Mark Byron

They Had Better Years

Here's an interesting piece of news.

An angry U.S. senator introduced legislation Friday to cap compensation for employees of any company that accepts federal bailout money.

Under the terms of a bill introduced by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, no employee would be allowed to make more than the president of the United States.

Obama's current annual salary is $400,000.

The classic comeback for that one comes from Babe Ruth. Back in the pre-free-agent era, Ruth was that boat, a rarity for that era. Per Ruth's Wikipedia-

In 1930, which was not a pennant year for the Yankees, Ruth was asked by a reporter what he thought of his yearly salary of $80,000 being more than President Hoover's $75,000. His response: "I know, but I had a better year than Hoover."

Nowadays, the major league minimum is more than what The One is making. They all seem to have had better years than Bush.

Three quick nits to pick:

First, Obama is a public servant. People don't generally go into politics to get rich.

Second, big decisions deserve big money in a free market. If a guy can save a company a billion dollars by a good decision, he'll have earned at least a thousandth of that. True, a lot of guys were getting bongo-bucks for making bad decisions, but that's another story.

Thirdly, we get a nasty case of government-knows-best here. Central planning doesn't tend to work well. Let's hope the dose we get of that is minimal.

Steele Away

Some good news out of the RNC confab; they elected Michael Steele their new party chairman. If Steele slipped below your radar, think Alan Keyes' mellower brother; both came out of Maryland, both are devoutly Catholic and black, but Steele got elected LG in a rather liberal state in 2002, then lost a run for a US senate seat in 2006. He's one of the new Great Black hopes in the GOP.

He's good on TV and he will appeal to both economic and social conservatives within the party without scaring off either faction. Whether he can do the day-to-day work of fundraising and candidate recruitment is a good question, but the party out of power needs a strong, articulate party leader. Other wonkier candidates, like runner up Katon Dawson and Michigan party chair Saul Anuzis, whose supporters flooded my spam box for the last month, might not play well on the talk show circult, and that is much of the job of out-of-power party chair.

When your party is in power, the party chair can afford to be more wonky and be a master at crafting fundraising campaigns; the president is the spokesman for the party, for better or (as a good chunk of the right side of the Peanut Gallery are groaning) for worse. Out of power, the party chair become more of the party spokesman. That's doubly true when the congressional leadership are not overly charismatic; Mitch McConnell might be a past master of the dark arts of Senate governance, but he's not going to get people to stop the remote clicker if he's on a show.

Steele will get people to watch, even if only for the freak show effect of being a black conservative. Once you get past that, you have a fairly decent guy who might help deliver the Republican case.

BTW-If the title gave you a 70s earwig, here's the Robbie Dupree oldie for you. Actually, it was 1980, but it sounds more 70s.

One Percent

That's all the economy contracted in the fall of 2008... or should that be The Fall of 2008? If I can borrow from Mars Attacks, we still have 99% of the economy working for us, and that ain't bad.

The fourth quarter stats are in, and GDP shrunk at a 3.8% annual clip. Divide that by 4 and it dropped by a smidge under 1%, 0.95% if you want to get pedantic.

That's not to say that those losses aren't real; we're getting layoffs at Lexmark here in town and we have friends working their. However, life is still going on despite the bad news, doggone close to normal.

Think about that before getting Washington or your state government to go gonzo.

Two Leaders Out, One Still In

It isn't often that you see an impeachment vote go 59-0. Usually, if the case is that much of a slam dunk, the perp has resigned weeks ago, expressing a strong desire to spend time with his family. If the accused wants to fight it out, he usually has some support in the legislature.

Not so with Mr. Blagojevich; he went out with a East Coast media blitz instead. It isn't often that I want to question the sanity of elected officials, but this is one of them. At least he is off of the public stage for now, at least as an elected official; he can now go to being a cheap side show on the legal circuit, unless he manages to bring other Illinois officials down with him.

That might be a wish for some folks on the right, but not for me. I don't want to see the president dragged down by this (if perchance he was doing something illegal, which seems unlikely); that only gives us a President Biden, which isn't an improvement.

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Interesting stuff happening in Iceland, where protests surrounding a very bad financial collapse, including the tanking of the countries three major banks, forced a center-right government out. Now, we have a minority left-of-center government serving as a caretaker government until May elections. The Independence Party-Progressive Party (think the Aussie Liberal-National combo as a good analog) coalition has a majority of seats (just barely, 32 out of 63), but not a majority of public opinion, so the last government was a Independence-Social Democrat grand coalition; not grand enough.

So, the Social Democrats and Left-Greens, who have 27 seats between them, get a shot at ruling. The Social Democrat's leader is recovering from a brain tumor issue, so social affairs minister Johanna Sigurdardottir will take the helm. She'll try to put a finger in the dike of this financial crisis.

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Speaking of minority parliaments, Canada's lived to fight another day. New Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff signed off on the Conservative's budget with some minor reservations, much to the chagrin of his erstwhile coalition partners. There's a whole post on that one, but it will keep until after the MSU game.

