Politcs-Religion-Crypto

Economic Article Commentary

2012-01-09T17:32:00.003-06:00

Well, some people are optimistic about the payroll numbers that came out this month, and some are just not too enthusiastic. Count me in that second category. The numbers are good, to be sure. Especially the manufacturing, which added 25000 jobs. But to begin a recovery, we need at least ten more months in a row with numbers like that. And that is just to begin recovery.

To see what dire straights we are in, look at this article:
Almost too Crazy to Believe

I said last year that we seem to be in the end game. I don't know if that end game will last 2 years or 20 years (although I cannot see how it could last 20 years). Of course, there is nothing to say the Rapture won't come in less than 20 minutes, but if I were to lay odds on it, I would say between 2013 and 2023 would be the most likely years for the Rapture. One thing is certain, though, if my predictions are early and we are all here in 2030, we have lost nothing. But if you don't believe, and the Lord returns when you are not ready, it will be bad for you.

Having said all of that. I find myself ready for Jesus to return, but continuing to prepare for the interim, in case He decides to wait a while.

End of Year Roundup

2011-12-31T17:00:00.001-06:00

Well, this year has gone by so quickly there is not enough time for a proper end of year roundup. Of course, anybody knows, as we get older, our years get shorter.

At the beginning of the year I recognized that we may be entering the "end game" and the prophesies concerning the Rapture, Tribulation, and the Return of Christ seem, more than ever to be coming true. I rather suspect we have less than 20 years left in this world, though we may have less than 20 minutes also. As any Bible believing Christian will tell you: "NO man knows the day, nor the hour" that the end times will come.

Throughout most of the year I watched the world and US economy slowly tread water or move first one way then another, with no real progress. But I really spent most of the year rethinking and reorganizing my disaster plans. Oh, yes, I have disaster plans. I am not making plans to ride out Armageddon, and be a survivalist in days that look like Mad Max. But I have plans to make things go a little smoother should some little calamity come to may corner of the Earth between now and the End.

Towards the end of the year, mostly in October and November, I spent too much time following the silver market, and considering buying some silver coins. I actually tried at one point, only to have my credit card not go through, because of some computer glitch. I might try again, but I am learning not to spend too much time thinking about it.

Just a note about parables

2011-12-22T15:11:00.001-06:00

The parables seem to be of interest to some people, but to be properly understood, they need to be studied as a whole. There is a principle, called hermeneutic consistency that needs to be applied.

As some examples, in all of Scripture, the New Testament Saints (after the resurrection) are never called servants, nor are we involved in the harvest. The servants of God are the Old Testament believers. New Testament Saints are called Sons, the Church, the Bride of Christ, etc.

We, Jesus and the Church, are the sowers, not the reapers. The angels are the reapers.

Earth is not the Kingdom of Heaven. The Church is not the Vineyard. We are the branch, not the olive tree, nor the vine.

Birds are never good in parables, they are always evil ones. Leaven is never good, but is the corruption that "puffs up" and makes things palatable to the carnal man.

This of course, in not all inclusive, but can give some insight to parables that otherwise can be very misleading.

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It is appointed unto man (mankind) once to die, and after that the judgment. Will you stand before God, clothed in the righteousness of Christ, or stand before him in your sin? This is the all important question.

The Economy Still Stinks a Little

2011-12-06T17:57:00.003-06:00

I find it amusing the markets are all up these past few days. Can anyone say "irrational exuberance"? Not only is our government still massively in debt, with no real plan in sight to fix it, but the governments of Greece and a few others are in the same condition. And not only are governments in dire condition, but the consumers and the corporations they have come to worship as their provider are in dire condition also, with balance sheets full of debt. And a meltdown in Europe is not too much of a long-shot in the next few weeks.

The fact the world economy keeps humming along is a testament to workers who get up each morning, look at the situation, and go to work anyway, even knowing they aren't making enough to do well. And it is a testament to God's Grace and Patience that he hasn't pulled the plug on this world and allowed the Evil One to come to power for that "last 7 years."

It is possible (it would fit well with my understanding of prophesy) the meltdown of the European Union could be the start of the Great Tribulation. But I think it is more likely just one more event along the way towards it, and we have a ways to go. And that is how I do my planning. If this is "the end," so be it, but if it is not, then here is the best way to handle it.

Greenspan used the term "irrational exuberance" in Dec 2006, and within a year we were into the meltdown. I was a bit disturbed Bernanke sold us a bill of goods while secretly bailing out the world banking system. We were told TARP would be $800B, and it looked on the surface it was less than that. In reality, it Was $16,000B dollars. 20 times as much. I warned repeatedly back in 2008 that it seemed to me that the Fed was printing a lot of money, but was told they weren't printing all that much. Now I see why. A great deal of it was pumped into, not our economy, but other countries economies. The globalist leaders of our nation sold us out years ago to build a new world order, and this was part of the price we will pay.

Another reason people may be overly optimistic about the economy is a drop in the unemployment rate. But that is deceptive. The rate dropped, not because more people had jobs (although payroll did go up about 120k jobs) but because a lot of people dropped out of the system. Also factory employment was down. All in all, this points to a weakening economy that is hollowing out even more.

I have begun to look into buying silver. Not much, as I don't have much money. My first attempt, a couple of weeks ago failed because of a credit card malfunction. (I think my credit union's safeguard said it didn't look like a normal purchase for me.) Last year (I think) I said silver was overpriced and should be less than $26 an ounce. This year, because of the possibility of a meltdown, I am looking at buying silver at any price under $31 an ounce. If things get to looking worse, I might go higher, but then again, the price of Gold dropped just before the meltdown in the mortgage market. I am hoping I can take advantage of such a drop.

Money is not all there is in this world, but Jesus told us to be aware of the goings on in the world. And Paul said that while we should be as harmless as doves, he also said we should be as wise as serpents.

I say be frugal with yourself and generous with others, but don't let the goings on in the world rob you blind.

Raw Link Information for this article.

irrational exuberance
http://www.irrationalexuberance.com/definition.htm

http://financialedge.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0910/Rising-Cash---And-Rising-Debt-Too.aspx
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/story/2011-11-26/myth-of-corporate-cash-piles/51346848/1

Secret Bailout of the World Banking System
http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3

Govenrment Printing Money
http://crypto-corinthian.blogspot.com/2008/12/us-gov-printing-more-money.html

U.S. Employment Situation Report for November (Text)
By Chris Middleton - Dec 2, 2011 7:45 AM CT
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-02/u-s-employment-situation-report-for-november-text-.html
Following is the text of the November employment report from the Labor Department.
The unemployment rate fell by 0.4 percentage point to 8.6 percent in November, and nonfarm payroll employment rose by 120,000, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment continued to trend up in retail trade, leisure and hospitality, professional and business services, and health care. Government employment continued to trend down.
The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was little changed at 5.7 million and accounted for 43.0 percent of the unemployed.
The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) dropped by 378,000 over the month to 8.5 million. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full- time job.
In November, 2.6 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, about the same as a year earlier.
Among the marginally attached, there were 1.1 million discouraged workers in November, a decrease of 186,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.5 million persons marginally attached to the labor force in November had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities.
The private sector added 140,000 jobs, as employment rose in a number of service-providing industries. Government employment continued to trend down.
Manufacturing employment changed little over the month and has remained essentially unchanged since July. In November, fabricated metal products added 8,000 jobs, while electronic instruments lost 2,000 jobs.
Construction employment showed little movement in November. Employment in the industry has shown little change, on net, since early 2010.
The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls was unchanged at 34.3 hours in November. The manufacturing workweek was down by 0.2 hour to 40.3 hours, offsetting a 0.2 hour gain in the previous month.
Average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls decreased in November by 2 cents, or 0.1 percent, to $23.18. This decline followed a gain of 7 cents in October. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 1.8 percent.
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for September was revised from +158,000 to +210,000, and the change for October was revised from +80,000 to +100,000.

