Mark Byron

Saturday Musings

60 years. That's what Jerry Sandusky will get at minimum for his pedophilia. The sad part of the story is that guys who honestly want to help boys will get tarred with that brush as people avoid having repeats of this, since Sandusky often found targets through his youth charity.

On the good side, the case is behind us coming up to the start of football season this fall, letting PSU try to start anew. A detente with the Paterno clan might be nice, even though it's too late for JoePa himself.

_________

Touchy times in the eastern Med, as Syria shot down a Turkish jet that crossed into Syrian waters. Given that Turkey is part of NATO, that could trigger a reaction, but the Turkish government doesn't seem to be pressing the issue, essentially saying "Oops, our bad."

___________

Add another story to the "nothing good happens at a nightclub at 2AM" file-Tony Parker got hit by the crossfire of a bar fight and had some eye damage; he's suing the nightclub. That knocks the chances of the French team down a notch, but the US likely losing Dwayne Wade will even things out.

___________

By the way, congratulations to Miami on their NBA title, getting that monkey off LeBron's back. I'm not one of the haters, but was rooting for OKC, since Miami had cast itself as the NBA's Yankees. That being said, you can still appreciate Jeter and A-Rod and root against the Pinstripes, and you can appreciate the triple-double-machine the same way.

____________

Here's an interesting story I stumbled into as we came back from TN this week; the Free Hills settlement in northern TN, where freed slaves from the Hill plantation settled and created a rare free-black community in the pre-Civil War south. I just noted the road sign as we were going past and checked out the story once we got back.

 

Edifier du Jour:Psalm 122:3-5(NIV)

³ Jerusalem is built like a city
    that is closely compacted together.
⁴ That is where the tribes go up,
    the tribes of the Lord,
to praise the name of the Lord
    according to the statute given to Israel.
⁵ There the thrones for judgment stand,
    the thrones of the house of David.

This is the prologue for "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem" that I hit yesterday. What I find interesting is that people came to God in the Davidian era, going up to the city on a hill.

While we'll occasionally trot out that rhetoric in politics, the modern reality is God is more likely to go out to where folks are than folks are to physically come to Him. Muslims might come to a central spot, but the Church is called to go out to the world, not to wait for the world to come to it.

Edifier du Jour:Psalm 122:6-7(NIV)

⁶ Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:

“May those who love you be secure.

⁷ May there be peace within your walls

and security within your citadels. ”

This Psalm was cited by one of the small-town churches we drove past in TN near my in-laws; I don't recall reading past the headline verse of 6a before.

As I'm reading this, it seems to take on more metaphorical shape and less a commentary on contemporary Arab-Israeli relations. That peace of Jerusalem is the peace of being in God's presence, since that was where the Holy of Holies was back in David's day. Today, that's a mobile location thanks to the Holy Spirit trashing the curtain on Good Friday.

That was the under-rated good news of Good Friday, lost behind the sacrifice to end them all; God's presence was now on the move. We can head into that citadel when we need it, in a cats-and-dogs rain on I-69 yesterday and any othe place.

 

Scaring the Bejeebers Into People

We spent today coming back to Michigan from my in-laws in Tennessee. That's a pretty good chunk of the Bible Belt we traversed, and a common roadside sight was some sort of eschatological prodding for folks to come to Jesus-"Jesus is coming, are you ready?" is the prototype of such messages, often accompanied by a just-before-midnight clock reminding me of the cold-war Doomsday Clock.

I'm not sure if that's great theology, for it seems to cast Him as some sort of blood-thirsty  alien that will devour anyone who can't flash a Get-Out-of-Hell-Free card. Disaster preppers will have their multi-month stash of food and water and plenty of firepower to fight off the zombies and Mad Maxes of the secular end-times, while rapture preppers will have their salvation stashed as well; post-tribbers might well have both.

Jesus is more than just a get-out-of-hell-free pass. He's Lord and Savior, and the fear-merchants seem to miss the first part, not to mention the ongoing help of the Holy Spirit. Discipleship, walking with the Lord, seems to be well off-screen in that milieu.

That's not to say that the folks posting those turn-or-burn type signs don't do a good job of ministering to people beyond saying the Sinner's Prayer (or some such confession) and making a trip to the dunk tank, but that can be the metrics of choice in many circles.

