doesn't maximize freedom if the local governments decide to minimize the freedoms of its citizens. I won't play the Jim Crow card, as liberals like to do in this debate; I can look to the present just fine.

Ask the folks in New York who'd like to have a gun to defend themselves if federalism maximizes their freedom. Ask the folks in states who make life difficult to home school kids if federalism maximizes their freedom. Ask the motorcycle drivers who don't like helmets if state helmet requirements maximizes their freedom. Ask the beer-lovers in the dry counties of Kentucky if federalism maximizes their freedom.

Those last two might not be all that bad laws, and some folks on the port-side of the Peanut Gallery would say amen to the first. However, they are all laws designed to insure the safety and well-being of their citizens. I hear the right side of the Peanut Gallery say that the second one only insures the wellbeing of the NEA, but people have often been honestly concerned of whether home-schooled kids are getting a good education; wrongly concerned, if you look at the data, but honestly concerned nonetheless.

The federal government can make massive boners, but so can state governments or state courts; it was the Massachusetts court system that made same-sex marriage a live federal issue. Sometimes, federal law can step in to fix a state oversight; for instance, federal civil-rights law can be used to prosecute crimes that fall through the cracks at the state level, as might be called for in the Jena 6 case for the white noose-hangers.

There are times where the federal government needs to pull rank and do things on a federal level. As much as the Civil Rights Act can be a pain in the butt to local election officials, letting them have carte blanche to disenfranchise whomever they want is even worse. Partial-birth abortion might be another case where the federal government stepped in to protect the safety and well-being of its citizens (broadly defined to include the not-quite-born).

Thus, I'll take issue with Josh's closing thoughts.

For Carter, Christian conservative ends can justify big national government means. But for libertarian-minded conservatives like me (and, apparently, Thompson), we must uphold the principles underlying federalism. In doing so we will find that federalism is a principle whose means, in and of itself, are fruitful and rewarding.

I'm not a "libertarian-minded conservative," or at least not as much so as Josh. I don't have any grand theories of subsidiarity or sphere sovereignty. Despite having a BS and graduate work in Political Science and a doctorate in Finance, I look at things on the "is it the right thing to do" level.

Simplistic? Yes. Hard to define? Somewhat.

Sometimes, you do things at the federal level. Sometimes you do things at the state level. Sometimes, you do things at the local level, and sometimes, you have government do nothing at all and leave it to the private sectors.

In the case of same-sex marriage, I'm in favor of a federal constitutional amendment at least codifying the Defense of Marriage act in the Constitution, where the federal government doesn't recognize it and doesn't require states to recognize them, either. The Supreme court hasn't weighed in on it yet, but I don't trust Anthony Kennedy to make that call. I'd like to ban it outright if possible, but that would be hard to get two-thirds of each house of Congress to sign off on, especially when the liberal Democrats are emboldened.

Put me in the "do the right thing" caucus.

Edifier du Jour-Acts 2:42-47(NIV)

⁴²They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. ⁴³Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. ⁴⁴All the believers were together and had everything in common. ⁴⁵Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. ⁴⁶Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, ⁴⁷praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

This was one of the passages we read in our Sunday School Class Life Group this morning as we focused on a fellowship theme from the new church mission statement. Of course, we're weren't just blasted by the Holy Spirit the way the early church was in Acts 2; Pentecost had just gone down and things were moving.

However, you would think that the minor dose of the Spirit that we do have in the modern church would have us looking something like that. We don't; the co-leader of the class has had us over for lunch once and dinner once this summer, but the only other time we'd noshed with our churchmates was when we invited a friend/churchmate from our apartment complex over before giving her a ride to church on Wednesday.

For independent cusses like us Americans, communal living doesn't come naturally, especially in a Bowling Alone modern milieu. However, being a Christian doesn't come naturally, either; we need the Holy Spirit's help to pull that off. Thus, reading the tail end of Acts 2 without reading the middle puts it a bit out of context; I was too polite to mention that in a Baptist Sunday School Class Life Group.

Crocs and Whales

Here's a couple of interesting pieces I came across the last few days. While waiting for a haircut this afternoon, I was thumbing through a dead-tree US News, and found an interesting piece on Crocs, the colorful sandal-style shoe that has caught on in the last few years. It turns out that Dow Chemical makes the plastic that makes the Crocs so comfy (or at least so I have heard; even Dubya's been spotted wearing them).