U.S. October Consumer Price Index Report (Text)
By Kristy Scheuble - Nov 16, 2011 7:30 AM CT
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-16/u-s-october-consumer-price-index-report-text-.html
The all items index has risen 3.5 percent over the last 12 months, a lower figure than last month's 3.9 percent increase, as the 12-month change in the energy index fell from 19.3 to 14.2 percent. In contrast, the 12-month change for all items less food and energy edged up from 2.0 to 2.1 percent. The food index 12-month change was 4.7 percent, the same figure as in September. (food up, energy up less, all other up, overall, up more than payroll)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-14/greece-s-new-premier-says-keeping-euro-is-only-way-for-country.html
The immediate priority for Greece is securing the payment of an 8 billion-euro loan installment under a previous 110 billion-euro European Union-led rescue, Papademos said. The tranche must be paid before the middle of December to prevent a collapse of the country’s economy.
Samaras said yesterday that backing for the interim government should last no more than the three months needed to secure the financing before elections are held.
“The danger is that this is a really transitional service government, a pre-electoral government that will do all the right things to secure the loan but will be unable to promote the real reforms,” Yannos Papantoniou, a former finance and economy minister in a previous Pasok government.

We Will Miss Mark

2011-12-05T20:34:00.001-06:00

Well, we buried him today.

Let's back up a bit. He was a soldier, a baseball player, and one of my coworkers. And I would call him a friend, although not a close one. We both retired out of the service, him a few years before me. We were about the same age, him a couple years older. He and I worked together daily throughout 2010, and saw each other on the job regularly after that. All and all, he was a good guy, though an ornery one. He would often take up a line of argument with one of the new employees just for the sake of seeing how they defended their positions. But most of us knew he didn't take it seriously, and half an hour later he would be helping them with some job we had to do.

Oddly, most of his family outlived him. His father passed when he was young, but his mother and 3 older sisters were among those at the funeral. He lost his wife and a daughter, each to illness a few years back. I'm not certain he ever got over that. He died suddenly, on the job, about a week ago (27 November). No one guarantees tomorrow.

He and I talked politics and about God for hours. He believed in God, was raised Catholic, but had a falling out with that Church some years back when they indicated they wanted more money out of him. The sad thing is that even though he seemed to understand the Gospel in his head, I didn't really see any indication that he ever accepted it for his own salvation. I hope I am wrong about that.

I don't normally go to funerals. I can count them on my fingers. On one hand. I went to the internment, as the actual funeral was in another town. Catholic. Their ways seem strange to me. But since we worked together for some years, and I knew this is hard on my coworkers, as well as his family, I went to this one. I don't normally go to funerals, because I have been sent to help the living. He is gone, and there is nothing more I can do for him. Maybe others of my coworkers will have questions. No one guarantees tomorrow.

Comic Strip - Now the Book

2011-12-01T17:37:00.002-06:00

My favorite (secular) comic strip author, Jimmy Johnson, has released his first book in over 20 years.

You may be aware of Arlo and Janis, either from seeing it in the news paper or the link to it from the list of "other blogs I read" on the right side of this blog. He has great insights to the introspective and the humorous things in life. It is about the life of a middle aged couple with a son. The son was a pre-teen or early teen, in the strips found in this book, and is now about 22 in the current comic strip.

Before he put the book on sale, me and several others advised him to ask more for it than the $25 price he settled on. I got my copy a couple days ago, and I would give him the same advise today. It would be a bargain at $40.

The book can be ordered on Jimmy Johnson's website.

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As you may have seen on one of my previous posts, I will no longer be following the format I held to for the past couple of years. The posts will be more off the cuff in the next few months.

Desperate Times

2011-11-29T17:30:00.005-06:00

To say these are desperate times is both a "no brainer" and a bit of unmerited anxiety.

China and the U.S.

It looks more and more like China and the US will be squaring off for a fight. Not too long ago, it was the US and N.Korea. And it has always been that way between those two countries and the US. Especially in the 70's and 80's when Communist operatives in our universities and media were telling us that China had no expansionist agenda and would never be a threat to us. Purely defensive, they told us. Right.

But in the grand scheme of things, these countries are, right now, just a distraction from what everyone familiar with the Kingdom of God and Biblical Prophesy knows we should be watching (and for those who don't know, it is Israel and her enemies).

Wars and Rumors of Wars
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2066380/Will-World-War-III-U-S-China.html?ITO=1490

When the U.S. Navy deployed warships in the Yellow Sea in a show of support for the South Korean government, Beijing denounced America, blandly denying North Korea’s guilt. The Chinese claimed that they were merely displaying even-handedness and restraint, but an exasperated President Obama said: ‘There’s a difference between restraint and wilful blindness to consistent problems.’
Washington is increasingly sensitive to the fact that its bases in the western Pacific have become vulnerable to Chinese missiles. This is one reason why last week the U.S. made a historic agreement with Australia to station up to 2,500 U.S. Marines in the north of the country.
Beijing denounced the deal, saying it was not ‘appropriate to intensify and expand military alliances and may not be in the interests of countries within this region’.

Energy.

While the Global Warming (oops, I mean climate change) wackoes are still telling us we are about to run out of oil and our carbon emmisions are changing the global climate, a quiet change in the crude oil and natural gas supply has now produced easily harvestable reserves that will last for more than 40 years. Maybe more than 100 years.

As for the Global Warming Wacko crowd. These are the people who look at a roller coaster and believe the people on that little train are causing it to go up and down and around. The tracks are just incidental. Man Made Global Warming or Anthropological Climate Change, or whatever you want to call it is now know to be a complete fraud. Apparently made up by some guys in a university to keep them in scholarship (or fellowship) money. It just snowballed from there, as certain LEFTIST liberals found ways to turn weak minded people's anxiety into cash.

Global Famine.

Well this one is real. But maybe not immediate. Others have been writing about the famine that I wrote about. But as I said a few weeks ago, it doesn't look like it will be a major famine next year. Of course, anything can happen, and we could face a major famine even a couple of months from now. But it currently doesn't look that way.

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/commentary/reuters/2011/07/15/309874/Food-inflation.htm

With grain supplies still tight and worldwide demand growing quickly, food price inflation looks set to remain high and even worsen in the years ahead.
It will likely take years of near-perfect crops to replenish global stockpiles of corn and wheat, the staples of the world food system, and minimize the risk of price spikes.
Stockpiles of corn in the United States, the No. 1 producer, are forecast to drop to 16-year lows — 870 million bushels — by summer 2012. As a percentage of use, that would be the second-tightest since the Dust Bowl devastated crops in the 1930s.
This time around, crops are historically large, but demand is also surging due to Chinese consumers and U.S. ethanol producers.
As for wheat, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) projects world inventories will improve by June 2012 to reach 182 million tons, up from their 26-year low of roughly 126 million in 2007-08 during the last run-up in prices. But growing demand, notably from the livestock sector, will keep prices high, as will a scarcity of high-protein, high-quality milling wheat.

Israel and Islam.

This is Real. And Big.

It is looking like Israel will take a preemptive strike against Iran
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/8877758/Israel-believes-it-could-carry-out-strikes-on-Iran-with-under-500-civilian-fatalities.html

Israel believes it could carry out military strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities and suffer fewer than 500 civilian fatalities were Tehran to retaliate, the country's defense minister said on Tuesday.

Ehud Barak raised the prospect of military action with Iran once again as he hinted that splits in the international community over imposing sanctions regarded as crippling enough by Israel could leave the Jewish state with no option but to take matters into its own hands.

Economic Disaster in Europe

This one is also real. But we don't know when the meltdown will occur, or how long it will last.

The biggest problem in our economies today is that the money we need to invest or use today, was spent several years ago. This is true throughout most of the western world. The next biggest problem is that those who seem to be willing to either bail us out or buy up the shattered remains of our self destructed civilizations are our enemies.

I have said before, on this blog, that the insanity has gone on so long that a sudden removal of the insanity would be disastrous, and that continuing the insanity will be disastrous, but that we as individuals need not participate in the insanity.

I said at the beginning of the month that the banks are still safer than hiding money under your mattress, but that "the margin is getting thinner." Well, things have gotten worse, and it looks like it will only be a matter of time before there is a melt down in Europe, with the economic destruction spreading to the US. Now may be the time to begin watching the silver and gold markets and moving some money into silver and gold coins, if you haven't already. And I mean physical coins that you have in your hand, not certificates. Of course that means you will need physical security. A safe deposit box might be ideal, or not. If the melt down is severe enough, the banks will lock their doors and you will not be able to get in. I have researched home safes, and can say that anything is better than nothing, but most home safes can be broken into. What you need depends on what you have. I am fortunate, as I have very little money, I don't need much of a safe. (Maybe I should bury a coffee can in the back yard?)

