Suspension of Disbelief

I Don’t Want To Alarm You

I’m no banking expert. Or anything remotely related to one. Period.

I don’t know what to make of the current crisis in the finance system.

I don’t even know if I’m using the right lingo.

But here’s something I just read:

Dominoes: Large Euro, US Banks On The Brink

We are witnessing a failure in government. Our Congress cannot work together to provide an immediate fix to a problem it created in the first place: forcing the American financial sector to extend mortgages to those who were high risk borrowers in order to champion to the American people that more minorities own homes than ever. That worked well under a booming economy. But when the natural cycle of economics turned downward, fear dismissed became reality unavoidable. The house of cards came tumbling down.

And even still, amid all the haggling and fighting going on in Congress over how to shore up the financial cash crisis, not a word is mentioned about changing the counter-intuitive practices forced upon mortgage lenders in the first place. In this respect, it’s not unlike how Congress and the White House chose to address illegal immigration: by trying to deal with those already here first rather than initially addressing the cause: the influx of illegals that continues to flow unabated.

Make no mistake, if we wake to Black Monday this week, the responsibility lies squarely upon Congress and the electorate which has put them there, not our banks. Our banks’ hands were forced by mandates from Washington, not their boardrooms.

And here we are. With a Congress so polarized that they are incapable of working together.

[…]

America does not seem nearly as polarized as its elected representation. But perhaps in less than one full week, it really won’t matter but for hindsight and lessons going forward. Hard, painful, demanding lessons.

I don’t have time to say more, though there’s plenty I could say.

For now, I remind you about Roger Hertzler’s article I posted here.

Welcome to Today!

Putin

Oooops! 😯 Maybe that’s not such a good photo to go with the title!

Here, this next one is better:

Apply our hearts to wisdom

Today is our daughter Dora’s twentieth birthday. So I made the above wallpaper with her in mind because of this transition from her teens to her twenties. Of course, it’s a good verse for all of us.

Now…two news items to start out your day….

Happiness is key to longer life

“Happiness does not heal, but happiness protects against falling ill” says Ruut Veenhoven of Rotterdam’s Erasmus University in a study to be published next month.

After reviewing 30 studies carried out worldwide over periods ranging from one to 60 years, the Dutch professor said the effects of happiness on longevity were “comparable to that of smoking or not”.

That special flair for feeling good, he said, could lengthen life by between 7.5 and 10 years.

The finding brings a vital new piece to a puzzle currently being assembled by researchers worldwide on just what makes us happy — and on the related question of why people blessed with material wealth in developed nations no longer seem satisfied with their lives.

And this less happy story:

Russia vs Georgia

A fragile cease-fire appeared even more shaky as Russia’s foreign minister declared that the world “can forget about any talk about Georgia’s territorial integrity.”

The declaration from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov came simultaneously with the announcement that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was meeting in the Kremlin with the leaders of Georgia’s two separatist provinces.

“One can forget about any talk about Georgia’s territorial integrity because, I believe, it is impossible to persuade South Ossetia and Abkhazia to agree with the logic that they can be forced back into the Georgian state,” Lavrov told reporters.

[…]

Russian troops also appeared to be settling in elsewhere in Georgia.

[…]

The scene underlined how closely the soldiers Russia calls peacekeepers are allied with its military.

I said two news items, but here’s a third one to end on a more positive note:

Anything into oil

“Working with the USDA we’ve identified enough waste material around the country, we truly believe we can make the United States totally energy independent of foreign countries in about five years,” he said.

WND originally reported on the project in March as Bell, an agricultural researcher, confirmed he’d isolated and modified specific bacteria that will, on a very large scale, naturally and rapidly convert plant material – including the leftovers from food – into hydrocarbons to fuel cars and trucks.

That means trash like corn stalks and corn cobs – even the grass clippings from suburban lawns – can be turned into oil and gasoline to run trucks, buses and cars.

Make it a good day today!

Good News…

…followed by bad.

Potential Leukemia Breakthrough

Australian scientists said Monday they had mapped a blood cell structure which could hold the key to improved drug treatments for diseases such as leukaemia, asthma and rheumatoid arthritis.

[…]

“We hope that this discovery will lead to targeted therapies, more specific to the malfunctioning cells seen in diseases such as leukaemia.”

Lesbian, Atheist, Muslim to “Attempt” Christian Life

A new television program being broadcast this month follows a group of 13 non-Christian volunteers, who, on camera, attempt to “live by the teachings of the Bible for three weeks.”

“Make Me a Christian,” broadcast in a three-part series, asks the participants to be mentored by four pastors from a variety of backgrounds – Anglican, Catholic, Evangelical, and Pentecostal – as they attempt to live like Christians, an effort that runs in stark contrast to many of the participants’ backgrounds.

