Mark Byron

Three Questions

What's the difference between Smokey Robinson, the housing bill and Todd Bentley? Smokey was a performing Miracle, the housing bill "won't perform miracles" per Chris Dodd and .... Bentley .... well, .... is at least more entertaining than the housing bill.

______________

Why do Brett Farve's cars always wind up getting flats? They never quite get re-tired. However, it could prove to be a blessing in disguise for the Packers if they can weasel a draft pick or two out of Tampa Bay or the Jets.

______________

What's the difference between selling your opponent Park Place when he owns Boardwalk and the FCC actions today allowing the Sirius-XM merger? One is a dumb move that will be regretted later and the other just creates a monopoly, although I can't quite tell which is which.

Mortgage Musings

It looks like we're going to get a mortgage reform bill through Congress that the president will sign. It passed the Senate 72-13, so it seems rather bipartisan.

Most of the stuff in the bill isn't a budget-buster. One of the more common-sense approaches is to allow the FHA to issue new mortgages to defaulting home-owners if the mortgage holders would agree to write the loan down to 90% of the value of the house.

In many cases, people got into houses either with teaser rates or low ARM rates that went up back when short term interest rates spiked last year. This will allow some of those folks to get a long-term fixed-rate loan that makes since; the FHA insurance will largely be self-financed.

Many of the changes seem solid, like giving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac better oversight, upping the down-payment needed on a FHA loan from 3% to 3.5% and raising the size of mortgages that Fannie and Freddie can insure.

The one that seems a bit problematic is the $7500 rebate to first-time home buyers that will get paid back at a $500 year clip over 15 years. That's tempting to me: I buy a house and Uncle Sam zeroes out one of my credit cards. As a renter who would likely qualify as a first-time home-owner, that might get me house hunting.

However, the logistics of getting that $500/year back from folks is likely to be problematic and be the source of much liberal weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth in the years to come. There will be pressures to waive that payback in the future.

There are some nanny-state flourishes that the right side of the Peanut Gallery won't like, but this seems to be a reasonable package to shore up the mortgage system.

Burning Bushes

That might be what some quarters of the left might be doing at the GOP convention, but it's the one that Moses talked to that got me thinking this weekend.

Our church is in the middle of VBS, and Eileen's teaching the second graders this week; since it's a night-time thing and I teach Monday through Thursday nights, I'm out of the loop other than to help set up her room with the cheesy Polynesian decor for the Outrigger Island (the Southern Baptist's official 2008 VBS) theme.

Anyways, she was working on the Monday lesson from Exodus 3, Moses and the burning bush. Let's review; here's the NIV take-

¹ Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. ² There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. ³ So Moses thought, "I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up."

OK. Let's take this out of children's story and apply some lay physics (I'm not a physicist, so take my science with a grain of salt). Normally, if something is burning, it is shrinking, as the hydrocarbons of the wood are turning into carbon dioxide and water vapor and energy and some charcoal. If the old Einstein equation is to hold, additional energy will require converting some mass. However, the mass wasn't getting converted; the bush wasn't shriveling up like it should in a wildfire.

The reason it wasn't burning was that God was supplying His own energy. Our normal laws of thermodynamics assume a closed system; God has the option of opening up the system and adding or subtracting energy, since He is outside the system.

That applies in our lives as well. God does supply energy even today. Recall Isaiah; "they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength." God can get us through the tough times with a supernatural push of energy, a second wind. Billy Joel may not the best example to be pulling Edifiers from, but Second Wind's bridge comes to mind as valid advice.

But I survived all those long lonely days
When it seemed I did not have a friend
Cause all I needed was a little faith
So I could catch my breath and face the world again

Don't forget your second wind

A little faith in God and a little pray can give you the energy you need to tackle the things God has for you to do. You might not have the energy, but God does.

Veepstakes

Bobby Jindal has written himself out of the VP race. That's probably for the best, since he's at least a cycle too early to be on the ticket. He'll be a favorite for the 2016 presidential nomination if he puts in two solid terms as governor and might be a decent choice in 2012 if we have to oust President Obama. One year as governor isn't quite enough to put him on the ticket, although I'll be surprised if we avoid seeing him on a ticket in the next dozen years.

