Congress stops the bailout

Supported by Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain, Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and President Bush, the $700 billion bailout bill seemed inevitable. I remarked to my wife this morning that I was sure it was going to pass, even though I’m completely against it.

It’s not the first time I’ve been wrong.

It is unclear, of course, what this will mean. If we believe Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and President Bush, we have basically just brought about the end of Western civilization. Others think that we just put a brake on Socialism in the US. I think we just prevented a massive power grab for the Executive Branch of the federal government.

Clearly, the public doesn’t believe that we are facing the kind of peril that some of our leaders want us to fear.

Also, apparently, Congress responded to that interest. The measure failed with very split decisions by the parties … certainly not a party-line vote.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in every way — what will the public think? What will the markets do? What will happen to the economy? What will happen to politicians on each side of the vote?

We’ll see what happens, I guess. For my own part, I’m pleased. I’m not sure exactly what is going to happen, but businesses need to be allowed to learn this lesson.

Even great big banks can fail when mismanaged.

In terms of the Presidential race, this is very interesting … neither of them can claim any real kind of victory, since each endorsed a plan that has failed in the House. No bragging rights to be gained, there.

Yes, the stock market plummeted today. Wall Street wanted this bailout, naturally. The fact that it didn’t happen didn’t make those people very happy. However, they’ll recover. If they won’t, then possibly they shouldn’t have been here in the first place.

Paulson E-mail Hoax

This is quite possibly the funniest political joke that I’ve seen in quite some time:

Your Urgent Help Needed

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson

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Last Night’s Debate

First of all, I’d like to start by calling the winner — plainly, no question about it, Jim Lehrer took this one. The two Presidential candidates went to great pains not to commit to anything new, but Mr. Lehrer did a great job forcing the issues.

Here’s the transcript, please enjoy.

In the opening statements, I’d like to give Sen. McCain credit for a lot of class … he noted that Sen. Ted Kennedy has been taken to the hospital and wished him well. As much as I’ve criticized John McCain lately, one of the things I’ve liked about him, and I’m glad to see continuing, is that he does typically see other politicians as human beings, and friends. That has its ups and downs, but this is an “up.”

Defining the Pharisees

On Sunday morning, while I was driving the boys home from church, we were talking about the sermon and I asked them if they remembered who the Pharisees were. My elder son said that they were “the religious leaders of Jesus’ day.” Great answer, but it left something to be desired. So, I set out to explain who they were and why Jesus never had anything good to say about them.

I used this as an example to help them understand:

It’s important to get a good night’s sleep. The boys’ mother, therefore, has a rule that they’re not allowed to have any caffeine after 5pm on school nights. But the Pharisees would start taking that rule and trying to make it better … or to make themselves look better.

So, the rule is 5. But you never know … if someone pours a glass of tea at 4:30, they might not finish it until after 5 by mistake. So, let’s say no caffeine after 3. Even at that, we want to prove that we’re not even tempted to break the rule, so there’s to be no mentioning of caffeine or anything with caffeine (including chocolate, and therefore chocolate milk) after 2:30.

Why doesn’t John McCain just concede now?

Does anyone else think that John McCain could save us all a lot of bother if he’d just concede the election now?

The more I read of his campaign, the more I think that he’s more or less lost interest in the whole thing, and is pretty much phoning it in. After all, he’s had his convention, he’s made his headlines, but now … you know … being President does look like it might be a lot of work. Apparently, there’s more to it than making attack ads and calling your opponent names. Who knew?

And so we come to the matter of tonight’s debate. He announced that he was suspending his campaign and running to Washington to save the day, and wasn’t sure whether he’d do the debate … giving Barack Obama the opportunity to look vastly more Presidential by pointing out that Presidents don’t get to focus on just one problem at a time. President McCain or President Obama (Sorry, I know it’s a scary thought, but let’s just deal with it ..) will have no choice but to deal with the markets, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia, China, North Korea, Venezuela, hurricane recovery, and al-Qaeda reports all at the same time. He doesn’t get to have Markets Week.

Mike Huckabee on the Bailout

(This is from a HuckPAC e-mail. This is a great example of why I backed Gov. Huckabee in the first place!)

Dear Huck PAC family,

I ask 2 things of you right now:

First, read this email completely.  I’m including my thoughts on the “bailout bill,” and I believe you will find them of interest.  Second, if you agree with what I have to say, support my efforts at Huck PAC so we’ll continue to have a strong voice and we’ll have the capacity to support conservative candidates all across the nation who will stand and fight for our conservative principles … especially in times of crisis like we are facing as a nation today.

