Without question, this blog is poignantly depressing & distressing for the most part. But, I don't make the news..., I merely aim to make all who will wake up & pay attention aware of what's happening to America. Sadly, things are deteriorating faster & faster with each passing day.
Our federal government, frantic & clueless, is destroying the very fabric our nation was founded upon. If you don't get the picture, then you're clueless as well, just perhaps not frantic...yet. Yet, there are those of us who have the Peace that passes all understanding, and fear no evil.
Your individual situation may not be directly affected at this time, but it soon will be. And not only yours, but all future generations of Americans.
Life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness are becoming just words on an ignored & forgotten paper. Our Constitution & Declaration of Independence are great historical documents, but aren't relevant here anymore...
The evolving structure of America and our government is and has become exactly what our forefathers left England & Europe for in the 16th Century, and then later rose up in revolution against 250 years ago.
The "shot heard round the world" fired at Lexington on April 19, 1775 began the war for American Independence. It ended eight and a half years later September 3, 1783 with the Treaty of Paris.
Lest you mistake me calling for another revolution, NO, I'm calling for REVIVAL. A revival of all that America stood for from the beginning; "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal... that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." With sole & special emphasis on our Creator, not us.
We are a nation sick & riddled with spiritual cancer. A cancer of the heart & mind that only our Creator can heal. All that we now see & experience are the symptoms of this cancer, spread out into every aspect of our existence. We do not need grandiose fiscal stimulus, but the Divine stimulus of the Great Physician.
If you cannot see the spiritual warfare underway in this land, then the cancer has blinded you as well.
Years ago, as a naive Believer in Christ, I too was ambivalent about the depravity of sin in our lives, and the overall spiritual welfare of our families, our society, and our nation. But over the last forty plus years, I cannot ignore all that's gone on. The devastation is not someplace distant from us, it's in our face, and threatening everything we once held sacred & dear. And, soon, it will all be taken away...
Dear Reader, I cannot coerce, cajole or scare you into righteousness, that's not my aim. My aim is to point to the Healer, the Redeemer, the Living Water, the Bread of Life:
"And the LORD said,...every one that is bitten, when he looks upon it (Him), shall live." Num 21:8
"Look unto Yeshua, the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is now set down at the right hand of the throne of God." "Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious reappearing of the great God and our Saviour Yeshua the Messiah; Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works." Heb 12:2, Titus 2:13-14
This is who & what the Holy Spirit inspired America since the founding of Jamestown & Plymouth Rock. But, what is America now?
____________NEWS_____________
No Plan to Jump-Start Economy With No Manual
President-elect Barack Obama on Friday in Washington. Mr. Obama’s stimulus package is being shaped by political as well as economic imperatives.WASHINGTON — The fresh evidence on Friday of the economy’s downward spiral focused even more attention on two questions: Is the stimulus package being pushed by President-elect Barack Obama big enough? And will the component parts being assembled by Congress provide the most bang for the buck?
With the Federal Reserve having just about reached the limit of how much it can help the economy with cuts in the interest rate, Washington’s ability to end or at least limit the recession depends in large part on the effectiveness of the big package of additional spending and tax cuts that Mr. Obama has made the centerpiece of his agenda.
And with the economy facing what now seems sure to be the sharpest downturn since the 1930s, the financial system balky and the government facing towering budget deficits, economists and policy makers acknowledge that there is no playbook.
“We have very few good examples to guide us,” said William G. Gale, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, the liberal-leaning research organization. “I don’t know of any convincing evidence that what has been proposed is going to be enough.”
In part because Mr. Obama wants and needs bipartisan support, the package is being shaped by political as well as economic imperatives, complicating the process by putting competing ideological approaches into the mix.
It includes $300 billion in temporary tax cuts for individuals and businesses, in part to attract Republican support. It includes a big expansion of safety-net programs like unemployment insurance, which Democrats say makes both economic and social sense. It includes more money for highways, schools and other public infrastructure; more money for “green” energy projects; and more money to help state governments pay for health care and education.
Republicans, as always, are advocating for more and broader tax cuts. But the evidence is ambiguous about whether tax cuts will really spur economic activity at a time when consumers and businesses alike are frozen in fear and reluctant to let go of their money.
The risk is that Mr. Obama and the Congress will weigh down their effort with measures that cost many billions of dollars but may not have much impact on economic activity.
Tax breaks, for example, usually produce less than $1 of stimulus for every dollar they cost, economists say. Spending on public construction projects, like highways and bridges, produces the most economic activity — but there is a limit to how many projects are “shovel-ready,” and even those take time to generate jobs and ripple through the economy.
Christina Romer, whom Mr. Obama has designated to be his chief economist, concluded in research she helped write in 1994 that interest-rate policy is the most powerful force in economic recoveries and that fiscal stimulus generally acts too slowly to be of much help in pulling the economy out of recessions, though associates said she now supports a big stimulus package if policy makers roll it out early enough in the recession.
The goal behind all those ideas is to jump-start economic activity by getting as much money as possible as quickly as possible into the hands of consumers and businesses, trying to make up for the falling demand in the private sector that is leading to higher unemployment. And although the package includes a big dose of tax cuts, it represents a big departure from President Bush’s playbook by relying heavily on direct government spending.