We came close to a meltdown and run on the banks

By Bob Ivry, Bradley Keoun and Phil Kuntz - Nov 27, 2011 6:01 PM CT
Bloomberg Markets Magazine
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html

The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy.
And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.

This could go under "disaster prep" also
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8917077/Prepare-for-riots-in-euro-collapse-Foreign-Office-warns.html

British embassies in the eurozone have been told to draw up plans to help British expats through the collapse of the single currency, amid new fears for Italy and Spain.
As the Italian government struggled to borrow and Spain considered seeking an international bail-out, British ministers privately warned that the break-up of the euro, once almost unthinkable, is now increasingly plausible.
Diplomats are preparing to help Britons abroad through a banking collapse and even riots arising from the debt crisis.
The Treasury confirmed earlier this month that contingency planning for a collapse is now under way.
A senior minister has now revealed the extent of the Government’s concern, saying that Britain is now planning on the basis that a euro collapse is now just a matter of time.

Run on the banks?
http://www.thetrader.se/2011/11/08/run-for-your-money/

24 November 2011
Don't mention the R word
By Laurence Knight Business reporter, BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15869945
R is for run. As in bank run.

IMF said to be readying Italian bail-out 28.11.11 @ 09:29
http://euobserver.com/19/114418
By Leigh Phillips

BRUSSELS - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is preparing a multi-billion-euro rescue of Italy, reports in the Italian media on Sunday (27 November) claim.
The Washington-based lender is in talks readying a €600 billion assistance package for Rome in return for swingeing austerity and structural adjustment measures, according to an article in Italian daily La Stampa, quoting unnamed officials in the American capital.
Spain meanwhile may not need a full bail-out programme and be offered instead a credit line.
Buttressing speculation that the IMF is set to bail out the eurozone’s third biggest economy, ECB member and Bank of France governor Christian Noyer was asked directly by reporters whether the IMF is preparing a programme of support for Italy, but he refused to comment.

A note on my lack of style in this article.

I didn't have time to embed the links properly this time, I left them in the raw form I use in my notes.

Change in blogging habits

2011-11-28T18:01:00.004-06:00

I will be changing the way I do blogging in the future. For now, the main change is the articles will be more random, and probably shorter. In a short time, I will change all the commenting to "moderated," meaning that no comment will get posted unless I see it first.

This is driven by three factors. One is I am planning to move my writing to another blog (maybe in a few months or so). Two is that I don't seem to be as good as I though I might be at writing articles on time, on several subjects. So I am letting the "on time" part go away. Third is that I intend to allow people in the local area know about this blog, and I don't want my local address posted to it.

Monthly Economics Report

2011-11-07T09:04:00.004-06:00

All eyes are fixed on Greece and its slow downward spiral into bankruptcy. But, I think we are paying too much attention to that, and not enough to our own. President Obama is still pushing the bus (our economic future) ever closer to the abyss(the point where we, like Greece, will not be able to pay our debts and will spiral into a financial meltdown), and the Republicans in congress are still stonewalling his efforts.

In the mean time, the payroll report is out for this month. It shows that employment is down slightly(from 9.1% to 9.0%), not because of the numbers from October, but because of revisions to the numbers in August and September. September saw the addition of about 100k jobs that had not been previously reported, so the unemployment numbers were adjusted. It still stinks just a little, because manufacturing jobs for Aug and Sept are still at a net loss.

There is still some 8% (give or take some) that is under employed (working at whatever they can find) or dropped out of the job market completely. And 42% of the unemployed have been out of a job for 27 weeks or longer, meaning they will have increasing difficulty finding work and may eventually join the numbers of those who have dropped out.

Over all, the situation is still grim, just as it was two years ago and it will remain grim for more than another year.

Greece

Now, about Greece (to be followed by Spain, Portugal, Ireland, California, etc.) and the current state of the bailout. The other nations of the EU (Germany in particular) have agreed to forgive half of Greece's debt, if Greece will agree to live within its means in the future.

Most of the markets climbed with the news that the EU had came to an agreement with Greece, and felt that life could go on and they would work their way out of this mess.

Now, Greece is not certain they want to accept the deal. Well, to be more precise, a large fraction of the population, accustomed to living off the government dole, doesn't want to accept the reduction in their comfort level the deal would require. And another large fraction of Greece cheats on their taxes with an audacity not even imagined by most people.

It is commonplace to rail against the flaws that drove the state to bankruptcy. Statistics that betray the extent of the state’s failure are part of everyday conversation. One million people, or a tenth of the population, last year gave a backhander to the civil service to grease the wheels of bureaucracy. Only 15,000 people declared earnings of more than €100,000 in 2010 but one in 20 purchasers of £2?million houses in London lived in Greece.

It shouldn't surprise anyone. They didn't get into this mess by being Puritans, willing to work long hours, live frugally, save methodically, and treat all others honestly.

Now, why is this important to us? There is a concern that the crisis could snowball into a run on the banks, and that could spread here. This is not a completely empty concern. The banking system in both Europe and the US is largely based on trust, backed up by nothing. And most are leveraged about 20 to 1. This means that if 5% of their customers decide to withdraw their money, the bank will collapse.

This is what happened in 1929, and is the reason the FDIC (and subsequently, the FSLIC and NCUA) was created. Except that if the panic is widespread, they are all a house of cards, and will crumble quickly.

Now, I am not trying to panic anyone. First, this is not likely to happen within the next month. Second, the likely hood of it happening within a year is fairly small. Your bank is still safer than your mattress. But the margin is getting thinner. Next year may be a different story, and I can't tell yet.

Enslavement

Some day in the future, we must be aware that our economies will try to enslave us. Read the story, in a post on "the oildrum" website, that begins with "many years ago." It wasn't really science fiction. My grandfather escaped one such camp on the west coast of the US.

While it will probably not happen with oil (since we recently discovered enough gas to last many years) it will likely happen with food and clothing.

Thus is the reason I am beginning a regular posting on food and famine.

Reformation Day

2011-11-02T16:48:00.002-05:00

Reformation day passed without too much excitement. I should have written this before, but truthfully, I didn't think too much about it until a Catholic I joust with frequently made a couple of, over the top disparaging, remarks about Martin Luther.

A skirmish of words ensued, and I decided I needed to get some resources lined up, and all linked to a central place.

For those of you who are scratching your head, Reformation Day is the day that Martin Luther tacked a list of 95 theses (or grievances against the Roman Catholic Church) on the church door (or did he?), and said he would hold a public meeting the next day if anyone wanted to debate with him on any point on which they had question or difference of opinion.

No one took him up on the debate, but the Pope eventually put out the word that he was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church, to be considered an outlaw and should be killed, if possible. They failed to kill him, and in the following years, the Roman Catholic Church was largely removed from Germany.

It is notable that the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod (a large grouping or convention of Lutheran Churches), is the only major branch of the old mainline Churches I can find, that has not gone into apostasy.

I found most of these by doing a search on Reformation and Protestant.

http://www.theopedia.com/Protestant_Reformation
http://www.theopedia.com/95_Theses

"Brief history in chart form of over 20 reformers from Arminius ..."
http://www.religionfacts.com/christianity/charts/protestant_reformers.htm

"An essay on the beginning of the Reformation, concentrating on Luther's reaction to the sale of indulgences and his developing the doctrine of
http://www.everythingimportant.org/theReformation/
(This is mainly a Seventh Day Adventist site, and most of the site seems to be a forum)

short outline presents key points and supportive links
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/C_Transp/C11_Protestantism.html

Catholic Encyclopedia
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12700b.htm

http://www.greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/martin-luther.html
On Halloween of 1517, Luther changed the course of human history when he nailed his 95 Theses to the church door at Wittenberg, accusing the Roman Catholic church of heresy upon heresy. Many people cite this act as the primary starting point of the Protestant Reformation… though to be sure, John Wycliffe, John Hus, Thomas Linacre, John Colet, and others had already put the life’s work and even their lives on the line for same cause of truth, constructing the foundation of Reform upon which Luther now built. Luther's action was in great part a response to the selling of indulgences by Johann Tetzel, a Dominican priest. Luther's charges also directly challenged the position of the clergy in regard to individual salvation. Before long, Luther’s 95 Theses of Contention had been copied and published all over Europe.

http://www.luther.de/en/wartburg.html
Luther lived incognito at the Wartburg; he called himself Junker Jörg (Knight George) and "grew his hair and a beard."

