1. Mr Obama, horse trader.
2. The pinup goes East.
3. Gun control.
4. That he defended al-Qaeda does not mean he is unprincipled, recall John Adams and the Boston massacre case. On the other hand, it doesn’t mean that like John Adams, he is. 
5. Goverment control over … yet something else it doesn’t need to touch.
6. Of heart and sin.
7. Meta-linking.
8. Props to MacDonald, a gun bleg.
9. Another take on the McChrystal kerfuffle.
10. A bill and the Internet. Yah, push that “button” and no Democrat gets elected or re-elected for a decade.
11. A boy.
12. Bluffing?
13. Sex and mystery.

1. Wagging the dog in Afghanistan. 
2. Not unrelated.
3. One more.
4. Books.
5. A passing of a famous unknown girl. Memory eternal.
6. Dat new home buyer credit.
7. Of lobbying and unintended consequences.
8. Sucks to be blind in the UK these days.
9. Indian satire.
10. More on the Barak/Kagan criticism. I haven’t seen any defense of this position. Anybody got links to that?
11. Passive aggression and immigration.
12. Yah think?
13. Stupid PR tricks at Fermilab.
14. Of work and play.
15. Legal academics on confirmation.
16. And to wrap up, some humor to start your weekend.

The first thing he looks at in the opening chapter is perhaps one of the biggest causes of the recession. The US mortgage industry, specifically the two big government mortgage institutions. He begins by looking at the rising 90/10 income gap and locates its primary cause as education. He follows that story by looking at politicians and then a short history of mortgages in the US in the 20th (and current) century. Politicians respond quite quickly to pressures and unrest of the voting public. Currently in the US there is a rising income gap between those with HS education or less and those with college degrees and technical aptitude. This problem has been on the rise for the last 30 years. Politicians the long term (right?) recourse which is to attempt to “fix” the broken educational system. The quick fix is re-distribution. One particularly dangerous form of such redistribution is by given them loans. And lo, this is what we did. Begun by the Clinton administration and followed by Mr Bush the mandate for Fanni and Fred were to sell more and more NINJA and liar loans. 

Here’s one thing not brought out clearly in the first chapter, but which seemed problematic. Fannie/Fred wrote $3 trillion of questionable loans in the last 10 years. 20% of them defaulted and where one of the driving factors behind our current recent economic unrest as the banks had some little difficulty absorbing that. Here’s the thing. The housing prices skyrocketed in a large part under the pressure of this expansion. Now they are falling. What happens when the next 20 or 40% of those loans default? 

Isn’t it wonderful that Fannie and Freddie are government institutions but aren’t accounted for by/on the budget? Clever of them. 

1. On the escrow account and the Gulf.
2. Holocaust and fiction.
3. Not in the news so much.
4. On prayer and silence.
5. Ms Kagan, here and here. Barak from wiki? Anybody else have much on that guy?
6. A remark on McChrystal. For myself, I think the press shot itself (yet again) in the foot on this one. Soldiers from time out of time have always gripped about their bosses. Apparently the inflammatory remarks in the RS article came from a period of downtime in a airport bar after a long flight (alcohol was “involved”). I think the main effect will be that the military will have yet another reason to distrust the press, justifiably this time. That being said, given Mr Yon’s report McChrystal (and likely many of those scewered by McChrystal) should be removed and replaced by more effective people.
7. A driving feat. I drove 730 miles @ 79.6 mpg in my car. And I drove the speed limit (unlike I think did Mr Gerdes).
8. Some inconvenient questions.
9. Maths and the World Cup.
10. How about tennis?
11. Obamacare and its effects.

Good morning.