Turkish Delight, SEC Style

It's tough in the SEC, where ADs seem to have become George Steinbrenner all of a sudden. Georgia canned Dennis Felton earlier today after the Dawgs won the conference title last year. That was the conference tourney and they made a quick exit from the Big Dance as a 14 seed. However, a 0-5 SEC start got the itchy trigger finger activated.

Earlier this week, Alabama's Mark Goffried jumped before being pushed, resigning under pressure. A come-from-behind win for Kentucky was his last game.

It's that type of environment in basketball, where teams don't wait to the end of the season to have the Turk come a-calling. The NBA has had seven coaches get the scimitar since the beginning of the season, with Memphis' Marc Iavaroni being the most recent last week.

It's a real tough sports economy.

Ice Capades

More bad weather fun today; Eileen is having her birthday and both of us have the day off. She's between assignments and Thursday is an vacant day on my schedule, since my four classes are Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights and a once-a-month Saturday (with the rest on line).

Sullivan U wound up having to cancel day classes for the third day in a row, which means (if traditional patterns hold) that they'll be meeting on Fridays for the next three weeks starting a week from tomorrow. That will make my Friday office hours interesting, since instead of the laid-back nature of our "Plus Fridays" (we run day classes M-Th and leave Friday mornings free as office hours for times all students can grab their instructor without having a competing class intervene) we'll have a normal weekday schedule for three weeks.

The ice is still thick on the trees, many of which have fallen down. I'm blogging from one of Lexington's public libraries while Eileen goes on a book crawl; one of the trees across the street from the library had one of its main branches split off, only to be held up by a neighboring tree. Even this branch has an abbreviated schedule, running from 12-5 today.

At least one stop light to the east of us on Man O' War was out; another one to the west of us wasn't working last night. The city schools are shut for the week; they've already announced that they're closed for Friday.

President Obama gets some brownie points from this red state; he's signed off on a disaster declaration. The latest reports have 1.3 million people without power nationwide due to the storm and 580K in Kentucky. I had anecdotal reports of a friend's house being without power in Poplar Bluff, MO; the owner's off at a conference in KC, so pray that nothing bad happens while she's gone.

Thankfully, we've kept our power and our Internet and cable, although we had the local station link to our satellite/cable provider taken out yesterday for a while. I got two days off when I could use a breather, which isn't bad. Now, I can continue to spoil Eileen rotten on her birthday, which includes a nice breakfast out, a library run (good for beaucoup husband point for my book-loving wife), a run to the mall for buying gifts of her choice and a nice dinner out.

Life's good, even when the weather leaves a bit to be desired.

Winter Wonderland

We've been iced in for two days here in Lexington; the tough-to-cancel Sullivan U had to pack it in both on Tuesday and Wednesday, leaving me with a one-night work week this week outside of my on-line class and office hours on Friday morning.

It has been that icy. I got out to try and shake the cabin fever this evening and had to use every trick in the Michigander's winter playbook to get my car going. There was at least an inch of ice on the car with three inches or so of snow on top of that. If we were expecting warm weather tomorrow, I would wait for Mother Nature to do her thing, but we're expected to be sub-freezing for the next few days, so it had to get done sooner or later.

Trick 1-Hot Stuff. Fill up some available bottles with hot-as-you-can-get water from the bathtub. I had three empty two-liters of pop and a gallon milk jug filled with the hot stuff (cue Donna Summer). In an apartment, this also doubles as a device of getting said trash down to dumpster at the same time.

Once down, pour water on windows, or on doors to deice them so that you can get at your scraper.

Trick 2-Bang on the Drum Windows all Day. Time to go Cro-Magnon on the windows, gradually cracking down the ice. The hot water application creates a small water layer at the bottom that will allow the ice chunks to come off cleanly.

However, you need to be careful not to bash it with the scraper end lest the scraper come off from excess force, which I did; I had to get into Eileen's car to get Sparkle's scraper as a back-up.

Trick 3-Rock with You- I had enough snow and ice to deal with between my car and the plowed section of the parking lot to require the old rocking technique. Go back, then forward, then back, then forward, then back... until you get out. It's usually one I've used if I slid into a snow bank or off onto the shoulder of the road, but it worked well to get out of the parking spot.

Once we got out and on our way, we saw one of those views that you only get every few years, of everything being one big icicle. Some folks in town are without power, including one of the lights on Man O' War (Rapid Run, if memory serves). People don't seem to remember that a malfunctioning stop light is a four-way stop; most of the folks on Man O' War blew through not bothering to stop, although it was dark enough where they might not have seen the darkened lights in order to know to stop.

Many trees came down due to the ice coating they took. Some parking spaces in our complex are off limits due to tree branches sagging into them; we have a half-million people without power statewide and about 36K out here in Lexington. One of Eileen's buddies from church is without power and her cell phone is playing hard to get.

However, the main roads were clear enough to get us out to a late dinner. More later.

Shreaded Tweets

We've got a nasty winter storm due in Lexington tomorrow; we're looking at 3-5 inches of snow and sleet before the Zamboni shows up tomorrow afternoon. Normally, Sullivan U is the last to close up the campus for the day, but we did have three snow-ice days last year. Hopefully the system looses some steam; Oklahoma got hammered.