“This is not an intellectual exercise, and there’s no pride of authorship,” Mr. Obama told a news conference in Washington on Friday. “If members of Congress have good ideas, if they can identify a project for me that will create jobs in an efficient way — that does not hamper our ability to, over the long term, get control of our deficit; that is good for the economy — then I’m going to accept it.”
Mr. Obama’s aides said he did not intend to unveil a detailed formal proposal but rather to allow Congress to fill in the outline that he has proposed.
Given the recent scale of the downturn — the nation lost 1.5 million jobs in the last three months of 2008, and economic output during those months shrank by 6 percent compared with same period in 2007 — economists were highly uncertain about whether the economic plan would provide enough firepower.
Adam Posen, the deputy director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said Mr. Obama’s plan could provide just the right boost — if it was carried out properly.
But as the Federal Reserve has been learning for months now, the biggest obstacle to economic activity right now is not a shortage of money. The real obstacle is pervasive fear, which has made banks reluctant to lend and companies reluctant to invest in expansion.
Alan J. Auerbach, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, said the overall scale of the program looked “reasonable” at $800 billion over two years.
“It’s much bigger than anything that’s been tried in my lifetime, but this is scarier than anything we’ve seen in my lifetime,” Professor Auerbach said.
Left to their own devices, many Congressional Democrats would prefer to focus almost entirely on spending projects and avoid tax incentives.
“One thing we learned from the Depression is marginal, incentive changes don’t work very well when the economy is falling away from you very rapidly,” said Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota and chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. “And that’s what’s occurring here.”
But Republicans have been adamant about the need for tax breaks, and Mr. Obama has made it clear he would like to bring as many members on board as possible.
Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, said in an interview, “I really do believe that if you combine the evidence of history along with the psychological concerns about making investments in the economy today, the better bang for your buck is lower taxes that are certain and permanent and lasting.”
The Democratic plan would direct much of the stimulus money to low-income and middle-income families. That reflects both traditional Democratic concerns about helping lower-income households, as well as the view of economists who say that people with lower incomes are more likely to spend rather than save any money they receive from the government.
Mark M. Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, a forecasting firm, told a forum of House Democrats this week that the “bang for the buck” — the additional economic activity generated by each dollar of fiscal stimulus — was highest for increases in food and unemployment benefits. Each dollar of additional money for food stamps yields $1.73 in additional economic activity, Mr. Zandi estimated, and each extra dollar in unemployment benefits yields about $1.63.
By contrast, Mr. Zandi estimated, most tax cuts produce less than a dollar for each dollar of stimulus, especially if the tax cuts are temporary, because people save at least some of their extra money.
One of the few tax cuts that economists say can generate a positive bang for the buck is a reduction in payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare.
Mr. Obama wants to offer a tax credit of $500 for individuals, and up to $1,000 for families, which they would receive through a temporary reduction in payroll tax withholdings. The idea, known as the Making Work Pay credit, was part of Mr. Obama’s economic platform during the presidential campaign. As originally envisioned, it would have been available to households with annual incomes as high as $200,000.
But economists said the tax credit could have drawbacks as an economic stimulus measure, mainly because people usually save part of the money or use it to pay down debt. That makes good sense from an individual’s standpoint but does nothing to increase economic activity.
Joel Slemrod, a professor of tax policy at the University of Michigan, said, “The research I’ve done on the 2001 and 2008 tax rebates suggests that the proportion of the rebates that went to spending was rather small, about one-third.”
After Congress approved Mr. Bush’s tax rebate to individuals and families last spring, economic activity jumped fleetingly during the summer, and then stalled out again in the fall.
Some Democratic officials were also skeptical.
“It’s not that rebates don’t work under normal conditions,” said one senior Democratic aide in the Senate. “It’s that current conditions are not normal and are not favorable to rebates or broad tax relief.”__________________________________________
Bank of England Cuts Rate to Lowest in Over 300 Years
By Svenja O’Donnell
Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) -- The Bank of England cut the benchmark interest rate to the lowest since the central bank was founded in 1694 as policy makers tried to prevent the credit squeeze from deepening Britain’s recession.
The bank rate was reduced a half-point to 1.5 percent, bringing policy makers closer to the point at which they will run out of options to fight the financial crisis with conventional tools. The pound rose against the euro and the dollar because some investors had bet on a larger reduction.
“They’ll come down below 1 percent by the second quarter,” said Philip Shaw, chief economist at Investec Securities in London. “Things have deteriorated further and this highlights the need for further monetary stimulus. Non- conventional monetary policy techniques are on the cards.”
Bank of England Governor Mervyn King may have to cooperate with Prime Minister Gordon Brown to inject money into the economy and the financial system through so-called quantitative easing as Britain suffers its first recession since 1991.
After almost 16 years of continuous growth, the economy contracted 0.6 percent in the third quarter, and the Bank of England predicts it will shrink 1.3 percent in 2009.