 

If all that sounds like the kiss of fashion death—the Bush endorsement probably isn't a big plus—well, it wouldn't be the first time.

It might not make them trendy, but it might actually help on the conservative side of the aisle. It made me take notice more than Molto Mario or Faith Hill.

_______

The other was a local story with a major international twist. We're in the self-proclaimed Horse Capital of the World here in Lexington; even though the Kentucky Derby is up the road in Louisville (who took it in the chin against a struggling Syracuse this afternoon), the real money is on the west side of Lexington at Keeneland, where yearlings are sold and high rollers from around the world come in the fall to buy horses.

As I learned in my International Business class last term via one of the student cases, the highest of the high rollers is the crown prince of Dubai, who Keeneland treats like Las Vegas treats the big-gambling "whales;" as the student's story went, the prince gets a whole floor of a hotel on Keeneland's nickel when he's in for the fall yearling sales.

Of course, he had his own aircraft parked at the Lexington airport, looked after this year by airport security. The prince left behind some rather nice gifts for the security detail, $2,000-$3,000 a person nice. The security folks can't take such gifts, since it would smell a bit too much like a bribe, even if the prince is merely being nice.

That would have been a great case to bring up in my International Business class; many cultures are big gift givers, so big that they will smell more like bribes to American noses. In many cultures (the Japanese are this was, and so are the Arabs); such generosity isn't looking for a quid-pro-quo, so explaining to them that the gifts are no-nos can be a delicate bit of diplomacy.

Parity

If the word "parity" crosses my screen, it's usually with the NFL in mind, where the salary cap and revenue sharing make the goal a crop of 32 8-8 teams; have fun with the tiebreakers.

When this blog started back in January 2002, the Canadian dollar was trading at US$0.62 (Jan 21 of this blog's diaper days saw the all-time low of US$61.79) and Canadian conservative bloggers were making fun of what I called at the time "the Loonie's descent into the Marianas." Five years has changed a lot, and the Loonie is at parity this week, cracking momentarily over the US$1.00 mark yesterday. As I go to press, it's just four basis points short of parity, at US$0.9996.

Is the US economy 40% weaker than five years ago?  Is the Canadian economy 40% stronger? I can't quite explain it, but to be sure, we can't make the "Don't worry, that's only $1.50 American" standing joke that our church singles group had on a circa 2000 trip to Toronto anymore.

However, it's the first time that the Loonie has been at parity in a while; it was so long ago, they weren't calling it the Loonie, for it was only 20 years ago in 1987 when they launched the loon-faced dollar coin (they replaced the dollar bill entirely by 1989) that gave the Canadian dollar its modern nickname. It was November 25th 1976, back when the PQ first took over the Quebec National Assembly. The idea of Quebec independence spooked the financial markets, and drove the Canadian dollar below parity, staying there for three decades.

Today, the PQ is now the #3 party in Quebec with their BQ federal entity losing market share in this week's by-elections. The federal government is running surpluses, unlike the red ink flowing out of Washington. A divided federal government keeps the ruling-but-plurality-only Conservatives from cutting taxes much or keep the three more-statist out-of-government parties from growing spending; divided government in the US in the 90s gave us a good surplus, since we couldn't give it away in tax cuts or spending.

So, all those "Canadian dollar accepted at par" signs on Michigan establishments aren't a big deal anymore; they'll just about do that at the border exchange places now. Unless it's a small box of Timbits (which came out a few months before the last parity point; a factoid I stumbled into just now), it's not going to be just "$1.50 American" anymore; at least that about what I remember paying the last time I was in Tim Hortons.

Edifier du Jour-Proverbs 29:26(NIV)

²⁶ Many seek an audience with a ruler,
       but it is from the LORD that man gets justice.

In the days of autocrats, an audience with the king allowed you to essentially lobby the king on some issue. Since what he said went, you don't have to worry about getting majorities in both houses of Congress or whether the losing side will try to filibuster in the Senate; the king has the power to grant your request. I recall seeing a bit of that going on in Saudi Arabia, where the king will meet with common folks and hear requests, often asking for some red-tape cutting or for some governmental largess.