Right now, school is one. The campus director sent this out earlier this afternoon-" At this time, Monday 2/26/09 2:30 p.m., no decision has been made regarding tomorrow’s schedule." Then, he caught his typo-"The date in the e-mail below should be 1/26/09…my crystal ball can’t predict tomorrow’s weather let alone a month ahead."

I guess I was reading what he meant the first time. I didn't catch it either at first.

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Call this Three Degrees of Super Bowl; I was leaning towards rooting for Arizona in Sunday's Super Bowl with their historic doormat status (if they got in, there is hope for the Lions) and their evangelical QB Kurt Warner and his rags-to-riches-to-journeyman-to-riches story.

Eileen just noted another reason. She has a fellow Humble High alum playing for the Cards; DE Bertand Berry. His mom was Eileen's Econ teacher at HHS.

I can't think of any Midland High alums who have recently made the NFL; Howard Mudd played for the 49ers in the 60s and has been an NFL offensive line coach for decades-per his Wikipedia, "His 33-year tenure as an assistant coach in the NFL is currently the longest." He was with the Colts during their Super Bowl run a few years ago.

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Here's a darker football story from metro Louisville; a high school coach is being indicted for reckless homicide for a heat stroke death of one of his players last summer.
Pleasure Ridge Park High is the school; doesn't that sound like something you'd make up for an upscale high school for a TV movie?

Seriously, this might have coaches thinking twice about overheating their players if a mistake can land you in prison. Suing the coach, which the parents are doing, is understandable, but you'll be seeing a lot less warm-weather practices nationwide if he does serve time.

What might work better are some sort of best-practices guidelines under which coaches can know their on the right side of the line; don't have them out in X degree weather or when the heat index gets over Y, if it's between F and G, only work them out for a hour or less and make sure to get them plenty of water (one of the alleged oversights of the coach here).

"May God Have Mercy on You, For We Sure Won't"

That may have well have been the motto of one Texas church school, Dallas Covenant, who's girls basketball team mopped the floor with an underwomaned Dallas Academy team 100-0. The team didn't start calling off the dogs until midway through the 4th quarter.

Here's an interesting quote from the school's principal, Kyle Queal-

In the statement on the Covenant Web site, Queal said the game "does not reflect a Christ-like and honorable approach to competition. We humbly apologize for our actions and seek the forgiveness of Dallas Academy, TAPPS [the state private-school sports organization] and our community."

There are a lot of times where we can take the world's view of competition to heart a bit too much. That's not to say that there isn't a place for hard-fought competitive sports, but a no-quarter, killer instinct can make one uncivilized and ungracious.

You can see a bit of that in many conservative Christian commentary about new President Obama. While he deserves a large dose of criticism over his revoking the Mexico City policy on funding foreign abortion providers, he isn't the Antichrist or the Devil incarnate; rhetoric that has us heading to a socialist dystopia at warp speed is well overheated. A recent bumper-sticker sighting that such folks might borrow- "Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?"

One of the reasons I'm not a big fan of the Creation Museum crowd is that they tend to demonize and belittle evolutionists and even Intelligent Design backers; if you don't agree with them straight down the line, you're stupid or evil or both. There isn't room for honest disagreement, [seemingly] questioning the salvation of old-earthers who haven't bought their take yet. Not the best way to make a church visitor from outside of King James Land feel welcome.

[Update 1/24- I got an e-mail from the Answers in Genesis folks. No, the Sunday School study I went through didn't outright question non-young-earther's salvation, but their rhetoric was very uncomfortable for a guy who is a mugwump between old-earth and young-earth and would be very chilly for a flat-out theistic evolutionist.

I also wasn't focusing on the actual AiG organization per se but ardent young-earth creation advocates in general. Time for me to listen to my own words and take a bit off of my rhetorical fast ball]

We often need to take a bit off of our competitive fastballs and be more graceful in the public sphere. Even missionary poster boy Tim Tebow got caught over-celebrating late in the title game and got hit with an unsportsmanlike conduct call for taunting. That should be a reminder to cool the competitive juices if they get too overheated.

Shreaded Tweets

Kirsten Gillibrand would up getting the NY Senate appointment. She's starting her third term as a Democratic congresswoman from the Hudson Valley between Albany and NYC and something of a moderate, being pro-hunting and a Blue Dog.

A few more liberal Democrats might challenge her in 2010 for the nomination for the rest of Hillary's term, which might create an interesting election. If she wins, she might have the job for decades; she's only 43 and a moderate Democrat in NY might be in there for life or until the liberals mug her in the Democratic primary a la Lieberman.

Even there, she might be the standard-bearer for one of the third parties that can run fusion candidates and create a three-way race; I recall Jabob Javits, one of the last true liberal Republicans, running on the Liberal party ticket after getting mugged in the GOP primary in 1980 and getting 11%.

However, I can see the conservatives drooling over the prospect of a moderate-liberal brawl in the 2010 primary with one of the liberals winning, allowing a good Republican to pick up the pieces in the general. The flip side of that dream is the nightmare (from a GOP perspective) of the liberal primary survivor winning.

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Caroline Kennedy was supposed to have gotten that slot. She still has the possibility of getting into electoral politics the old-fashioned way, by getting... elected. Gillibrand's house seat will be up later this year and a few current congressmen might leave their seats to run in the 2010 Senate primary.