In addition, I found resources on other Protestant Movements in the Theopedia entries.

UPDATE:

historylearningsite.co.uk
The Council of Trent played an important part in determining the outcome of the Counter-Reformation. Along with the part played by the Jesuits and certain individuals, the Council of Trent was a central feature of the Counter-Reformation. But whether Trent represented a positive move by the Catholic Church remains contentious.

newadvent.org (Catholic Encyclopedia)
The nineteenth ecumenical council opened at Trent on 13 December, 1545, and closed there on 4 December, 1563. Its main object was the definitive determination of the doctrines of the Church in answer to the heresies of the Protestants; a further object was the execution of a thorough reform of the inner life of the Church by removing the numerous abuses that had developed in it.

fordham.edu
The books of those heresiarchs, who after the aforesaid year originated or revived heresies, as well as of those who are or have been the heads or leaders of heretics, as Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Balthasar Friedberg, Schwenkfeld, and others like these, whatever may be their name, title or nature of their heresy, are absolutely forbidden.

hereiblog.com
"Most of the speakers seemed only too happy to treat Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox as “brothers and sisters in the faith,” as easily as a Baptist might refer to a Presbyterian. Now, I trust that some RC and GOs are Christians, but such unqualified, unnuanced passing remarks effectively dismiss the Reformation and jeopardize souls. Don’t you realize the effect your passing comments have on sheep?"

thelightheartedcalvinist.com
There are many in our day who say that the Roman Catholic person is a brother with one who professes salvation through faith alone. Rome, in its own documents, denies this, using the word “anathema” toward those who disagree with certain doctrinal issues.

Jobs report stinks just a little

2011-10-12T08:54:00.002-05:00

The markets are up a little on the news that there was a fairly good monthly jobs report from the Department of Labor last Friday. But on closer examination, I think it just stinks a little. While the private sector did create 137,000 new jobs, which is almost good (remember, we need 200,000 per month to recover), manufacturing lost 13,000. While we did make some headway last spring, overall these past 12 months, the progress has not been good at all. Recovery in total private sector jobs has been less than half of what is needed, and manufacturing is in about the same boat. So, while we are not being dragged into a second recession, we are not pulling out of this one either.

In addition, average hourly earnings has remained pretty stagnant also. While food and energy prices have gone up about 10% (very rough estimate) over the past 3 years (the reason they tell you there is no inflation is they measure your pay, not prices), wages have remained nearly the same. This means that even if you do have a job, things are not getting better.

As if all that is not enough, President Obama has proposed a half billion dollar "stimulus" plan that will likely act like throwing an anchor off the back of a boat. Sure the boat will move forwards from the stimulus caused by throwing the anchor, but then the anchor will be a drag for years to come.

The only good news about all this stagnant economic stuff (that is, if you have a steady job) is that gas prices won't be rising much in the next few months.

Meanwhile, copper, which I use as a forecaster of where manufacturing is going, has lost about 20% of its value. This is a bad thing. Since manufacturing is a large user of copper, it means manufacturing is slowing down. No matter what the ISM index says, if copper use is down, manufacturing is, or will be, slowing down. At least that is what happened in the past. It isn't that I have a crystal ball, but I have seen this before.

Some people have been saying the price of silver crashed but really all it did was lose some gains it made this past couple of years that were completely out of line with how much silver should cost. It is still over priced, if you ask me, but then again, I have said gold was over priced for five out of the last five years.

A predicted shortage of cotton has failed to materialize at this time, so goods made with cotton will remain economical for the next several months.

Other good news is, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the anticipated worldwide famine will not develop. Not because food production is all that much better, but because it turns out that the quantity of food wasted in more affluent countries is just simply colossal, and that can absorb the losses, with just a 10% to 20% rise in prices. I will likely be writing more on famines, epidemics and other disasters soon, though, as they are not going to go away.

Obama and False Christianity

2011-10-06T11:54:00.003-05:00

A recent conversation on another forum got me thinking. The discussion was about President Obama, and his supposed christianity, as well as his animosity towards Fundamentalist Christians.

As soon as a couple of videos of Obama's speeches were posted, some of his supporters began saying they were Photoshopped, so I presented evidence from one of Obama's own speeches, and posted by his own self.

As soon as I posted it I knew there would be a problem. The typical Christian, even if they kinda know what Christianity is, cannot discern true from fake Christians. Most, even if they have spent many years in Church and looked up the verses referred to in Sunday School and in the sermon, still have little overall knowledge of the Bible.

I know I am beginning to sound like a broken record on this. Constantly harping that Christians need to dig into the Bible, but how else are we to know the true Christians from the Counterfeit s? Especially if the Counterfeits are doing what many believe are good works?

To make thinks worse, the site I referenced was from the United Church of Christ (UCC). While the "Churchs of Christ" had a good reputation many years ago (though I have heard no news lately), UCC is a different organization. Wikipedia says the "United Church of Christ" is "less historically related" and that is an understatement. One is a separatist movement, separating themselves from the mainline churches that had fallen into apostasy, the UCC is an ecumenical organization.

Now, ecumenical was once a good thing. It meant that faithful, Bible believing churches would get along. Today it is a snake in the grass, teaching there is no difference between churches even if they have renounced the Bible as the central authority, and teach that there are many ways to get to heaven.

I also noticed, as I researched the various parts of this article, that the wording of the ecumenical movement is getting more subtle. This is disturbing, as it will make it more and more difficult to spot the counterfeits without actually being inside their organizations. In addition they have been embarking on their own versions of Bible dictionaries and their own interpretation guides. I suspect it will not be long before the truth will be completely indistinguishable to those who are not already saved. And I am certain this is one of the elements that will bring the Rapture and Second Coming of Christ.

The Bible is the Word of life. As such, studying the Bible is crucial to the life and growth of every believer. -- John MacArthur

Just some updates

2011-09-26T02:49:00.003-05:00

Just some updates on some of the things I have written about over the past few months.

The Famine I wrote about a couple of months ago will not be as severe as I first thought. There will likely be shortages, but instead of the price of food doubling, this time it is only expected to rise by about 15%.

Some tidbits as to why it isn't as bad as I thought it would be:
Corn crop not hurt as bad as expected, but will be late.
Wheat harvests also not hurt as bad as I thought.

But the biggest factor is waste. Apparently, both the US and Europe still waste a good bit more food than I thought. How much, I don't know. I am still researching that (a lot of junk to sift through on the Net). But the bottom line is that the crop loss can be easily offset, this time by reducing the waste in our systems. As these things go in cycles we should have a few more years (or not, since these things cannot really be predicted) before a really bad famine sets in.

Obvious by now, this isn't the big famine mentioned in Revelation, but I will write more on both the coming famines and the 4 Horsemen of Revelation later.

Closely related to famine is epidemic. There is a strain of Bird Flu (in India) that is beginning a breakout, but it is still unclear if it presents a pandemic threat. Remember, the time to prepare is before things like this hit the media and panic ensues. As a related note, Polio is making a comeback. The majority of the US is vaccinated, but there could easily be a spread into small segments of our population, which would cause a panic. Keep your own vaccines up to date and there should be no problems. (And that goes for your family and friends) And lastly, MRSA strains are showing up that are resistant to antibacterial ointments. These are the ones found in the typical family medicine cabinet. Time to look into old time (18th century) remedies.

On a completely different note, as I have been listening to the expository recordings made by Pastor Chuck Smith covering the whole Bible, I have realized they were done over a period of about 20 years. Makes sense. He did something like 232 of them, and no more than one per week.