It would be a fair hermeneutic to say that our political activities might fit in the same bucket; we want officials who are friendly to our viewpoint, so that we don't have to lobby them to get them to do the right things. At higher levels of activity, we may well get the ability to interact with officials and directly plead our case.

However, even if the efforts we do are just, the real power is with God. He may not cut our taxes or get a zoning variance approved, but He holds the real power to change things, including the hearts of our leaders.

Thursday Musings

Here's an interesting civics quiz coming via Red State. I managed to get through with 59 out of 60, missing only a question on the nature of knowledge; well, I'm one short of the Chicago Girl. The average college senior only scored 54%, only four points higher than incoming freshmen.

There are some rough questions on political theory that even the PoliSci wonks might struggle with. Consider an A grade of 54 or better a red state badge of academic courage.

__________

I'm not quite getting the furor over the "Jena 6." I understand the broad outline. Blacks try to integrate a tree in the high school lawn that is a white-only lunch hangout; white goons put lynch ropes on the tree, hearkening back to the KKK lynching era. White goons get suspended from school; the DA claimed that "he did not charge the white students accused of hanging the nooses because he could find no Louisiana law under which they could be charged."

Our heroes proceed to beat the crap out of a white kid, or at least they've been charged with that. Like the Rodney King cops, they get overcharged with attempted murder (that overcharge was what got the King goons off, sparking the riot), while one 16 year old with a rap sheet gets charged as an adult; I don't know LA law too well, but I know in Michigan, 17 is the normal age where you get charged as an adult, but severe crimes by kids in their middle teens can get an adult sentence.

About the only way out for this is to try the noose-hangers on Federal civil rights violations. That's what the roused rabble seen to be leaning towards. Short of that, you'll see Jesse, Al and Ziggy on Louisiana's case for punishing the black goons but not the white goons.

Do we make a federal case out of each and every racial schoolyard taunt or graffiti the rest of the way? I can live with that, but I'm not sure if that's what the six-pack supporters want, since it would apply to black kids dissing white ones as well.

___________

On a lighter note, Ag Secretary Mike Johanns is leaving; the former Nebraska governor is likely to run for the seat being vacated by maverick Republican Chuck Hagel, who's opted not to run for reelection next year. Hagel, who's been hard against the war and has other moderate tendencies, was slated to have a rough primary fight had he decided to stay.

If the Democrats can recruit former Senator Bob Kerrey (two e's, no relation to John one-e Kerry) to come out of retirement, it could be an interesting race; Kerrey may have dated a Winger, but he's not a left-winger.

Hata la Vista, Baby

That's a deliberate malaprop. I'm having to learn to work around MS Vista, the successor to Win XP. I'm not really a Vista hata, but I'm not happy yet; it makes for a cute title, though. There are some nice features, but the newness gets in the way for now, like the little blue halo that replaced the hourglass for the "I'm working on it" icon.

The good news; papa's got a brand new laptop that forced the Vista issue. My five-year-old Gateway is now relegated to PowerPoint duty until I track down a copy of MS Office for the new Dell; I downloaded a copy of Open Office, but it didn't quite want to do PowerPoint, obscuring the last line of a long screen.

The old boy had its battery go years ago, had its CD shot, its PC-card reader's shot and read a USB-WiFi modem when it wanted to, which wasn't often. However, it still reads a USB memory stick OK, so it gets presentation duty for now.

I'm not a big fan of Vista so far. It seems slower to boot up and clunkier to get around.  Vista did bring back a "Recent Items" slot, which was a nice Win98 addition that got junked in XP.

However, the CD works nicely, the built-in WiFi rocks on toast and the Master level of Scrabble still hands me my lunch every time. I can play above .500 with Smart and bat around the Mendoza line with Elite, but I've yet to win one with the Master.

Bully Pulpits

I must have been out to lunch earlier this week, but I didn't catch that there was a "Value Voters Debate" that was sponsored by the American Family Association and a few other conservative media, like Sky Angel and World Net Daily. It didn't sink in that there was a debate until one of my friends from church mentioned it last night.

I blogged on the result, which included a straw poll that Mike Huckabee won with 63% of the vote. However, I thought it was the FRC that put it on instead of the AFA-lead coalition. My bad.