She's be an easy nominee for a House seat and an easy winner in most NY districts. If she runs a solid campaign, she'll have earned her way into electoral politics; she's got the smarts and grace to do so if she wants to.

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Back to that stimulus piece from earlier-

The House plan would devote $303 billion to tax cuts, with two-thirds of that going to individuals, and $550 billion to new federal spending, including more than $300 billion in aid to states and local governments for health-care programs and education.

That money may merely cover deficits in state budgets; here's an overview of state red ink. A large chunk of the money (about $100b by my seat-of-the-pants take) would not create new spending, but save localities from having to raise taxes to finance those core services. Anything above that might actually create new services; however, be careful of seeing the money go just to raise salaries of existing workers rather than get new services started.

States can't easily borrow their way out of deficits; Uncle Sam can. This could be merely passing the buck to Uncle Sam to finance rather than have state legislatures and governors slog through tough budget cuts or tax increases.

Crack-ers

I had an interesting moment last Sunday during communion. We were getting the standard type of communion practiced in most of the churches I've been in, where small plastic cups of grape juice and a mini oyster cracker is the bread and wine stand in. Unlike the flat wafers that are Catholic norm, these crackers were rounded and hollow.

Somehow, my cracker got cracked, as one side of the cracker imploded, leaving my hand holding a lot of crumbs from the demolished side of the cracker while the ushers finished up passing out the "elements."

However, as we got to the partaking part, the stock lines of invitation from 1 Corinthians 11 came up "Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you." It sure was broken.

That connected that cracker to Golgotha in a way I can't recall connecting to Jesus' sacfifice during communion before, having His body trashed on a pair of crossed planks to appease a Judean mob.

Try PhantAids, Your Pro-Growth Economic Relief

I'm still getting my mind around the "stimulus package" gearing up on Capital Hill. Here are a few early thoughts and contrathoughts

Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), who gave Vice President Biden a 17-page list of spending requests, said he opposes the proposed increase in funding for Pell Grants for college students because it would do little to spur short-term economic growth.

I resemble that remark as a college prof; college spending is a long-term proposition, since it gives us a better-equipped workforce if we're doing our jobs. Having people go to school less and work more would increase GDP... in the short term.

However, encouraging going to college in a recession is a good idea, since that will give the unemployed and underemployed something constructive to do. In finance, we preach looking at the long-term, focusing on maximizing shareholder value/wealth rather than this quarter's net income, for there are numerous ways (cutting R&D, cutting advertising, cutting quality control) to help the bottom line in the short term that trash the firm in the long term.

True, you won't get as good of a multiplier effect on the Pell Grants, since most of the money will go to schools who are on fixed budgets that will be slow to change. However, it might be a good long term-move for maximizing national value (if I could conjure up such a critter, but as a semi-pro economist, I can conjure up a lot) even if it the help comes years rather than months off.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio) said the plan lacks enough "fast-acting tax relief," such as a temporary halt to payroll taxes and more relief for businesses.

 Is The Onion writing your scripts? Here's my modest ad proposal-

Try PhantAids, your pro-growth economic relief. Unlike Democratic econ-antacids that take years to take effect and leave you bloated, PhantAids goes straight to the bottom line in seconds. PhantAids, long memory, fast relief.

A payroll tax cut would help most businesses, even ones that aren't making money at present and have the advantage of encouraging job creation. When you tax something, you get less of it all else being equal, and taxing wages means you get less wages. I'd make it ongoing rather than temporary, so as to encourage job creation rather than give businesses a one-shot cash infusion, but that makes more sense than a corporate income tax cut if the goal is to increase jobs.

Why? Income tax cuts only help if you have income. For instance, an income tax cut will help someone like GM very little, since they have a huge amount of losses to carry forward and won't get to see any added cash flow from the tax cuts for years. Likewise, other struggling firms that are either barely breaking even or losing money will only benefit if they can hang in there long enough to turn a profit. There would be a mild stimulative effect on struggling firms if successful firms have lower taxes and start plowing the savings into extra investments, but if lower taxes translate into lower prices for those firms, it might make it harder for the struggling firms to hang in there.

For some reason, corporate income tax cuts now seem a bit like social Darwinism, giving the successful firms a boost while letting the struggling firms fend for themselves. Creative destruction, I hear the guy in the back right say. Right said, but could we get by with a bit less destruction.

Chirac Derangement Syndrome

Who said poodles don't hunt? We've got at least one with some 'tude at chateau Chirac-

Former French President Jacques Chirac was rushed to a hospital after being mauled by his pet dog who is being treated for depression, in a dramatic incident that rattled the ex-president's wife.

The couple's white Maltese poodle, called Sumo, has a history of frenzied fits and became increasingly prone to making "vicious, unprovoked attacks" despite receiving treatment with anti-depressants, Chirac's wife Bernadette said.

He might call former President Bush. He's had to deal with attack dogs who have become increasingly prone to making vicious attacks for years. Sumo isn't the only one who could use a chill pill.