Zero Gain Economy

2011-09-06T16:45:00.006-05:00

Well, the jobs report came out riday, as usual. And as usual, it was a cold slap of reality in a warm fuzzy market that usually thrives on "you tell me no bad news and I will tell you no bad news" in order to look up.

There was zero gain, zero loss, in the overall jobs. The almost (well, not quite almost) bright spot is private hiring was up by 17,000 (we need more than 200,000 each month). The really dim spot is that manufacturing fell by 3000.

Another zero in the news was the interest rate. It is axiomatic that lower interest rates encourage economic growth, but fuel inflation. Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board Ben Bernanke recently stated the federal funds rate will remain at or near zero for the next two years.

While Bernanke may have prevented the US (and maybe the world) from going into the dreaded "double dip" in this recession, (and I have, from time to time, said he is probably the only guy in charge who actually know what he is doing) he doesn't have the tools to pull us out of the recession. Especially when most of those in Washington are busy trying to hang a millstone around our necks. We are still in the same condition as when I wrote, last month, that "gloomy just doesn't convey a strong enough message."

On the other hand, the assurance that interest rates will stay at or near zero for the next two years will likely be the factor that will start us into an inflationary cycle. One problem with keeping interest rates low (from a US standpoint) is it leads to a Dollar Carry problem. This is when investors can borrow money from the US at a marvelously low rate, and use it to buy bonds or other investment vehicles in Europe or Asia that pay a higher rate. To compensate for the flow of monies out of our economy, we will have little choice but to print quite a bit more, thus leading to inflation.

I am not qualified to predict how much or when this inflation will take place. It could be a year or three, and it could be 5% or 35%. I could guess two years and 20%, but that is just a guess. I will guess, also, that shortages of raw products will become a factor in a year or two, and they will lead to both inflationary pressures and slowing of the economy.

The downgrade of our national credit rating first by Moody's threat (even though they may deny it), and then by S&P, has had little impact on the overall economy. It seems they dragged their feet long enough that all the investors had already downgraded us in their minds. Still, the US treasury bond is considered the safest (really, there is no thought in the market that it is anything but 100% safe) of all investments, even though return is next to nothing.

And there is another serious threat however: public opinion seems to turn against anyone who attempts to fix our economic problems. There is two reasons for that. One is man's natural tendency to avoid anything that requires sacrifice. I mentioned this in a previous posting. The other is the press, which is doing Satan's bidding, to keep the liberals in power.

Of course, all of this seems to be in preparation for the end times. There are many who say they can see the US in prophesy. Well it is there, but not where they are looking. We are a bit player, a nobody. We are found in Ezekiel, complaining and doing nothing. A has been. Broken and sunken into depravity, we will sit on the sidelines and whine during the end times.

I don't know this for certain, of course. The timeline looked all set to go (rapture and war of Magog and all) once before, but then God raised up Ronald Reagan, and used him to set the timetable back more than 20 years. No man knows the day or the hour (and while I find it fun to guess the decade, I don't even know that for certain).

Teaching Error, the issue of writing

2011-09-01T18:50:00.004-05:00

I recently forgot myself and made a post to a humor thread about the origin of one of the Psalms. I was roundly criticized for doing so, as I should have been, since it was outside of the topic. (So I am also guilty of 2 Tim 4:2)

But that post revealed that some Churches are still teaching an error that was considered to be common knowledge in the 19th century, and later in the 20th century, mostly among those who lacked knowledge of the history of that period, and knew even less about the Bible. There are, of course, those who deliberately propagate this myth (as a heresy) with intent to undermine the foundations of Christianity, by saying the Bible is not the Word of God, but is merely a collection of stories made up and assembled by some mystical clerics only a few hundred years BC.

It is that the Bible wasn't a written book until only a few hundred years BC. I don't know where this started, but I suspect it was by those who refused to believe, and therefore wanted to destroy the foundations of Christianity, since if the early Scriptures weren't that they say they were, and were not preserved as God promised in Isaiah, and as confirmed by Jesus, then they could say that all of the Bible is a lie.

That this should happen should be no surprise, since both Paul (verses 3 and 4) and Peter (verse 1) warned us of these false teachers. But to allow these false teachings to stand makes us a party to the lie, and allows the enemies of Christ to place a barrier between men and the understanding of God.

Annual Gas Price Forecast

2011-08-31T07:46:00.003-05:00

I recently realized I had neglected to make my annual gas price forecast at the end of July, as is my normal habit (been doing it for about 8 years). Well, it isn't going to be so important in the future as it was in the past, as crude oil and therefore fuel will not be going into an ever growing shortage as was thought in the past. We now know of reserves that will sustain us for the next 40 years (sorry, I don't have a good supporting article for this) if need be. The "Peak oil problem," for the time being, has been defeated. Reliability of delivery is becoming a bigger question, but I will save that for another article.

As the world economy and more locally, the US economy have drifted into the doldrums, the price of oil has stabilized in the $80 to $90 range, and actually these numbers reflect optimism on the part of speculators that the world economy will improve. Should we slide into the dreaded "double dip" recession (increasingly unlikely, since Bernenky announced interest rates would remain near zero for the next couple of years), oil prices will slide back into the $70's of dollars a barrel.

Well, using my formula, $80 a barrel translates to $3.70 per gallon (regular unleaded, here in rural Texas), and $90 a barrel translates to $4.10 per gallon.

While that is still quite a range (but really only 10%), it is more dependent on politics and weather than it is on any predictable factor. Most importantly, it is dependent on how friendly (or, more likely, unfriendly) the current administration (read EPA) and courts are towards the oil industry, and how much our government devalues our money by printing more of it.

Preparing for a disaster

2011-08-26T16:19:00.001-05:00

A hurricane is approaching North Carolina and the Eastern shore tomorrow (Saturday) and I heard some government official on the news last night saying:

Friday is a good day to prepare.

NO! Friday is the day everyone will panic. I even heard on the news Thursday night that some stores as far north as New Jersey were sold out of supplies.

Preparing is what you do a week before, or a month before. Or even a year before. Not the day before.

The Four Cylinder Engine

2011-08-23T05:16:00.000-05:00

The Four Cylinder engine has been used in cars and trucks for around 100 years now.

Technically the first was in 1890, but in its second year of life (1913) the Chevrolet company was selling a car with a 4 cyl engine. They have been made with displacements from less than 1 to almost 3 Liters (although bigger ones have been made in the past). The inline-four is the most common engine configuration in modern cars.

Is it no wonder I have owned mostly cars and trucks with 4 cyl. engines?

I have considered a car with three cylinder engine, but I was formerly concerned about how long they last. Today it looks like they will last quite a while, but I think the jury is still out.

Over the past 7 years, the price of fuel hasn't consistently gone up, however, so fuel mileage may not be as big an issue as it used to be.

The Market Crash - Part 2

2011-08-16T04:07:00.002-05:00

Well, what a difference a week makes. Or not. Everything seems to be settling down, the Dow, NASDAQ, S&P, and other indexes are settling. But things are settling a bit lower than when they started. Except commodities. Gold and Silver are still very inflated, and a few other commodities are up 10 to 30%. A notable exception is copper, which is slightly lower than it was a couple weeks ago. Oil, while down, didn't drop below $75 (or at least didn't stay there). Gasoline has fallen about 10 -20 cents, and this may remain as is for a few weeks, but not for long. And the 5 year T-Bill has dropped below 1% for the first time in history.

Here is what it all means. Ignore the indexes for now. And the credit downgrade. The indexes are very emotion driven and in the long run, don't mean much. The credit downgrade was something everybody knew was coming down the pike. Oh, yes, congress didn't do their job when it comes to reigning in spending, but rather compromised. But the better of the market managers saw that coming too.

The low interest rate on the 5 year T-Bill means two things. Much of the world thinks the US is very likely to be able to stay solvent for at least 5 more years, and there will be no improvement in the economy for the average man for at least 5 more years.

Gold and silver are way up. Most people don't trust the markets, and some don't trust the governments any more. Gold and Silver are a hedge against both market crashes and against the government printing vast amounts of money, resulting in high inflation.

Copper is down. Copper is used in industry. A rising price of copper would indicate a health industrial and manufacturing sector. That copper is declining is a forewarning that the industrial and manufacturing sector is not so well, and that another downturn is likely. That a pound of is still above the price of gallon of gasoline is a good sign, though. When the two prices reverse, a serious drop in production and thus in all other sectors of the economy is imminent.