Here's CBN's David Brodie (yes, he works for Rev-run Pat, but he seems to be a straight-shooter) take on the event,

It goes without saying that this debate centered on the biblical values of traditional marriage, life of the unborn and the other boilerplate issues that are part of the conservative pro-family agenda.

They even had a lightning speed round where candidates activated a green light for a yes answer and a red light for a no answer. I was waiting for Alex Trebek to step out and conduct this, maybe even say a prayer. (He didn’t but Judge Roy Moore did without the Ten Commandments in tow)

Here were some of the questions candidates were asked to respond to in a yes or no format: (there were a lot of green lights)

 

Will you consider impeachment in cases of judicial activism?

Do you agree that multiculturalism is weakening American culture?

Will you de-fund Planned Parenthood?

Would you veto any legislation that re-institutes the fairness doctrine?

Would you nominate strict constructionist judges?

A lot of these don't lend themselves to good yes-or-no answers, or are moot for a presidential candidate. For instance, that first question isn't in the president's purview; it's Congress' job to impeach judges, not the president. The president might use the bully pulpit of the White House to plug for removal, but he doesn't get a vote.

Even at that, I don't see a badly decided case as a high crime or misdemeanor, unless it was part of a bribery or conflict-of-interest case. A garden-variety bad judgment doesn't qualify. If I'm not inclined to use impeachment to kick off a Ninth-Circuit-style judge, the 67th vote of a center-right Senate coalition needed to remove that hypothetical over-the-top liberal from office, a reasonably liberal Democrat, definitely ain't going to think so.

In Bene's comments on this outing, the phrase "bully pulpit" was used in a way that Teddy Roosevelt never intended. For TR, "bully" was the phat of the early 20th century. Here's part of Bene's reply to my critique

Comeon Mark, the questioners were (are) essentially single issue, single focus rich people with bully pulpits. Satellite bully pulpits. Captive audience bully pulpits. Direct mailing bully pulpits. Fear based bully pulpits.

I’m not upset with the candidates and it wouldn’t matter if I was.

This is politics of self-interest, politics of bullying, politics of demand, politics of fear, and I don’t care which party thinks they have to subject themselves to it, I wish every Republican and Democrat candidate had the guts to stand up and say no thank you.

I'm not sure how much self-interest we have in this quadrant, other than a strident style tends to get viewers, listeners and donors. Part of it that the strident voices on either side of the aisle gets the following; another part may be that people become strident in order to advance. In that latter case, the stridency is a self-interested facade.

That being said, there is more than a bit of ideological bullying from certain quarters in that faction. I've heard some of the AFA's radio stations while going to and from Florida last year, and their demeanor was frequently set up to preclude the listener from having an opposing viewpoint and be on their same theological page, even if the issue (immigration, for example) didn't have a clear Biblical mandate for a conservative viewpoint. If they weren't playing good CCM stuff, I'd quickly move on.

I'm not sure if the folks in charge were "rich people." Powerful people with big megaphones, but not rich. If they were rich, Mike Huckabee wouldn't be trailing in the fund-raising rankings as badly as he is.

Even so, those big megaphones only reach a niche audience; I don't recall an AFA station in Michigan or here in Lexington. I've seen a Sky Angel channel on our cable TV, and it seems like more of the name-it-and-claim-it school of preaching; the one thing I recall seeing is a Acquire-the-Fire's Ron Luce's high-octane description of the crucifixion that was too gruesome to be channel-surfing fodder.

Fringe is a tad judgmental, but it is a nice audience nonetheless. There's about a 10% or so following for the AFA school of thought, a following that doesn't tend to show up well in national media. They tend to live in flyover country and not be part of secular debate, being somewhat segregated into fundamentalist (in the old, non-pejorative meaning) media ghettos. It would be a subset of a broader evangelical conservative thought, the remainder of which is a bit less doctrinaire about conservative politics (although generally in agreement) and a bit less ethnocentric.

Is the gay-centric debate/forum that Democrat presidential candidates went to last month equally fringe? You'd be hard-pressed to say that the AFA-style theocons are a smaller voting block than the GLBT vote.

The "value voter" is a part of the Republican coalition, as much so as pretty much all of the factions within the Democratic Party, for none of their factions (with the possible exception of feminist voters) gets much over 10% of the country. The problem that we may well start to see is the friction between the business-wing and the church-wing of the party, or the Values Voter versus the Net Present Value Voter. More on that later.