Tim Pawlenty is getting some good press, but I'm not sure if he's the best pick for McCain. Obama fits Minnesota a bit too well and Pawlenty might not be enough to turn on the red light behind MN on the map board.

An interesting possible pick is Rob Portman, former Ohio congressman and OMB director. Ohio is a must-win state for McCain and Portman adds some economic gravitas to the ticket to offset McCain's foreign-policy centric style.

I don't see Mitt Romney adding much to the ticket, but he could do far worse.

The rumor mill is working OT, since the next week or so would be a great time to make a VP pick. Doing so before the Olympics would make since, but he might wait until after everyone in the Washington media gets back from The Grand Obama Tour. Thus, sometime next week, we'll possibly get to see the blank in the McCain-_________ ticket filed in.

Blog No Evil

A few days ago, our paper had a comic strip with the hear-no-evil, see-no-evil and speak-no-evil monkeys flanked by a fourth simian typing away on a laptop-"No one said anything about blogging."

One of the interesting things about blogging is that you'll write things about people that you wouldn't say to their face if they were in the room. In many cases, that's a safe assumption, especially for a small-fry blogger; if I were eviscerating a Paul Krugman essay, what's the chance that big-shot NYT writer will have my missives show up on his radar.

Conversely, I haven't done any punning that I know of on my pastor, David Head, and his last name. For one, he's a fellow blogger and will link through when I link to his blog; at least I see someone using the Ponder Anew admin page to link to my page. If I write about him, he's likely to read it, so I write as if he will read it, and write with the proper respect and tact, at least for me.

However, the targets of your derision occasionally stop by.

 Back when I was living in Florida, I recall lighting into a piece from the Lakeland Ledger's religion writer, Cary McMullen, declaring a certain piece "a steaming pile", back when such rhetoric was common currency among "fisking" bloggers. Well, a few months later, McMullen calls up and is interviewing me on a piece on religious blogs, and I quickly have to backtrack on what I said; using nasty rhetoric makes more since when you're critiquing a unknown person rather than a reasonably decent guy on the other end of the line.

I had a similar moment yesterday. I had written on a piece on gentrification, making fun of the name of one Ginger Gaines-Cirelli, a Methodist minister. Not only that, but I made the assumption that "a lady Methodist pastor with a hyphenated last name is going to be a big Bible-thumper." Avoiding a cheap Gilligan's Island quip was hard, especially when I forgot that she might be reading what I wrote.

Which she was. I've not seen Todd Bentley or Joel Osteen stop by and call me on questionable writing, but Rev. Gaines-Cirelli did, in a civil but slightly peeved way. I had such a rebuke coming, for I was out of line and need to ask for forgiveness.

I've gotten out of that combative "fisking" mode a while ago, but sometimes sarcasm gets the better of me, and that cutting humor gets misplaced more often that I like. Pray that I do a better job of being a good witness in what I write.

Gentrification and Reverend Ginger

Here's an interesting WSJ piece on gentrification of some bigger cities, especially San Francisco and Washington; DC may actually become majority white if trends continue. This passage had me chuckling; a black Methodist church in DC is losing members as parishioners head to the suburbs.

While his church flounders, the predominantly white Capitol Hill United Methodist Church just down the street is flourishing. There the average attendance on Sundays has doubled to about 120 people the past five years. "Demographics are in our favor. We're attracting the folks that are moving in," says the Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli, 38, who headed the church for five years before recently leaving for a position elsewhere.

It tends to be white, childless and more spiritually liberal folks that move into a big city; I don't think a lady Methodist pastor with a hyphenated last name is going to be a big Bible-thumper, while a black male pastor might be a bit more old-school.

Wait a minute... Rev-run Ginger?!? That's a straight line begging to be use, but it's the humor version of a Eephus pitch, so slow it's unhittable.

Whether it be the Lexus liberals heading out to the Red-tinged blue-collar country-side, like we saw with the Edwards' locking horns with a Rudy-loving old-school neighbor in exurban North Carolina, or yuppies tangling with traditional minorities at PTA meetings, we have an interesting culture clash. Seeing a more diverse big city is good in the long term, but it will make things more culturally liberal in the process.

It will be interesting what the Get Religion folks think about this piece