Oil, while down, stayed above $75. This tells me the oil speculators think the worldwide economy will remain healthy. These guys lose there asses on a regular basis, though, so I am not so certain how much faith I would have in them.

The Market Crash

2011-08-08T04:50:00.003-05:00

The "market" crashed a couple days ago, and everybody is in panic, but the actual economy isn't really any different than it was two weeks ago when the "market" looked good.

While the latest drop in numbers coincided with the budget deal in Congress, they were not caused by that budget deal. The issues in Greece, Italy, Ireland, and Spain overshadow our problems. The news from the European Central Bank and our own manufacturing outlook report (numbers from the ISM about our manufacturing sector show only 8 of the last 20 months the manufacturing employment picture was positive) were the cause, with a little help from China saying their economy might also be slowing down. And this all came in a week.

Don't get me wrong, the budget deal was a bad one, with Congress still kicking the can down the road on the debt and the disasterous spending levels that have been going on for several (about 8) years now.

This has become like pushing the bus over the cliff. The TEA party pushed candidates into Congress to stop the bus from going off the cliff, and this deal amounts to "well, we will let you push the front tires over the edge, but then we must talk about finding a way to keep the rest of it from going over for a while.

The liberals argument was spectacularly disingenuous. To say that the conservatives were going to cause the US to default on its bonds is like calling up your bank and telling them you won't be able to pay off your Mastercard with your Visa card unless the bank increases your limit on your Visa Card. But if they do that, you promise to reduce the amount you spend in the future, but not reduce it to what you make.

As for the overall outlook for the economy, in light of the employment data released today (and last month) and the probability of global famine that I wrote of last week, gloomy just doesn't convey a strong enough message. To put it bluntly, the economy, from the perspective of the jobs market, will not see any real improvement for several years - if it ever does. Our failure to see the road ahead, and our outdated tax code (we should have changed over to sales based tax code before now, and taxed sales on the Internet as well) have more than likely doomed our nation to be thrown on the scrap heap of history.

Now, it is just a matter of how many years before the disaster arrives. It could be two, or it could be twenty-two. Either way, I don't see much chance that we will recover. The last real recovery was in the mid 80's. The ones in the late 90's and then in 2004-2006 were fake, phoney, bubbles doomed to burst. And indeed, at this time, our economy is a bubble built on another bubble.

I will have to write more on this later, as I have run out of time

Defending against Heresy

2011-08-04T03:38:00.003-05:00

In these times, when there is little persecution in the US (there is some persecution and even arrests from time to time for true Christians in the US) it is easy for counterfeits to pass themselves off as Christians. For the lay person, the best security against heresy and counterfeit christianity is expository study of the Bible.

Expository study of the Bible means to expose the underlying meaning. This isn't some mystical or secret way of looking at the Bible, but rather, it simply requires close examination of what the Bible says and the comparison of one passage to other passages throughout the Bible, such as comparing the description of the Birth of Jesus to prophetic passages in the Old Testament that foretold of His coming. An expositor is a teacher that teaches the Scriptures by going through passages a few verses or a few chapters at a time, rather than teaching topic by topic.

There are about 100 or so events and stories in the Bible, we Christians (at the very least) need to know most of them, and know the underlying lessons for most of them. And this is just a start. Don't worry, you will never know all there is to know about the Bible, or even all there is to know about any major book.

Today we have many tools to assist with Bible study that were not available in the past, some not even a few years ago. MP3 players (like the I-Pad) are one such tool, allowing you to listen whenever and wherever you have time. I listen while driving to and from work (about 40 min each way, since I drive slow) I have found two excellent "Expositors" on the Internet, with extensive audio files that can be downloaded and listened to on an MP3 player.

One of the oldest and best known is Dr. J. Vernon McGee, who made more than 400 hours of recordings, specifically as an expository study of the Bible. He finished a 5 year tour of the Bible, and he called it the "Bible Bus." It has been playing on more than 100 radio stations around the world for many years.

He finished the 5 year study in the mid 70's and it has been repeated every 5 years ever since. He established the benchmark for all expository study, and I have been going through his "tour" for over two years. Because it was made just for radio, each of his recordings is exactly 26 minutes long, and contains about 22 or 23 minutes of his teachings.

Now, I will say that I don't agree with Vernon McGee's interpretation all of the time, but I do agree with him the vast majority of the time. Also, since he teaches the Scriptures without getting too entangled in the politics of the moment, when he makes a commentary on society, it is surprisingly relevant to the current day's issues.

The only downside to Vernon McGee is that he has a fairly steep, old English, vocabulary. It will, from time to time make you wonder what he is talking about, unless you read the King James Bible, Shakespeare, or some other classical literature.

Chuck Smith did a similar tour of the Bible, around 2004, for his evening Church group. While I haven't listened to very much of his recordings (about 15 hours, or so) I have listened enough to know he teaches well. The advantage of his recordings are the language he uses is less old English, and therefore easier to listen to. There are two disadvantages, both related to the fact that he did them for a live audience. First, since it is a live recording, some bits and pieces refer to things in the audience, that you cannot see. Second, since they were not made for radio, the length of the recordings varies from about 20 min to around 2 hours.

The Coming Famine

2011-07-28T09:02:00.008-05:00

In the coming year, we run a risk of worldwide food shortages. This will come in two forms. In third world countries there will be widespread starvation, as availability of food simply disappears. In developed countries prices will spike, and the poor in those countries will not have enough to eat, despite attempts by governments and charitable organizations to keep pace with the skyrocketing needs.

There will, of course, be people of wealth (about 2% to 5% of the population) in third world countries that will have sufficient wealth to have plenty. They will even be involved in profiteering off the misery of the masses, and the attempts by charitable organizations to deliver food to those masses.

There will also be some in between situations, where food will be available, though in short supply and at exorbitant prices, and in those places there will be riots and wars.

There have been a couple of close calls in the past, with world food inventories falling to near zero, political and market forces pushing food to the wealthy and well connected and for short
times there was starvation in some regions.

I will admit I could not find good references to the information, but I do remember around 1996, there was an article saying we were down to three weeks food in the US. But of course, the next crops were harvested and things went back to normal. And in reality, we are in perpetually the same shape today as we were in that close call. Only now we call it "Just in Time Supply System."

America once had massive warehouses, and silos dotted the land, full of food, stored up for times of need. Or at least stored until someone ordered it to fill our grocery shelves. But that system was deemed inefficient, as someone had to pay for those warehouses. Now, the "Just in Time" system forecasts needs, and computers know the moment there is a sale of an item from the grocery, so that the next shipment of a product is in route to the store as the sale of the previous one is being sold. The next shipment of the product to the distribution center is in route as the current one is being loaded onto the truck to be taken to the store. The next shipment after that is being harvested somewhere in the world, and already earmarked for delivery to the distribution center. It is all like a big pipeline.

In this system there are no major grain stores or warehouses. What is in the pipeline is what is in the system. And last I checked, that amounts to about seven weeks of supplies, total. This system works, as long as crops somewhere in the world are being harvested on a continued basis, and as long as when one food gets short people can eat something else.

We are coming to a day in the very near future, somewhere in late 2011 or early 2012 (most likely), crop failures all over the world will have a real and lasting impact on our food supply. Right now, no one is talking about this because it is so subtle. (as in epidemics, we seem to have two modes of thinking, complacency and panic) In reality, we are likely to see only 15% - 30% drop in crop availability. But that can translate to doubling or more of the prices here, and complete loss of availability in some regions.

But this isn't going to be a one week or one month event. There are impending crop failures all around the world right now, and these failures will happen over a period of months or maybe even years, and as the world population continues to rise, the shortages generated in 2012 will continue to echo across the world for years. And the political fallout, as the wealthy and well connected attempt to try to enrich themselves on the plight of the masses, will result in massive consolidation of power and control over increasingly scarce and valuable commodities.

It is not like this has not been warned about before. While most of the "news" releases about an impending famine have been self serving panic ads meant to make people buy their products, some of them are from the science community, and some of those were from people who will not directly benefit from the changes they advocate. Most of those have been talking about a famine 20 or more years down the road, but with the sudden rash of crop failures around the globe, it may be at our door step within the next year or two.