Edifier du Jour-Proverbs 28:6(ESV)

⁶ Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity
   than a rich man who is crooked in his ways.

Not every rich man is crooked, but quite a few are. Even if you gain your wealth honestly, it often comes at a price of a very heavy schedule that might require the businessman to ignore other things, like family and church.

Would I like to see my bank account have thousands rather than hundreds of dollars in it? All else being equal, yes. Do I want to sell out in order to do it? No.

Edifier du Jour-Proverbs 25:6-7(ESV)

⁶Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence
   or stand in the place of the great,
⁷for it is better to be told, "Come up here,"
   than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.

I may be dating myself, but that brings to memory an old beer ad with Bob Uecker, who winds up trying to sit from the dugout. The usher comes up and informs he and his buddy that they have the wrong seats ("Looks like I'm in the front roooow") and are ushered back to the nosebleed section a row from the back.

It's not fun to be informed you need to go backwards; it's is nice to be informed that you can come forward. Jesus made a similar comment in Luke 14-

⁸"When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, ⁹and he who invited you both will come and say to you, 'Give your place to this person,' and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. ¹⁰But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, 'Friend, move up higher.' Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. ¹¹For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."

That's why, as Mr. McRoberts mentions, that you don't here "Hey! It’s MY turn to sit on the front pew!" all that often. Part of it may date back to the era where the front rows were rented out like luxury suites at a football stadium to the fat cats of the church, but part may flow from the admonishing of Solomon and Jesus here. People will tend to sit towards the back in church.

On Wednesday night, that tendency is so pronounced, that our pastor will bring a chair and music-holder for his notes halfway up the center aisle.

By-Election Bicarbonates

There were three federal parliament by-elections in Quebec yesterday; Bene had the summary. A Bloc Quebecois seat stayed in BQ hands in Saint-Hyacinthe–Bagot, a BQ seat turned Conservative in Roberval–Lac-Saint-Jean, and in one of the bigger surprises and a Liberal seat went to the NDP in Outremont.

That's good news for both the NDP and the Conservatives. The NDP has been largely a non-entity in Quebec; this is their first Quebec seat in quite a while. On non-sovereignty issues, the BQ is very close to the NDP, blunting the NDP's support in francophone ridings; this particular riding was "multiethnic" per the Globe and Mail. It was also the first time a Liberal hadn't won in Outremont since 1935.

The Liberal boss spun like a gyroscope, making their -1 and the Tories +1 for the evening an anti-government statement.

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion says his party lost the by-election in Outremont to the New Democrats on Monday because voters were sending a message to the Conservative government to pull out of Afghanistan.

”Most people decided to support the NDP candidate. They thought maybe that it was a clear signal about their disagreement with the current government,” said Mr. Dion who, along with many other political leaders is attending a plowing match in this rural Ontario community.

”I just want to say that our policy about Afghanistan is realistic. The one of the NDP is not. We cannot leave tomorrow, whatever the people may think. It would not be responsible for Canada to do so.”

The NDP voters in Outremont likely disagreed "with the current government." The question becomes whether it was the current federal Tory government in Ottawa or the current Liberal provincial government in Quebec City that they were sending a message to. The provincial government is tacking to the right under the helm of ex-Conservative Jean Charest; like the Tories, they are a minority government which needs the silent support of the conservative Francophone ADP to stay in power.

That may have led left-leaning Anglophones to vote NDP for a change, sending a message to both Ottawa and Quebec City.

It's often too easy to over-read the tea leaves in a by-election, since two or three elections do not make for good generalizations. However, this is good news for the Conservatives, who continue to recover in Quebec. It's good news for the NDP, who now have a toe-hold in Quebec.

Both the BQ and the Liberals were reaching for the bicarbonates after this by-election. It's bad news for the BQ, who continue to lose market share to the Conservatives, who are possibly picking up soft-separatist votes who voted ADQ on the provincial level, knocking the PQ to #3 in the provincial National Assembly after the last election. It's even worse news for the Liberals, who now have the prospect of having to guard their left flank in non-Francophone ridings from the NDP.

Interesting and positive on balance.

Mandate of Heaven?