Christian Carnival CCXLIII

Welcome to the 243rd Christian Carnival!

Yes, I’m hosting. I had every intention of working on a really clever theme, and grouping the posts by relating them to Rich Mullins songs … this being a week after the anniversary of his death.

However, I’m in the process of fighting a brutal version of the common cold that has turned my brain into cotton balls. Frankly, this is going to be more like “The NyQuil Edition” of the Christian Carnival. (No, I’m not grouping the posts by symptoms … although that might be fun, too.) Sorry …

Anyway, there are apparently some Christians blogging out in the world whose brains are very much alive, well, and cotton-free.

Without further adieu, therefore, here are the posts of the 243rd Christian Carnival:

Mark Olson at Pseudo-Polymath (which you’ve got to admit, is one of the coolest blog names out there!) posts “Carnival of Christian Reconciliation: Considering Liturgical Chaos” for us. Yes, he’s linking to another Carnival! I’ll pretend not to take that personally. As he describes the post:

While this is written for a less regularly held carnival, I think it is of interest here. What might we make of our liturgical differences. I attend a liturgical church. In this post, I pose a question for those who do not.

Claudia from Standing Straight has a very clever post looking at home designs and using them to talk about the futility of worldly thinking in “Building Spiritual Homes.” As she describes it:

Some unusual home designs caught my eye this week – they aren’t very practical and it made me think of how we can come up with clever ideas for living that, unless in agreement with God’s Word, will also be unprofitable.

Casey Petersen at The Limitless ties the nation’s financial problems directly to our moral problems in one of the clearest ways that I’ve seen anyone do in “The Moral Recession of America.” Nicely done, Casey! Casey says:

The Financial Crisis is just a symptom of the larger Moral Recession in America.

I couldn’t agree more!

FMF of Free Money Finance asks “Is It OK for a Christian Church to Accept Credit Card Donations?” That’s probably an issue that will keep coming up in the near future, and we might as well look into what we think and believe now, right?

Just like money is amoral, so are credit cards — they are neither good nor bad in and of themselves. It’s how they’re used that matters.

Somehow I’ve got into a financial theme, huh? Next in line is Richard H. Anderson of dokeo kago grapho soi kratistos Theophilos who presents “A Modern Day Reading of the Parable” referring to the Parable of the Laborers, Lehman Brothers, and AIG.

Diane R. of Crossroads: Where Faith and Inquiry Meet has some comments about the book “Blue Like Jazz,” which she shares with us in “Blue Like Huh?“

The young Christians just love Donald Miller’s book, “Blue Like Jazz.” I’ve read it and I think it’s awful. Is this a generational difference or something else?

Drew Tatusko of Notes from Off-Center poses the question, “Can a Same-Sex Couple Receive Christ?” In the modern era, it’s another question we’ll have to face more and more … what do you think? Drew says:

The question is if there is a healthy gay relationship in which one can learn better how to relate to God? I think there is and there is ample evidence from gay partnerships that this is true. So can a gay couple receive the love of Christ (which includes an ethical demand to love God and neighbor) in their relationship more fully than outside that relationship?

Ronnica, writing at Tale of a Kansas Girl, reminds us of “Men and Women of Whom the World is Not Worthy” — and even does it without dangling the preposition! She notes that too many of us forget about persecution that Christians face in the world, and the evangelists who dare to stand up to that kind of evil for the work to which we’re called.

Sunday’s sermon was out of the end of Hebrews 11. Certainly not a fluffy message, but neither is the gospel.

This week at Light Along the Journey, John wasn’t sure whether he should write a Bible study or a John Wayne script, so he sort of did both in his post How to Keep from Getting Bushwacked! This was a very enjoyable post. I loved it.

Rodney Olsen at (where else?) RodneyOlsen.net asks about a new development in the Christian subculture, this time in the form of a new tech service. Specifically, he asks, “Do We Need a Christian Twitter?” Of course, since I can’t even figure out why anyone needs a Twitter anyway, maybe I’m not qualified to answer that question.

Michael at Sermon Select Online offers a sermon from 1997 about justification by faith in “Romans 5 Justified” He says:

Tom is a gifted teacher; able to communicate profound theological concepts of the New Covenant in an easy to understand manner that blesses the listener with insights into the “deeper things of God”.