1. Of dreams and rabbis in late antiquity.
2. That housing thing.
3. Those new medical regulations and here as well.
4. That rising tide.
5. Ms Kagan.
6. A lady and stone.
7. A Christian hero.
8. Mr McChrystal, here and here.
9. And the real reason he should (have) go(gone long ago).
10. Vuvuzela.
11. Nailing it on affirmative action, basing one’s opposition on “a weighing of positives vs. negatives rather than an in-principle resistance based on absolute moral claims”

Seven men have been selected by the President to head a “drilling commission” to investigate and recommend for the future of off-shore drilling. This article piqued my interest. It makes two claims, that these individuals have little to no engineering (scientific?) expertise regarding offshore drilling and that they have a definite bias against drilling, i.e., that the fix is already in by loading it with politicians and environmental activists. Go ahead, skim the linked article. I’ll wait. …. now that you’re back, here’s what I can find on the web so far about these individuals. It might be also noted that the President called this a “bi-partisan” commission. We’ll see how that plays out.

The Two chairmen:

• Mr William Reilly (wiki) — Not a scientist nor engineer, he has a BA in history and a Harvard law degree. Was the head of the EPA under Democratic administrations and President of the World Wildlife Fund. Mr Reilly is a Democrat.
• Mr Bob Graham (wiki) — Not a scientist nor engineer, he has a political science degree from U of Florida and a LLB (bachelors of Law) from Harvard. Was governor of Florida for a term and unsuccessfully ran in in the 2004 primary Presidential bid. He is a lifelong Democrat.

Our five members announced last week.

• Frances G. Beinecke (no wiki entry, mukety relationships) — Has an MA from Yale in “environmental studies” (and yes the scare quotes shows my bias as a physicist). Has been on the NRDC for 35 years. She is an anti-nuclear activist. He inherited much wealth from her family ties. I’m guessing Democrat as the profile does not indicate.
• Donald Boesch (no wiki, here is his auto-bio) — His publication list, Mr Boesch is a Professor at U of Maryland heading their Center for Environmental Studies. Political affiliation is not given. Wanna guess, uhm, Democrat.
• Terry Garcia (no wiki, auto-bio) — VP of National Geographic, Mr Garcia has a BA in international studies from American University and a law degree from George Washington U. Google shows him on a list of contributors to Mr Obama’s campaign, uhm, so a likely Democrat again.
• Cherry A. Murray (wiki) — is the first person on the list with any (real) engineering credentials, alas not in mechanical engineering but instead in optical data storage.  No political affiliation given. Wanna bet?
• Frances Ulmer (wiki) — BA from U of Wisconsin (Madison) in … (wait for it) … economics and political science. She is a career politician as a (suprise!) Democrat.

1. Exuding joy.
2. Driving on one tank.
3. Luminous debris?
4. Which professional habitual liar is lying this time?
5. Devastating evil.
6. Left with whale poo?
7. Trade and aid.
8. SCOTUS this week.
9. Considering porn.
10. Mr Moore.

1. Not impeachable just reprehensible.
2. Green china … that sort of claim has to be embarrassing for his defenders.
3. Happy birthday.
4. The only problem with attacking American exceptionalism … is that it remains exceptional. That brings to mind the Churchill quote about Democracy as “the worst form of government … except for all the rest.”
5. Hoping and changing for more sleaze?
6. Build your own.
7. An icon noted.
8. First they came for the … who will be next? 
9. Czech cinema.
10. Mr Obama’s advice for opposition party response to environmental emergencies.
11. Rahm.
12. Evil.
13. The new atheists and Mr Flanagan.
14. A tax on breathing. Wonderful.

What follows is the essay from which I drew my homily for the oral portion of the final in our late vocations N.T. class. First the two readings are given (cut/pasted from the ESV … take your own translation as needed). Note that the audience to which I was aiming was the class and not a general congregational talk.

Two readings: John 8:2-11

Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”

And a second selection Romans 14:

Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since she gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.

When casting about for a topic for this talk, Fr. Andrew suggested that the theme for this months newsletter was tolerance. So when considering tolerance, the above passages seemed relevant. Why? Webster gives this (one of its definitions anyhow … and the one which applies) as “sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one’s own.” It might be noted there is a modern cultural push to redefine tolerance as celebration and not merely sympathy or indulgence regarding practices differing from our own. Tolerance as discussed below does not go so far as to suggest celebration. What then does the above tell us about tolerance? How do they, if they do, connect? (find the rest below the fold)

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