The junior senator from New York has put forward her new health care plan. I'm not all that impressed to this point and am a bit concerned about the mandate feature.

A Clinton adviser compares the plan's "individual mandate" -- which requires everyone to have health insurance -- to current rules in most states that require all drivers to purchase auto insurance, according to The Associated Press.

In her plan, Clinton said families would receive tax credits to help pay for coverage. The tax credit would be designed to limit the premiums to a percentage of a family's income.

Federal subsidies would be provided for those who are not able to afford insurance, and large businesses would be expected to provide or help pay for their employees' insurance. Clinton said her plan would not require small businesses to take part, but will offer tax credits to encourage them to do so.

I would be more comfortable to have everyone enrolled in a basic health insurance plan and raise the taxes needed to do so, then offer the better off various extra-bells-and-whistles plans at cost.

How do we enforce this mandate? What if the person doesn't have the cash on hand to pay the bill, or can't afford the premiums given their other fixed payments? Do we have the federal health care agency garnishing their paychecks and bank accounts like the IRS does?

How would such enforcement be triggered? Failing to provide proof of coverage on your 1040 and docking any refund for the premiums might be one way to catch taxpayers or other folks filing a 1040.

What about the folks who aren't paying taxes or don't get EITC or child care tax credits that require filing a 1040? I'm reminded of the rules that keep young men who haven't filed with the Selective Service (the people who keep the list of draftable folks ready in case a draft is ever needed) from getting any federal college aid or federal employment. Could such barriers, or additional ones like not getting a checking account with a bank or not getting a driver's license unless you have health coverage, be a stick to get people to pony up?

A health care coverage card might be needed to do much personal business in the future in that environment. Civil libertarians might smell 1984 while premillennialists might smell the Mark of the Beast.

A mandate seems a bit spooky. I'd rather just cut to the chase, make a basic plan universal, and have them take it out of our taxes.

Moderates for Huckabee?

Blog buddy Bene Diction doesn't care much for the theocon wing of the GOP and how they buy into the economics and foreign policy of modern US conservatism a bit too readily for comfort. Bene christened the endorsement of Mike Huckabee by some Family Research Council folks at a Value Voters debate on Monday "Huckabee chosen ‘the David’ of the fringe Right Wing Republicans."

[Update 9/20- It wasn't the FRC, but a coalition of Christian and conservative media, most notably the AFA, that put it on. The FRC will have one coming up this fall.]

Here's a comment that I left on that post

"Fringe Right Wing Republicans." The Country-and-God (should be God-and-Country, but they get confused at times) Baptist-style US conservatives have a high and special spot on your [insert barnyard expletive] list.

However, I'd like to make a case for Huckabee as an alternative to some of the front-runners on the GOP side from your vantage point as a centrist, non-neocon Canadian.

1) He's far less of an alpha-male than the lead pack (Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, John McCain). There's where the David part may kick in nicely. If you're looking for humility, he's got more than that bunch easily.

2) He's less of an economic conservative than the lead pack with the possible exception of McCain. He's gotten flak from the economically hard-right Club for Growth for governing in a center-right manner, occasionally going along with tax increases as Arkansas governor.

3) He has a heart for the little guy that is rare among Republicans. At least one union gave him an endorsement in the GOP primary, for he was the only Republican who dared to show up at their convention.

4) He's no "worse" on the neocon side of things that the rest of the pack. He seems to be pro-surge and went mano-a-mano with Ron Paul on Iraq and the last GOP debate, but his take is largely humanitarian; "you broke it, you fix it."

5) He's not out-of-bounds to the right on the moral issues of the day. His FRC crowd might get your hackles up, but Huckabee doesn't seem to be out of mainstream Republican norms on issues like abortion or church-state issues.

Huckabee may well be the favorite of the religious conservatives in the GOP, myself included, since none of the big four have been great on those issues over the long haul. Romney has moved right as of late (seemingly from the heart) on "Life issues" but the too-strategic timing of the move (just as he moved out of wooing the center-left MA electorate and into wooing a conservative national GOP presidential primary electorate) makes many folks on the right a bit skeptical.

However, Huckabee should also be the favorite of the moderates watching from the sidelines in this fight; you're double on the sidelines as a Canadian centrist. I may doom his chances in the primary, but his more humble, more populist and more centrist leanings should give outsiders something to root for, unless Ron Paul's staunch anti-war stands or Rudy's center-left views on social issues hit your hot buttons more.