The Bible warns us in The Revelation, there will be a famine in the last days. It says the famine will be bad enough that a laborer's wages for a day will be sufficient only to feed him for a day, with nothing left over for housing, a family, or anything else. The only question, now, should be: is this the one the Bible talks about, or is this merely a harbinger of what is to come?

July Economics non-report

2011-07-26T15:22:00.001-05:00

32 years ago, President Jimmy Carter made a speech in which he outlined a general malaise that gripped the nation, keeping us in an unending slow to nonexistent economic growth.

Malaise. That word works today, too.

The biggest difference is that just over a year after we elected a new government, bent on breaking out of that malaise, 67% of the people are blaming that new crop of congressmen, just elected, for the problems they are trying to solve.

What this really amounts to is that the public has gotten the first glimpse of the fact that they will have to make some sacrifices to return our nation to a path of prosperity, and they don't want any of it.

Some years ago, I said the American public, having tired of freedom and prosperity, have elected a government that will leave them impoverished and enslaved. Now it looks like they are happy being impoverished and enslaved. At least then they don't have to do the hard work and make the sacrifices that are required for freedom and prosperity.

A little catching up

2011-07-13T06:52:00.003-05:00

Well, a month of hiatus from this blog
turned into 100 days, so I will have
a bit of catching up to do.

Apostasy, Heresy and Idolatry are rampant in both society and the Church today. In the past few months, I discovered that many of the old mainline churches began going apostate around the turn of the 20th century and were more or less completely apostate after WWII. This did not happen in the past 40 years, as I had assumed. Some had fallen away long before that. A letter to J.Vernon McGee in the early 70's said the apathy in the Church there "makes for a dark day" in Briton. It makes for a dark day everywhere.

A few definitions are in order, for those who don't study religion on a daily basis.
Apostasy is turning away from what one previously professed. A nonbeliever cannot be an apostate, only someone or a group (Church) that previously professed belief in the Bible can be apostate.
Heresy is the espousing of an idea that is clearly at odds with one of the major doctrines of the
Bible. There are only 7 to 10 (depending on who you ask) major docrines of Christianity. Most
of the arguments in Church groups is about minor doctrines.
Idolatry is the affection of some object or idea that one gives a priority above God.

Idolatry, Heresy, and Apostasy:
The "trinity of failure" of the Church.

Our nation, as are most nations, is steeped in idolatry. But our nation is not what is in question. "God's people" are in question. In ancient times, Israel was "put out of the land" more than once. And always for idolatry, not for other sins. Today, the "God's People" in question is "The Church." Not this church or that church or the church over yonder. And most certainly not the Roman Catholic Church. But rather, the Real Church, or some call it "The Church Invisible." Those who believe Jesus died and is Risen, and by whom they believe they are saved. And yet, these same Christians, who recognize they should worship God, often embrace the idols of our current civilization.

Most of us went through the comic superheroes phase as pre-teens. Many, however, still keep up with those same superheroes. For others, tuning in to watch the news when some megamillionaires (like Oprah Winfrey or Donald Trump) are the subject is commonplace in the houses of both the unsaved and the saved. Many Christians can name, and give statistics for dozens of national sports league atheletes, others can give the resume of many hollywood idols.

How many Bible charactors can you name? How many books of the Bible? How much time do you spend in the Bible, as compared to People Magazine, or Sports Illustrated. Is your idol found in pop culture?

Some church buildings are places of worship and comfort for all who go there, but usually the church building is a place where a few believers and a few curious gather with quite a few pretenders, who desire to make people think they believe. We should tolerate this for now, in the hope that the few curious will find Jesus. But maybe not. Are we promoting the defamation of the Gospel? Is it time to rethink where the faithful gather?

For what, do most Christians worship God? Why do they think they are Christians? Why do they go to Church or pray?

Many say they believe the Bible, but do they even know what is in the Bible? How can they believe what they have no knowledge of? Some no longer believe the Bible, but clearly state that they have moved on, and have no need of it.

There are some confusing statistics, to be sure.

According to the recent study by LifeWay Research, 62 percent of American adults own a King James Version Bible. But look more closely at the article I linked to. "Those who read the Bible more than once a month." Once a month? And just over a quarter don't read the KJV, because it is too difficult to read. So why do they have it?
Status symbol?
Ornamentation?
Idol?

The Truth? "According to an earlier LifeWay study, only 16 percent of regular church attenders read the Bible daily." So where do they get their theology and doctrine? I would be it is from the heretics on religious TV networks. And some get fed a dose of heresy in their own Church, but cannot see the difference, because they do not know the Scriptures firsthand.

More truth. I have my own Idols, and must fight with them daily. My pride, and my interest in economics and politics are prone to be my idols.

What to do about all this? Well, that may be addressed in some later article. For now, go read some more of the Bible. You will never get enough.

Will be taking a Hiatus

2011-04-04T09:32:00.002-05:00

From time to time, I find it necessary to take time off from blogging, and this looks like the time. Therefore, I plan to take a hiatus for the rest of April. Too much to do: Taxes, spring cleaning, gardening, etc.

If you are looking for more knowledge of the
Bible, go to ThruTheBible.org and climb aboard the Bible Bus

About the economy

Jobs still look good thru end of March

Oil and Gasoline are still going up. And they will continue upwards for at least the rest of this year. After that, I don't know if things will crash, like they did in the fall of 2007.

Government still claims there is no inflation (translation: your pay isn't going up).

I said a couple months ago that I might look into silver, and I did: Silver is wildly over priced. This past few months I looked at how many batteries I typically use in a year, and bought that many (and a few more). Energy is going up. Buy ahead, but beware, typical alkaline batteries like I use have a 3 year shelf life.

That Pesky Check Engine Light

2011-03-18T14:07:00.002-05:00

Over the past 16 years, on board diagnostics have become universal in our vehicles. The most common system, by far, is the OBD2, or "on board diagnostics version 2." Because we generally have learned to ignore all the new gadgets under the hood ("just some air pollution device"), most of us never know what that "computer" the mechanic talks about really is.

Just in the past couple of years, "readers" for this system have become common and inexpensive. (Before last year, I never saw one less than $100) The absolutely lowest price readers may just read out a code, but for not much more, you can get one that tells what the code means and is able to reset it, thus turning of that pesky check
engine light.

These things are great but, as any shade tree mechanic will tell you, they don't replace doing the basics. I am often astonished at the simple things people don't do to take care of their vehicles today. For the average person, owning the average car or truck, they should still pop the hood about once a week and check all the fluids. This means oil, transmission fluid, power steering, coolant, and brakes. One note on these, especially on the brakes, most vehicles are designed so you can shine a flashlight through the resevoir to check the level. Don't open it if you can help it. And don't add brake fluid, if it is low, it is time for maintenance.

And check the tires too. I do this visually each week (on my work truck I do this daily, as it is driven in a hostile environment), and with a gauge once or more a month. Low tires steal your money.

Now, on the subject of the check engine light, and the OBD2 system that turns it on, manufactures will always be looking for ways to bilk money out of their customers. So in times past, they included "secret" codes that only the dealers knew what they were. Today, the sensors and codes continue to become more complex, with new codes likely to be unknown to the available readers. A possible follow on to the OBD2 system integrates it, wirelessly, into computer networks owned by either the government or the car manufacture. This is already underway in some makes and models and is likely to allow a great deal of mischief on the parts of both. I don't have enough information on these developments at this time, but plan to do more research in the near future.

On the other hand, there are some codes that have a simple fix. One code indicates a leak in the fuel system, and that one may be no more than "you didn't tighten the fuel cap enough," or left the engine running while putting fuel in the vehicle. These are big no-no's, as today's fuel systems are sealed, and only vented through a charcoal canister (known as an evap system). Others may require fixing, but not right away. I had a problem with the torque converter clutch being "stuck off." OK, it is a problem, but only costs me a mile per gallon in the near term. I have been erasing this code about once a week for a couple of months now. I plan to get it fixed, but don't really have a specific idea of when.