Francois Viljoen at Liberta-Freedom reminds us that we’re all offered wisdom, and compares it to other desirable things … this post might well make you hungry, by the way. Francois says about the post:

The first article in a series on wisdom. This article takes a look at what the Bible says about how you can become wise.

Heath Countryman at Espirit d’Escalier takes a practical look at life and how we interact with others in a pizza restaurant dealing with the wake of Hurricane Ike. The post is called “3 Days, 36 hours, and $7,000 worth of pizza.” Really, what can you add to that?

Weekend Fisher at Heart, Mind, Soul, and Strength talks about “A Question of Ethics: Media and Disaster Preparation” in another Ike-related post.

Weekend Fisher, close to the coast in the Hurricane Ike strike zone, raises a challenge as to whether the hysterical headlines have been entirely ethical. In the comments, a news station employee weighs into the conversation.

Honzo, at Theology for the Masses, asks about how to deal with Christians with differing views in “The Christian Other.” I know a lot of people who have wrestled with this kind of issue, and it’s a great topic to discuss. How do we deal with those with whom we disagree?

I have tried to let everyone who submitted a post know that I got the submission, but I know that I didn’t comment on a few, especially the ones at came in in the past hour or two. There were also a couple posts outside the range of this Carnival, and I will update if I get replies to the e-mails I sent to those people.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the Carnival … and thank you to everyone reading!

The Christian Carnival is a weekly collection, posted every Wednesday, of blog posts by Christians of any persuasion, submitted by the bloggers ourselves, and hosted by any number of Christian bloggers.

Want to submit an article? Just choose a post (one post only per Carnival per blogger, please!) and click here.

Want to find where the Carnival will be each week? Click here.

This is why I love Peggy Noonan

If you don’t read Peggy Noonan’s column in the Wall Street Journal, then you’re doing yourself a grave disservice.

Whether I agree with her, disagree, or find the column to be a mixed bag, she’s one of the clearest-thinking and best-written columnists around, and her articles are consistently good.

Today’s is no exception. She’s looking at the mean spirit in the campaign, and commenting quite brilliantly as to why it’s increasing. I agree with her.

Praying for Stupidity

In a different thread, on a different blog (to which I’m not linking because I don’t want to restart that argument), I made some mention of the Just War Theory and the fact that it may well be the case that only one side of a war will be taking the Just War “high road,” so to speak.

The other guy responded to that simply by saying “That’s stupid.”

Perhaps, from a certain mindset, it is stupid.

However, I think that we’d be better off if more of us were willing to be so stupid. At least, those of us who are called Christians need to be willing to be so.

Tell me again, “no one’s pro-abortion”

Perhaps I’ll get a dismissive wave and be told that this is from Canada, so it doesn’t count. I disagree, especially given that people on this side of the border often speak the same way …

But others fear Ms. Palin’s emergence as a parental role model sends a different message. As a vocal opponent of abortion, Ms. Palin’s widely discussed decision to keep her baby, knowing he would be born with the condition, may inadvertently influence other women who may lack the necessary emotional and financial support to do the same, according to André Lalonde, executive vice-president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada.

Dr. Lalonde said that above all else, women must be free to choose, and that popular messages to the contrary could have detrimental effects on women and their families.

“The worry is that this will have an implication for abortion issues in Canada,” he said.

So, let’s pretend for a moment that I’m reading this from an honest, pro-choice perspective. I should be objecting strongly that Dr. Lalonde is deriding Gov. Palin’s choice, right? After all, she has the right to choose life is she so desires. Doesn’t she?

That’s about all the time I can spend pretending to be a pro-choicer. Look at what this doctor is saying. His concern is clearly that by choosing to let Trig live, Gov. Palin is going to influence other people into what he sees as a bad decision.

While he gives a nod in the direction that people must be free to choose, he clearly has a problem with that choice being made the way Gov. Palin did. He has presented it, naked and obvious: Dr. Lalonde is plainly pro-abortion.

Of course, he’s talking about children with Down Syndrome. People try to rationalize and argue that Down Syndrome is so hard on children born with it and their families that it’s better just to abort them. I don’t understand that line of thinking. Maybe that’s because I’ve known too many people with Down Syndrome and their families to buy into the idea that the world have been better off without them.

I’m not going to run with the Eugenics argument for now. I’m not even going to draw any connections between this Dr. Lalonde’s view of children with Down Syndrome and this other pro-death cult’s view of Down Syndrome.

All I’m going to do is ask if there is anyone out there who can even try to argue that Dr. Lalonde’s position is really just “pro-choice” and not solidly pro-abortion.

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