On social issues, Huckabee is the most conservative of the viable candidates in the race, if I can crudely discount the chances of Paul, Hunter, Tancredo and Brownback at this point and promote Huckabee to a "top 5." I'd like to see Brownback doing better, but he seems to have lost the theocon primary to Huckabee to this point; his more pedantic style doesn't do well to a mass audience, where Huckabee's humor-laced southern preacher style comes in handy.

That back-pack would be just as conservative on most of the social issues, unless Paul's libertarian streak trumps his moral conservative streak on an issue. Tancredo, for all of his immigrant-bashing, is a solid moral conservative and no one is getting to Brownback's right on life issues.

However, on economics, Huckabee is possibly the least conservative of the top five, or at least going toe-to-toe with McCain for the honor. He's championing a national sales tax to replace the income tax, but even that has a populist twist, where everyone will get a check equal to the sales tax on a poverty-level person; that will take the poor off the tax roles and take the "regressive" sting out of a sales tax program.

I'm not sure how to best play this, but if I were the Huckabee campaign, I'd play for the economic moderate vote in ways that won't tick off his theocon base. Sister Souljaing the Club for Growth might be one way.

Putting the Spurs to It

This is good news; the Fed's Open Market Committee cut the Fed Funds rate by 50 basis points (that's half a percent for those of you in Wachula) earlier this afternoon. Normally, the Fed moves in quarter-percent increments, so a half-percent move means business. They had cut the discount rate (what the Fed lends to troubled banks) earlier, but it is the Fed Funds rate (the rate that banks lend Fed deposits amongst each other) that the rest of the money market takes its cue from.

The Fed move will mean many, if not most, money-market rates, like bank prime lending rates, will go down, as will any adjustable-rate mortgages and credit cards that are based on short-term money-market rates. That should have a positive effect on the economy, as it will be easier to borrow to buy stuff.

The Fed has a dual task of keeping inflation in check while encouraging economic growth. The good news of today is that the Fed thinks that the oil-driven inflation has been managed sufficiently where they can lower interest rates and help the economy out of a mortgage-foreclosure induced funk.

$2.65/gallon gas isn't any fun, but the economy seems to have adjusted to it. Wal-Mart has even eluded to it in its recent ads, pitching the idea of saving where you can to make up for the high gas prices; they probably get an inferior-good kick out of people rounding down to the simpler stuff.

A rate cut is generally a sign of weakness, but in this case, it may be designed to head off any weakness before it become endemic in the larger economy. We had 4% growth in the second quarter of 2007, and the Fed wants to keep the number on the positive side for the third quarter. This will help end the third quarter on a good note.

Edifier du Jour-Hebrews 8:1-7(ESV)

¹Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, ²a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. ³For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. ⁴Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. ⁵They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, "See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain." ⁶But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. ⁷ For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.

The modern mind often looks at the constant animal sacrifice and thinks that the early Hebrews were barbaric; modern man doesn't need to do such things. That's only because Jesus has done it for them, making the old Sim Holy of Holies obsolete.

Part of that modernity looks at the barbarity of animal sacrifice as such through the lens of a Christian culture that had rendered such sacrifice moot. Is it moot because Jesus became the sacrifice to end all sacrifice, or that man has ignored God or assumed that God doesn't need such sacrifice after all.

Atheists don't need no steenking sacrifices, but devout universalists might think we do. But was the Cross was a one-size-fits-all operation with no RSVP required? Unfortunately, the intersection of Hell and humanity is not a null set; if it were, God's prophets and messengers wouldn't have spent the time talking about it.

We still need a sacrifice and still need a cross, even if modernists and post-modernists want to claim otherwise.

Edifier du Jour-Proverbs 4:20-22(ESV)

²⁰ My son, be attentive to my words;    
incline your ear to my sayings.
²¹ Let them not escape from your sight;    
keep them within your heart.
²²For they are life to those who find them,    
and healing to all their flesh.