I had to do a double take to make sure this wasn't an Onion piece; it sound almost too good a line to be true. "Down Sumo, Down Sumo!" "Yi,yi,yi,yap,yap,errrr"

Funeral for a Friend

Eileen and I went to the funeral of one of our Sunday School classmates (a.k.a. Life Group member in Victoryese) this morning; Buddy was only 43, which was scary. He was the first age-peer to die of natural causes. I've had friends and acquaintances die in car crashes and accidents, and one suicide, but this is the first time that health issues claimed someone roughly my age.

I've seen age-peers die of natural causes. Reggie White passing on not that long ago (actually, four years now) with sleep apnea-related issues hit close to home since I have issues with that as well. However, Buddy was younger than I and even two weeks younger than my "kid" sister.

There but the grace of God go I. I need to lose weight and Buddy seemed to take better care of himself than I do, but that didn't matter in the long haul in this case.

I talked about servant leadership in my MGT 499 class tonight, even citing Matthew 20, but Buddy did a good job of being a servant, helping out a lot at church and opening his house to one semi-homeless young man last year until he got things straightened out.

He was a lot simpler than I, but he loved the Lord. He'll be missed. I'd like to do more than I'm doing at present, but I have to remember that I am doing more than I think between teaching the little ones on Sundays and the adults during the week.

Buy-One-Get-One-Free at Last

The malls were busy today on King Day. For most of us, it's a day off that we don't quite know what to do with, other than recover from bronchitis that doesn't quite want to go away and watch the Pistons on national TV; they won what may be their last outing with the small-ball lineup with Rip Hamilton sliding to small forward and Tayshaun Prince moving to the 4.

Here's an interesting thought I've been having- Has the media ever been as gung-ho about an inauguration  as this one?

I don't think so. There was a bit of a spring in their step at the Carter inaugural, as the country was being delivered from the Watergate era, but Carter was not of the East Coast powers that be. Clinton was somewhat damaged goods and a southerner, albeit a southerner with a East Coast (Yale, Georgetown) college pedigree and a Rhodes Scholarship.

Obama is part of the cultural elite, one of them. He speaks northern liberal, not Southern Baptist liberal, and thus resonates in the heart language of the cultural moves and shakers. There is a religious-like zeal that Obama speaks to in a good chunk of the political spectrum. The coverage on Oprah (it was on at the restaurant this afternoon, I didn't seek it out) and other places made tomorrow look like a high holy day rather than a swearing in.

Add that to the coinciding of King Day today with the inaguural tomorrow, giving us the iconography of King the prophet and Obama the culmination of the prophecy as the first black president and the first King-like progressive to make it to the White House. The symbolism is getting laid on a couple notches too thick.

I'd be a lot more content tomorrow if Obama wasn't poised to take things in the wrong direction on a number of fronts and in questionable directions on even more. However, the black liberals with "We have overcome" T-shirts speak to an America enough past its racist past to have elected its first president of African descent. Not fully past it, mind you, but enough where a decent man of African descent can get a majority to vote for him.

That sounds like the passage in the I Have a Dream speech about the content of our character. 46 years after King made that speech, we're within hailing distance of seeing those dreams achieved, not just for a black guy from Illinois but us all.

I recall Harry Truman saying that for every black guy held in the gutter, there's a white guy in the gutter with him holding him down; the equality of races and genders have allows us all out of the gutter of racism and misogyny and to allow everyone to use their skills to the betterment of all.

Plus, a two-party system works by having the "other guys" have power every so often. It's the Democrat's turn at bat. Pray that they use their turn wisely.

Git 'r Done, Disciple-Style

Today's sermon sort of meshed with my lecture to my MGT 499 class on Wednesday. Pastor David focused on the Great Commission's call to create disciples. We're not called to have great music, wonderful Sunday School classes and great youth programs, we're called to make disciples. Those other things are only nice if and only if they contribute to making disciples.

That reminded me of my MGT 499, which noted that the first job of a manager was to "make things happen," which I revamped a bit to include the motto of one Lawrence the Telecommunications Technician:

1: Git’ R Done! (a.k.a. Making Things Happen)

Meeting and organization are nice, but the first goal is to get things done that advance the goals of the business. The book mentions a case at Gateway, where the new CEO was too busy organizing the firm like a conventional business that they got in the way of making good computers and getting them to customers.

Another historical example comes from the Civil War, where early Union general George McClellan was big on training; his Wikipedia states that-“although McClellan was meticulous in his planning and preparations, these attributes may have hampered his ability to challenge aggressive opponents in a fast-moving battlefield environment.” His indecisiveness lead President Lincoln to rant "If General McClellan does not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it for a time."

That’s not to say that a manger should ignore planning altogether, but any planning and management should add to the ability to do the business’ job, and not see meetings be where “minutes are taken and hours are stolen.”

Pastor David even moved into that vibe, mentioning a letter from Starbucks' CEO (I think I have the same one he cited) of trying to move the company back to its funkier, more human past and away from trends towards making the stores more efficient but also more antiseptic.

How then do we best git disciple-making done? For instance, does Sunday School help? I'm now helping Eileen run herd over the two-year-olds at church. Did any of the five rug rats take anything away from the story of Daniel and the veggie diet? I don't know, but it's hopefully a start towards a good knowledge of Scripture that can firm up their faith in the years to come. Even if that wasn't much help, freeing up their parents to go to class themselves, which should help their discipleship.