I will admit that those scary signs are better evangelism than none at all; to borrow from Moody, their way of evangelizing is better than my way of not evangelizing (not much beyond the blog, at least). I'd just want to see something beyond a punch-card salvation in people's lives.

Not a Bug, a Double Feature

Oil prices are falling based on a more-passive-than-expected Fed? That's not a bug, that's a double feature.

First off, lower oil prices help everyone who doesn't own oil stocks or was long in oil futures. What's not to like there? Well, if you were a GOP operative who wants to hang high oil prices around BO's neck, you might be disappointed, but I don't think we need $4 gas to send him packing.

Secondly, having the Fed pass on what the wags were calling QE3 is a good sign. A third round of "quantititive easing"  (finance wags made a nod to the Diamond Jubilee girl by christening the last round QE2) would merely have the Fed doing something about a sluggish economy; having hit a liquidity trap on short-term rates (once you take the Fed Funds rate down to near-zero, that monetary policy bullet has been shot), the Fed has tried to spur investment by lowering long-term rates via buying up Treasury bonds rather than T-bills.

Sounds good on paper, but it puts the Fed's balance sheet at risk, since they're buying bonds when rates are at rock-bottom, any move upward will put the money supply at risk, since it's all those T-bill and T-bonds, rather than gold, that are by-and-large backing up the dollar. A spike in long-term rates will make those T-bonds worth less and put the Fed in an awkward spot where it might lose money rather than make money off the interest it gets on all those securities.

Thus, the Fed passing on a QE3 is a good thing; the drop in oil prices might be signaling a worry about a second recession driving the demand for oil down or (more positively) seeing less inflationary pressures in the absence of a QE3

Heading Home

I visited Pineville, LA a few years back when I interviewed for a teaching job in town; it's a suburb of Alexandria in the central part of the state. It's also Rashard Lewis' home town.

Lewis is heading home, sorta, as he's been traded to New Orleans; he and a second rounder are coming from Washington while Trevor Ariza and Emeka Okafor head inside the beltway. Lewis might not actually get to stay, since his mondo contract is likely to be waived. At least he can head up I-49 with a $16M buyout in his back pocket.

With Anthony Davis slated to come to town in the draft, Okafor is odd man out in the middle. The well-spoken center might have some interesting outlets in DC. He's underachieved in the NBA so far, but might well find a home with the Team Formerly Known as the Bullets, letting Nene and John Wall take the alpha dog spots.

 

Send in the Clown Questions

We're have our first sighting of the signature Bryce Harper reporter put-down in politics, coming from fellow Mormon (and likely WashNat fan) Harry Reid-

In a press availability with reporters this afternoon Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid shot down a reporter’s question using some rather colorful language.

“I don’t want to answer that question. That’s a clown question bro,” Mr. Reid said eliciting laughs.

However, here's the bozo-bait via USA Today

Reid was being asked to respond to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's comment that he's waiting for Mitt Romney to weigh in on the DREAM Act, the legislation that would create legal status for some children of illegal immigrants. Reid also was asked if he had any intention of bringing up the DREAM Act for a vote to get senators on the record.

That's actually a fairly serious question, bro, especially when the Obama team unilaterally had a DREAM last week.

Clubbed Med

I've been a bit under the weather over the weekend, so it's catch-up time.

Greece-postponing the crash that needs to happen; I don't see the Greeks making the cuts needed to balance things especially with the establishment parties that are now in charge. The second election surprised me, as their mainstream conservative New Democracy party got an expanded plurality, enough to patch together a majority with the mainstream socialist PASOK.

I was kinda rooting for the hard-left Syriza to win, since they'd give the ECB and IMF the MDS (middle digit salute) and get back to normal sooner, if normal includes nationalizing the banks.

_________

Egypt-Have Murci! Mohammed Mursi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, beat out the general's choice 52-48. The next question is how much authority the generals will let him have and whether they'll make their autocoup throwing out the parliamentary elections stick. Neither option seems all that palatable and Israel is seeing their Sinai border get more problematic; whatever happens in Egypt will have spillovers to the east, especially if the MB start to back their sister-movement Hamas.

___________

Syria-the Russians are sending a gator freighter there. The cover is to allow for the evacuation of Russian nationals, but it also give a shield to Assad and friends if the west does want to intervene; they might have to shoot at Russians to do so.