I may be going to a Baptist church, but the charismatic side of the Bapticostal ain't gone. This story off the sports pages is a good pick-me-up; John Kitna, the Lion's QB, got knocked out of the game yesterday during the second quarter with a concussion, but somehow got healed enough to lead the Lions to victory. Kitna, a professing Christian, gives God the credit-

   Kitna was knocked out of the game against Minnesota on Sunday with a concussion, only to return and lead the Lions to an overtime win over the Vikings.

   "I've never felt anything like that, and for it to clear up and go right back to as normal as I can be, is nothing short of a miracle," Kitna said Monday. "I just definitely feel the hand of God. That's all it was. You can't explain it.

   "I have no headaches, no symptoms, no lingering effects. But that was the worst my head has ever felt, and the worse my memory was in the second quarter. Yet, after halftime there was nothing."

Headline writers don't dig the supernatural, so the "miracle" got the "He said it, not us" quote marks from ESPN in the headline.

It may be a bit of "let's Google the Bible for heal" (well, Bible Gateway, but it doesn't verb as well) to use the Proverbs verses in this context; I'll plead guilty as charged. A better exegesis for this passage is that God's word is healing in a emotional sense across the board to "all flesh"; that you can take to the bank, even if you're a bit leery about Pentecostal stuff and modern-day miracles.

However, let's not limit a big God from just working with our consciences; He can skip doctors and do the healing Himself from time to time. This story shows that Jehovah Rapha, the Lord our Healer, is still in business.

Himself. No TV preachers or roving prophets here, no slain-in-the-spirit theatrics. Just a turnaround that modern medicine can't figure out.

Secular folks, or less-supernaturally inclined church folks, will chalk it up to good fortune, but I'll give God the credit. He may tell me someday by-and-by that Kitna's healing yesterday was a fluke that He just let happen;  I'll let God beg off the credit later if He wants.

 

Edifier du Jour-John 15:1-5(ESV)

¹"I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. ² Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. ³Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. ⁴ Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. ⁵I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

Of course, I hit this classic in 2002, but this morning's sermon had me revisit it. We're in the beginnings of a sermon series addressing the new church mission statement/strategies, hitting the first of an "I⁴" set of discipleship characteristics, intimacy with God. Having spent a few years in Central Florida, I can't think of I⁴ without thinking of I-4 and its Malfunction Junction starting point in Tampa.

However, what proved interesting was the difference between the ESV that Paster David was preaching out of and throwing up on the PowerPoint, versus the NIV that was in my Bible bag and in the pew Bibles. As you can see from the except above, the focal verb in the passage is abide in the ESV. In the NIV, the verb gets translated as remain.

As I was sitting in the pew, I was already crafting an Edifier on the difference; many of us will often just remain in God, just sitting their like a bump on a log. The ESV is a better word-for-word translation, going toe-to-toe with the NASB for the honors of being the go-to Bible if you want to do serious exegesis short of learning Greek and Hebrew. It has abide, which hits me more as living rather than being.

Fast forward to the sermon. As I get that crafted, David goes and says (may not be verbatim) "The NIV has abide translated as remain" and absolutely runs with my analogy. He talked about going on a leisurely vacation and remaining there for a while, which isn't the close, active, intimate relationship God wants from us. All I could do is holler an slightly-out-of-place "Amen!"

I can't remember that happening quite that strongly since my first visit to the Indy Vineyard-

We got to meet Pastor Sean before the service; his sermon was very down to earth and almost too informal even by Vineyard standards. He seemed like a cross between Carman (Massachusettes rather than New Yawk) and Mel Gibson, rather animated and very transparent. He was doing Joseph this morning, managing to get in get in a friendly Donny Osmond dig and actually referred to Potiphar's wife "having the hots" for Joseph. Truth be told, I had that same phrase in mind as I was mentally moving a step ahead of him, but thought "no way that's going to come from the pulpit." Way!

There are some times when you can think a step ahead of a sermon if you're a veteran Christian, but contrasting translations isn't usually one of those. Interesting.

Are we abiding in Christ or just remaining in Him? Frankly, I've been guilty of the latter; the lack of Edifiers as of late is a good indication of that. Not that I can't have a close relationship with God without blogging about it, but it has been part of my devotional life for a half-decade now, and my spiritual life's low points correspond to the lack of them.

One of the things that David mentioned is the Jesus managed to get away for prayer, time alone with his Daddy. We have to remember to do likewise, and not give Him the leftovers, squeezed in between a shower and the commute if at all.