If stuff doesn't add to making disciples, think about giving it the heave-ho. Easier said than done, though, since a lot of traditions (or new innovations of the month) are hard to ditch.

"I See Your Schwartz is as Big as Mine"

Now let's see how the Lions handle their Schwartz. Jim Schwartz, that is; the Titan defensive coordinator just got the top job.

Of course, if we're doing a Spaceballs shtick, we've need to discuss MegaMaid and the operation has been in effect in Detroit for years..."Suck, suck, suck."

Well, he has nowhere to go but up and has a #1 draft pick to play with, as well as Dallas' #20 pick overall. That will give them three of the top 33 picks overall.

Detroit needs a good QB, but I don't see the crop of available QBs this year to be #1 overall good. I'm not all that impressed with Matthew Stafford or Mark Sanchez at that level, although either would look good in Honolulu blue and silver if the pulled a Brady Quinn and stayed on the board at #20. Otherwise, they might be able to snag Javon Ringer with that #20 pick and see who's on the board at the top of the second round for a QB prospect.

Of course, this is the area where the non-ball-handling (a.k.a. "non-skill" as if linemen don't have any) positions come to play where the casual fan is at a loss to critique offensive linemen and most defensive players. I'm not a draftnik and don't have the time to become one.

Sanchez seems to be making the right move. The 2010 draft will be loaded at QB, with McCoy, Bradford and Tebow all in the mix along with any other QBs finishing their junior or senior year that might make a move up the pecking order. He's probably be the fourth or fifth QB on the board next year, while he'll be #2 or so this year.

Plus, he'll be done with his undergrad work in May. He'll get a better football education as a pro QB than with another year at USC, not to mention one that pays better. He can work on an MBA online if we wants another year of school.

Turning Japanese-Part I-Monetary Policy, RIP.

If you want to partake in the title earwig, here you go.

Deflation, stangnant growth, and near-zero interest rates. That's something we've seen in Japan for the last decade or two. Could that be what awaits the US in the '10s?

We currently have the three-month T-bill rate at 0.12%. It had been at 0.06% earlier in the week when I was discussing the issue with my FIN 324 class. People are so spooked, that they're letting Uncle Sam hang on to their money just about for free.

Normally, we talk about the T-bill rate including a modest "real" interest rate plus expected inflation. That real rate is usually around 1 or 2%, the money needed to compensate us for putting off enjoying our goodies. We then tack on inflation to that real rate in order to keep our purchasing power.

What does a near-zero interest rate say about expected inflation? Try expected deflation. Our model starts to fall apart when deflation is bigger than our real rate and the model would call for negative interest rates.

We had deflation last month, 0.7% worth. It was the third straight month of declines, almost moving 2008 into net deflation; we had a 0.1% inflation figure for the year overall. Dropping oil prices and stagnant consumer demand have given us declining prices for the fourth quarter of 2008.

What that means is that the Fed has just about shot its monetary policy wad. The Fed Funds rate is at a quarter-percent, as low as it can go without giving money away for free, as least if they keep the custom of moving in quarter-percent increments.

Ben Bernanke just became moot. He's like the general in the creature feature who has fired everything in the arsenal at the approaching leviathan and can't slow it down.

Can you say "Liquidity Trap", boys and girls? I thought you could.

"What do we do now?!?", the president screams in the creature feature. Good question.

The mad scientist hero now takes center stage.

A Modular Faith

Here's an interesting finding from Barna's latest research (hat tip to Richard at Bandits no More)-

By a three to one margin (71% to 26%) adults noted that they are personally more likely to develop their own set of religious beliefs than to accept a comprehensive set of beliefs taught by a particular church. Although born again Christians were among the segments least likely to adopt the a la carte approach to beliefs, a considerable majority even of born again adults (61%) has taken that route. Leading the charge in the move to customize one’s package of beliefs are people under the age of 25, among whom more than four out of five (82%) said they develop their own combination of beliefs rather than adopt a set proposed by a church.

One of the interesting aspects of modern evangelical life is that people belong to churches that they agree with rather than agree with the churches they belong to. If you changed denominations as an adult, you're more likely to have moved to a church that matches your doctrine than to have your church mold your doctrine.

For instance, I'm hanging my hat at present at a Southern Baptist church. Is my flavor of Christian doctrine based on the Baptist Faith and Messagedoctrinal statement? No, but the BFM makes a decent run of expressing an orthodox evangelical doctrine.

Can good teaching mold one's core beliefs? Yes, especially if you've been raised in a particular church. However, the similarities between most evangelical churches make it easy to adapt. There is a core faith that makes a basic model which we add features to like a car or computer.

Do you want Calvinist bucket seats or Arminian bench seats? OwnStar prophetic guidance system? Young-earth rim wheels? Padeobaptist sprinklers or a credobaptist spa/dunk tank? All of the above can be add-ons to the evangelical basic mini-van model.

Changing churches will mean either adding a feature or stowing a feature or two, but the basic model doesn't change much. It comes with Jesus as Lord and Savior standard, a Trinitarian drive system, Bible Steering and a Holy Spirit shock absorber system. Those basics make it easier for people to make minor changes.