The 13 volunteers who will make the effort include a tattooed militant atheist biker, a man who converted from Christianity to Islam, a lesbian schoolteacher, a lap-dancing witch with a lust for expensive shoes, a middle-class yuppie couple that can’t find time to spend with their children and a party animal who claims he’s slept with over 150 women.

Whether people can be made into Christians by a three-week crash course in discipleship, however, remains a matter of debate.

[…]

The show’s website concludes with the teaser line, “All this is just the start of their three hard weeks. Can they embrace Christian ideals and learn to live in a different way or will their old lives prove just too strong to resist?”

You cannot live the Christian life without Jesus.

There is no Christian life without Christ. Not in real life. And certainly not in for-TV life.

Help Us

As a Russian jet bombed fields around his village, Djimali Avago, a Georgian farmer, asked me: “Why won’t America and Nato help us? If they won’t help us now, why did we help them in Iraq?”

A similar sense of betrayal coursed through the conversations of many Georgians here yesterday as their troops retreated under shellfire and the Russian Army pressed forward to take full control of South Ossetia.

Note to other countries: Who will go to war against Russia for you? 😯

US-Russian Tensions “Worsen”

Dozens of Russian warplanes staged air raids in Georgia on Monday, officials said, but Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the United States of trying to undermine Russia’s mounting military offensive.

[…]

Russia and Georgia pursued their attacks as diplomatic tensions worsened. US President George W. Bush, Georgia’s biggest western ally, said he had told Russia’s influential prime minister that its bombing of Georgia was “unacceptable.”

Putin responded by accusing the US of trying to disrupt the Russian military operation by transporting Georgian troops from Iraq into the “conflict zone.”

“I regret that some of our partners are not helping us but in fact are trying to impede us,” Putin said directly referring to the US flights of Georgian troops.

[…]

The UN refugee agency said up to 80 percent of Gori’s population of 50,000 have fled the city because of Russian attacks.

[…]

Russia, which has already moved battleships to the Black Sea and said it has sunk a Georgian navy vessel, is preparing to deploy 9,000 troops to bolster its forces inside a second separatist Georgian region, Abkhazia, a military spokesman was quoted as saying by Interfax.

It will send more than 350 armoured vehicles to add to what is officially a Russian peacekeeping force in the breakaway region, the spokesman said.

“What is officially a Russian peacekeeping force” highlights a concept I’ve found difficult to grasp for years. Look at Russia’s track record through fairly recent history and who wouldn’t consider their “friendly” military presence anywhere without at least some trepidation?

PS to Putin: So some of your partners aren’t helping you? Well, what’s the US to do when it’s also partners with your adversary? Ah, the strange world of geopolitics. And of plain ole politics. 🙄

Well, may the good news from Australia result in new and effective cures for leukemia. Amen.

Number 97

That’s where the United States ranks in the 2008 Global Peace Index. 😯

And this in a list of 140.

That means I live in a country that is less at peace than most.

And the folks in Bhutan (26), Vietnam (37), Libya (61), Cuba (62), China (67) and Rwanda (76) are better off in that department. 🙄

Something seems wrong with that picture.

It looks like Scandinavia is the place to be.

Last year’s #97?

Iran.

(The US ranked 96 in 2007.)

I say someone doesn’t know how to correctly define peace.

Lemme see if the folks at Dictionary.com know a good definition.

Hmmmm. Methinks I’ll save my observations on that subject for another post.

August 1

1980 — Ruby Yoder married me and thus became the Mrs. Roth she still is.

1988 — The national Rush Limbaugh Show starts.

2006 — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rejects a UN Security Council resolution that gives his nation until August 31 (2006, of course) to suspend uranium enrichment. 🙄

2007 — An Interstate bridge collapses into the Mississippi.

2008 — Thousands of people gather across Arctic regions, Siberia and China to see a total eclipse of the sun, despite Chinese warnings that it could augur bad luck.

2008 — The United States reaffirms a weekend deadline for Iran to answer an international offer to freeze its nuclear drive. 😯

2008 — A German medical team announces it had performed (on July 25-26) what it called the world’s first transplant of two full arms, on a farmer who (six years ago) had lost both his limbs in an accident.

Inflating vs Drilling

I meant to post this yesterday, but I’ve been too busy with Anabaptist Bookstore and Reaching Out Magazine:

Obama energy policy: ‘Inflate your tires’

"There are things you can do individually, though, to save energy," Obama said. "Making sure your tires are properly inflated – simple thing. But we could save all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling – if everybody was just inflating their tires? And getting regular tune-ups? You'd actually save just as much!"

This is stunning.

No wonder Congress shut down yesterday for their five-week break without doing whatever it was they were supposed to do about the “energy crisis.”

They just inflated their tires and away they went, saving oil so no more drilling would have to be done.

Somehow, that sounds like a perpetual motion machine.

PS: What if Dan Quayle had said that?

Above all, love God!