“The availability of credit to both households and businesses has tightened further, pointing to the need for further measures to increase the flow of lending to the non- financial sector,” the Bank of England said in a statement. “Output is likely to continue to fall sharply during the first part of this year.”
Pound Rises
The pound climbed as much as 1.3 percent against Europe’s single currency after the rate decision and traded at 90.44 pence per euro as of 4:32 p.m. in London. Against the dollar, it increased as much as 1.2 percent and traded at $1.5193.
The central bank reduced the interest rate by 1.5 percentage points in November and by 1 percentage point in December.
The Bank of England may soon have to join the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan in expanding its toolkit to fight the financial crisis. U.S. officials, led by Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, lowered their main interest rate close to zero in December and on Jan. 5 started buying mortgage-backed securities.
Rates in Japan are also close to zero and the central bank has increased its emphasis on adding funds to the financial system.
Treasury Role
The European Central Bank has cut its key interest rate by 1.75 percentage points to 2.5 percent since early October, and may reduce it again next week. President Jean-Claude Trichet may provide clues on his thinking when he gives a speech in Bratislava at 8 p.m. local time today.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling told the Financial Times this week that the U.K. Treasury may need to play a bigger role in setting monetary policy if interest rates approach zero. That may prompt the government to authorize the central bank to buy assets including government securities and perhaps create money to pay for them.
Darling today tried to damp speculation the government is ready to create money as part of a quantitative easing policy.
“Nobody is talking about printing money,” he told broadcasters today.
Financial institutions are hoarding cash and a Bank of England survey last week showed they plan to constrict credit further even after the government unveiled a 50 billion-pound ($75 billion) rescue plan last year. Mortgage approvals dropped to the lowest level since at least 1999 in November.
Brown ‘Fighting’
“We are fighting to do the right things,” Brown said today in Liverpool, northwest England, where he is holding his weekly Cabinet meeting. “The global banking system failed. We have got to rebuild it.”
“It’s baked in the cake that we’ve got higher unemployment coming, and that economic growth is likely to remain weak for a long time,” said George Buckley, chief U.K. economist at Deutsche Bank AG in London. The Bank of England “can still cut further.” The benchmark rate has never been this low since King William III founded the central bank to fund a war against Louis XIV’s France. The rate began at 6 percent and fell no lower than 4 percent throughout the 18th century.
Rate History
It touched 2 percent several times in the second half of the 19th century. The central bank held it at that level throughout World War II until 1951.
Unemployment rose at the fastest pace since 1991 in November and a survey released yesterday by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation and KPMG showed the number of workers placed in permanent jobs fell at the fastest pace since 1997 last month.
Barclays Plc, the U.K.’s third-biggest bank, said yesterday it will cut 408 information-technology jobs, primarily in London and Cheshire, England. Marks & Spencer Group Plc, Britain’s largest clothing retailer, said it will cut 1,230 of its staff.
Easing price pressures are giving the Bank of England scope to keep cutting interest rates. Inflation slowed to 4.1 percent in November from 4.5 percent the previous month. King predicted on Dec. 16 that the rate of annual price increases may drop below the 1 percent lower limit this year.
“I’m not sure interest rates will necessarily get to zero,” said Matthew Sharratt, an economist at Bank of America Corp. in London. “We may see them at 0.5 percent by the end of the first quarter. But now it’s really about what they do about quantitative easing.”
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Florida QB Tebow's 'John 3:16' hottest Google search
Tebow inscribed Bible reference on eye black for championship game
Posted: January 09, 2009
11:35 am Eastern
WorldNetDaily
 Florida quarterback Tim Tebow blazes New Testament verse of John 3:16 on his face last night after he led the Gators to the BCS National Championship |
Google Trends this morning had "John 3:16" ahead of searches for actress Mary Lynn Rajskub and the Windows 7 beta download. Searches for the Bible verse reached a peak during last night's game.
In previous games, Tebow, an outspoken evangelical Christian who was born to missionary parents in the Philippines, sported on his eye black Philippians 4:13, notes Christianity Today. The verse says, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me."
The well-known verse John 3:16 is commonly presented as a summation of the Gospel: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
Tebow, who won the Heisman Trophy last year as a sophomore, led the Gators to a 24-14 victory last night over the University of Oklahoma.
Tebow and his four siblings were homeschooled by their parents, but a Florida law allowed him to play football for a public school team. He was named Florida's high school Player of the Year in both his junior and senior seasons and developed a reputation for toughness, finishing a game with a broken leg.
Google users, at one point, searched for "John 3:16" more than any other term |
In an interview last year with the Florida Baptist Witness, Tebow said football is not even the third most important thing in his life.
"I am fortunate to have family members, coaches and teammates around who can help me stay focused on the right things for us to be successful," he said. "For me, every day includes four things: God, family, academics and football, in that order."
Tebow's "John 3:16" display last night drew attention in the blogosphere.
William Lobdell, author of "Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America - and Found Unexpected Peace," had a mixed reaction.
But he concluded: "I have to wonder if his coaches or NCAA officials would allow him to have 'There Is' 'No God' written on his eye black below his right and left eyes.
"I imagine that these personal slogans will soon be banned," he wrote.
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