 

 

Edifier du Jour:Psalm 44:23-26(NIV)

²³ Awake, O Lord! Why do you sleep? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever.

²⁴ Why do you hide your face and forget our misery and oppression?

²⁵ We are brought down to the dust; our bodies cling to the ground.

²⁶ Rise up and help us; redeem us because of your unfailing love.

News flash-God doesn't sleep or if He does, He puts the Universe on pause until he gets back. Some prayers are answered "no" or "not yet."

When you're going through a tough stretch, it's often hard to feel that "unfailing love" that the psalmist references. It's easy to question how unfailing that love is, since there are some areas that you'd like to see some success in that isn't happening at present.

Make that "I'd like to see." I've had a rough year or so and need to work at drawing closer to God; sometimes, it's not God hiding His face, but me hiding mine. That's not good.

I'm going to try to bring the Edifiers back to a daily feature. There are times where my confidence is shaky and I don't want to put stuff to print, but one way to get that confidence back is to express myself anyway, even if I'm not sure about how valid it is. It's seemed to be valid to a lot of folks over the years, and I need to remember that without getting cocky.

 

Shreaded Tweets

New job description for Mitch McConnell-RINO herder: "He'll need to keep GOP moderates from straying." Cats are easier to herd.

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Belated congratulations to Florida for another title. One oddity, at least in this sports era, is Tim Tebow's decision to come back for his senior year. Yes, he would be an odd fit in a lot of NFL offenses, but I'd love to see him take a shot at it. That will have to keep for a year at least; he gets to pester UK for another year.

Why couldn't a team run a two-offense set, with a Tebow-like option QB running normal downs and a more conventional pocket passer QB for passing downs? When Tebow turns pro, I could see his team going back to the Florida '06 model, where Tebow runs an option package on a third of the downs and has your regent QB (holding down the kingdom until the boy king is ready to rule) doing the passing downs.

That will give QBs like Pat White an option other than converting to WR when they run out of college eligibility.

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Another sad note; Tony Dungy is hanging it up. I was just starting to blog in 2002 when he got the heave-ho from Tampa Bay. Jon "Chucky" Gruden did get the Bucs to the Super Bowl the next year, but Dungy had the last laugh by turning Indy into a perrinial power.

He'll have a lot of ministries to spend time on, but he loses the bully pulpit of the NFL. Hopefully, he'll stay in the public eye and continue to be a good witness.

Retreating to the Cave

The first week of the semester has been a bit draining, especially when I teach Saturday afternoon and I'm recovering from bronchitis.

Bloggy goodness should resume next week.

Catholic, Big and Small C

Richard John Neuhaus was one of the great Christian minds of the 20th and early 21st century; he died earlier today. He showed up on my radar first with his book The Naked Public Square back in the late 80s. Crossing the Tiber to go from being Lutheran minister to Catholic priest didn't diminish his influence; it actually increased it, as he headed up a dialog with conservative evangelicals on how to achieve a pan-Christian orthodox front on the moral issues of the day.

That is one of the things that he will leave behind; the ability of Catholic and evangelical groups to work together on social issues where they are on the same page, which is quite a few.

One thing that Neuhaus lets us note; Catholic and evangelical aren't mutually exclusive. Ben Domenech's obit notes that "Time magazine named him one of the most influential evangelicals in America, in spite of his Catholicism..."

I'll have a bone to pick with the "in spite." It is Neuhaus' small-c catholicism that had him reaching out to his brothers in Christ elsewhere in Christendom. If the Catholic church were more like Neuhaus, the ferry service across the Tiber would be a lot more active.

There is another post here, but the evangelical community doesn't have too many serious thinkers and writers like Neuhaus. That's why a lot of evangelical intellectuals troll in Catholic waters for serious reflection on public policy that don't merely regurgitate GOP talking points.

Shreaded Tweets

Obama has restated his preference for a college playoff, summing up the conventional football wisdom pretty well here-

"I think Utah has a pretty good claim," Obama told the network. "They're undefeated. I think USC, which had a great Rose Bowl, beat Penn State pretty badly. They've got a pretty good claim to being No. 1. Florida and Oklahoma both have a claim. Texas, at this point, has got to feel like, 'Well, we did OK, too.'

I'm not sure if Utah has a legal case or not, but when you can go into NOLA and decisively beat a 12-1 Alabama team, you have to be in the picture for a national title. However, there are enough people with midmajorphobia to ever get a Utah or a Boise State into the top two and into a title game as presently constituted.

I'd like a eight-team field, which you can do with the four classic BCS bowls serving as the quarterfinals and having semis and finals during mid January.

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Obama goes on in the ESPN piece

"I think a football playoff makes sense. I've spoken about this quite a bit, and I think if you look at knowledgeable sports fans, they agree with me. But, you know, I've got to pick and choose my battles. I probably am going to be spending more time focusing on creating three million more jobs."

Here's a little back-of-the-envelope math. Three million jobs times, say, a $50,000 a year salary ($40,000 in wages and $10K in benes and overhead). That comes to a modest $150 billion a year.

They're talking about a stimulus package of about five times that amount; $800 billion is the figured bandied about, plus or minus $50 billion. Are we talking about stimulating the economy or liberal libidos?

Spooked

One quick though came to mind with the pick of Leon Panetta to be CIA chief. If I'm not mistaken, George HW Bush didn't have any spy experience before taking over the CIA in the mid-70s.

Back in 2003, when he was being posited as a possible gubernatorial candidate, I noted that "He's a smart liberal and the best the Democrats have to offer" in that race. That still holds.

There is a place for an intelligent, well-rounded generalist to be supervising things. For instance, did Bill Richardson or Spence Abraham have any energy expertise to speak of before becoming energy secretary? Yet both were intelegent public servents who could master a somewhat foreign topic.

Personally, I'll take a smart liberal with a candid streak like Panetta over a CIA vet who distanced himself enough from the Bush team to show up on Obama's radar.

Fly By Night

We're back in Lexington; I'm still recovering from bronchitis and have to start back teaching this evening.

We spent the Sunday morning before Christmas visiting at NE Houston Baptist just down the street from my in-laws house. Like Pastor Dave at Victory Baptist, NEHBC's pastor is a blogger as well. I can't vouch for his preaching (he was gone the day we were there), but he seems to blog well at least.

He's doing the story of the Ark with his young kids here...

Me: Campbell, what is an example of a kind of a bird that could have gone into the ark? 

Campbell: 7 hawks

Me: What else? maybe 7 falcons, 7 cardinals, . . .

Colton: 7 Raiders

Tonight, I was the one that learned the lesson: don't do family devotions during halftime of the Falcons-Cardinals playoff game.

Especially if you wind up getting an eye-wig (would that be a visual ear-wig?) of those Capital One barbarians, pick-axes and shields in tow, trooping up Noah's ramp.

Sweet Caroline

Sorry for inflicting a bad Neil Diamond earwig in the New Year. However, it kinda fits the prospective junior senator from New York.

I haven't seen Caroline Kennedy in her new persona as senate candidate, but what I have seen of her over the years showed a smart, charming woman. Those were in apolitical settings as she talked about being a first daughter or about various books, but she seemed very competent. New York could do far worse, like most of their congressional delegation or state AG Andrew Cuomo, who has his dad's smarts but not his charm.

Would she be up for this post were her name not Kennedy? No. Celebrity gets your foot in the door; ask her cousin-in-law Ahnold or half-senator Al Franken.

Do you have to have legislative experience to be a good senator? Not always. Paul Wellstone went from being a poli-sci prof to the Senate and was an effective spokesman for his liberal causes. Sam Hayakawa went from being an English prof to senator on the GOP side; he gave us the great quote from the Panama Canal treaty debate-"Why should we give it back? We stole it fair and square."

Lest we forget, Caroline's uncle Ted has been a rather effective senator as well after being essentially handed the job by his older brother without prior elective experience. Side note-Ted was a pretty good tight end at Harvard, getting some interest from the Packers, but opted for "another contact sport, politics." Wags might say that he went from being a good tight end to being good at getting tight. That's the only Teddy-bashing allowed on this post, Peanut Gallery.

She might prove to be a formidable factor in the Democratic party if given a chance, a blue-state Sarah Palin of sorts. She has Upper East Side charm rather than ya-betcha spunk, but with a warmth that might appeal to the hockey and soccer moms (and dads) that Palin resonates with.

Lucky or Blessed?

I saw this MSNBC piece on alien life back during fall term, but the series got fubared when I went back to it the next day; I don't read MSNBC much at home, but since the Sullivan U computers come with IE and generic pre-set bookmarks, MSN and MSNBC is the default news site if I don't want to call up my Firefox bookmarks from my flash drive.

I came back to it yesterday, and the series is back working again. SETI's Seth Shostak is the main speaker in the piece. Here's my money graph-

Shostak notes that there is no direct proof for any life beyond Earth, but the universe is home to a lot of stars. And as research over the past decade has shown, perhaps at least 50 percent of those stars harbor planets. Shostak estimates there are 1 trillion planets in the Milky Way alone. "Surely some of them have undergone what Earth has undergone and developed life, and eventually what we call sentient life," he says. The argument, he notes, is simply one of probability. "If we are the only intelligent beings in the galaxy, or for that matter in the universe, then we are truly a miracle," he says.

You've got that right, Dr. Shostak. Yeah, but it's from that dreaded diploma mill called Cal Tech ;-). I think the guy knows his stuff.

However, we've got one data point for life in the universe, and it's here. Lots of possible candidates, but only one proven to this point.

Given the size of the universe, we can't be that lucky. Either life should be relatively bountiful or something other than random chemical processes got us here.

Something like an intelligent designer, maybe? A Guy who's in the miracle business.

That's not to say that there may not be life elsewhere. Most of the Peanut Gallery can recite Genesis 1:1 from memory-"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Even the non-church goers in the crowd would have that down, especially after we celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 8 reading of Genesis from lunar orbit last week. Genesis goes into detail on what happened on the Earth, but nada about the heavens.

SETI scientists hope to find other life in the universe. Others of us are also interested in eternal life and some of those miracles, the biggest coming back in Bethlehem and Golgotha about 2000 years ago.