Economic impact of disasters

2011-03-15T11:35:00.001-05:00

First, the Middle East, then Japan

Unrest in the Middle East caused oil to rise a few dollars in price, but not as much as is believed. It accounts for just 20 cents per gallon currently, but as Libyan Rebels have successes, saboteurs may strike directly at oil facilities there and in Saudi Arabia, and that would have more impact.

There is talk of the US intervening. I don't think we should. We are stretched to thin as it is, and I for one am not certain we want the rebels to win. I don't know who is behind them yet, and it could be the Muslim Brotherhood. If so, all these countries that are warring about "liberty" will convert to Fundamentalist Islam.

Meanwhile on the other side of the world, the impact of an earthquake and tsunami on Japan will be felt around the world. The markets have already gone negative, and there will be a loss of jobs as some good formerly shipped from Japan will be reduced or stopped. Ironically, oil and gas will go down in price, but this is only temporary, as replacing the electric generation capacity from the two destroyed nuclear power plants will require large quantities of coal, oil, and gas.

The commodities will go up, because the Japanese are people who harvest from the oceans and make things. The will be busy rebuilding for a couple of years, meaning smaller harvests (and to be sure, the ocean will have less now to harvest, as the earthquake and tsunami killed a portion of it) and more demand for raw materials to rebuild their country. We saw this same phenomenon with Katrina, and this is several times larger than Katrina.

More money being spent on rebuilding, less invested in industry, more demand on resources, and less resources all impact inflation. This will definitely mean more inflation, as you and I see it. The government numbers may not show anything at all, since our wages will not go up.

And, last, of course the anti nuclear lunatics are coming out of the woodwork to spout off their insanity. Meltdown or no meltdown from these plants, building more plant of our own is a must. We are many years behind on building nuclear plants, and several years behind on building coal powered plants. Certainly, there are things to be learned from the way this disaster unfolded, but there is no sanity in those who say we should not build.

Lessons We Do Not Learn

2011-03-14T10:10:00.002-05:00

As I watched news coverage of the Earthquake in Japan, there was a well covered side story about the approach of a tsunami into Hawaii. One news agency was in contact with an employee who was there on maternity leave. They said they first noticed something when everyone at a restaurant was on their cell phones. OK, now we know how fast news travels by cell phone, but later, they said they were calling by "land line" because the cell phone system was "a mess," meaning it wasn't working any more.

She also said there were lines at the gas stations, and people panic buying at the grocery stores. (She needed formula, if I heard correctly.) When she got to wherever she evacuated to, people were filling tubs and any other containers with water. Everyone was trying to call everyone, which is why the cell phone system was not working. And she said: 'the people are reacting calmly - this is something they have practiced. '

What have we learned from this? Or realized that we have not learned? Here in Texas, we recently had a minor emergency, and the local govenment used one of those mass robo-caller systems to try to alert everybody. The cell phone system overloaded. Way back in the aftermath of the 9-11 crisis, this was identified as a problem, and a solution was proposed. Limit voice calls to emergency personell only, and upgrade the texting system to allow it to handle everyone at once trying to access it. That proposal was never followed through. So, one of the first lessons is that the primary commercial communications systems will be the first to fail.

In almost every emergency, people swamp the gas stations and grocery stores. If you always have a half a tank, you can go 100 miles at highway speeds or go for 4 hours in stop and go traffic. (Three if you run your air conditioner.) The crisis on Hawaii is likely to only last a few days, and you can keep enough food on hand for a few days if you aren't picky about taste and variety. Plan to eat beans and rice. Water is another big concern. You will need some way to capture, filter and sterilize water. Planning ahead allows you to watch every one else panic, while you remain calm. Lesson two. Do not leave your gas tank less than half full, have some rations on hand, and a means to obtain water.

One of the biggest lessons here is that all preparations and planning MUST be done BEFORE the disaster. When nothing seems to be happening. Take a few minutes and think through every possible disaster that could come your way. Think through some of the improbible ones too. Nearly everyone in the US is vulnerable to earthquake. Half are vulerable to flood (or losing power or water due to flood.) Epidemic could shut down the trucking system that delivers our food. A pipeline break could close all the gas stations tommorrow.

When evacuations are necessary, the government usually has a plan in mind to move you a minimal distance and then ship goods to you. That is fine if you are indigent. If you are a person of means (remember my test, if you can afford cable TV, you can afford to plan for disasters and help others), you need to do more. Evacuate to twice the distance. Leave the government and Red Cross help to others who need it more. You will be better off, and so will others.

Finally - economic turnaround?

2011-03-10T15:55:00.002-06:00

Well, maybe. We are finally in a cycle of job creation, and manufacturing is up at the same time. But not enough to call this a recovery. Not Yet. We have seen manufacturing gains (49,000 last month, 33,000 this month) but there are still formidable hurdles facing us. The price of energy. The greed of the limousine liberal elite. The public employee unions. Our lethargy in facing a menacing threat from Islamists. Our failure to address the threat of those who hate God and are undermining America because it once stood for Christianity. The specter of high inflation still looms, and just around the corner, unless (as I do) you count that it has already begun.

The fact is, I still don't think this will be a real recovery. The last "recovery," from 2002 to 2006 was hollow and fake. Real income and wealth in Blue Collar America declined. The only increase was in what we bought by borrowing and amassing debt. In this "recovery" there is a sizable increase in spending, and yet the Baltic Dry Index and Rail Index are showing a slow slide. This tells me that what extra spending is being done is not durable goods, but really is an increase in waste of consumer dollars on things like video games, phone "ap's," and cable or satellite TV.

This increase in borrowing and spending in US households is a reversal of the sudden frugality that gripped the nation just a couple years ago. And while it may temporarily lead to the appearance of better economic times, it is just a repeat of what led to this crisis in the first place.

Just a couple of After Thoughts

Gas Prices. I forecast before that they would hit $3.50 by May, and said a couple weeks ago, the turmoil in the mideast is not the cause of rising prices. Well, I need to modify that slightly. I estimate 20 cents a gallon of our gas prices is due to the turmoil in the mideast. But while that 20 cents is a temporary rise, the steady rise in prices due to increased demand around the world will continue. Currently I expect the price of gas to top $4 (here in Texas) and go on up to around $4.20 to $4.50 in the next 12 months. I don't think we will see a massive downturn like the last one, but I do think the upwards climb in both usage and price of fuels will stall and either level out or turn back slightly downwards. At what point that stall will occur is beyond my expertise.

Prices of energy and commodities will continue upwards as a portion of our wages for the foreseeable future. There may be times of respite, but the days will be increasingly more difficult, until the Biblical expression of "a quart of wheat for a days wage" is true. Unless there is a die off of over 1/3 of the earth's human population, with no similar die off of other species, we are indeed going to be seeing a worldwide famine in the next 10 to 40 years.

We could delay the more difficult days ahead for quite some time if we would pursue nuclear, oil sands, coal and natural gas with fervor, and forget the silliness of the global warming fools. But ultimately, our population has already reached a point where the earth cannot sustain our food supply, and our fate is sealed. Now, it is only a matter of when.

Well, for the second

2011-03-04T05:47:00.002-06:00

For the second month in a row, I don't have much to say on the subject of theology or christian living. Thought I did, and wrote most of an article. But I don't have the answers, you have to read it for yourself.

Here are a couple of online tools I have found useful.
Bible Gateway
Blue Letter Bible
Bible Search

Ask God to show you His Wisdom.

Project Gunrunner

2011-02-26T17:21:00.002-06:00

Some months ago, the Obama administration and the media were caught lying about how many guns confiscated after crimes were committed in Mexico. They said it was 90%, and the real number was more like 17%. Now it looks like the BATF may be trying to enhance their statistics.

"Project Gunrunner," an operation run by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, was designed to stop the flow of guns from the U.S. to Mexico's drug cartels, but had the opposite result. Investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports.

ATF management was allowing potentially hundreds of semiautomatic firearms to be walked across the Mexican border in order to pad statistics used to further budget and power objectives.

Recently two federal agents were gunned down in Mexico. What is everyone NOT talking about? Those who provided the guns that killed agents were smuggled out of the country by the ATF.

Congress moves in mysterious ways.

Gas Prices Soaring Amid Mideast Turmoil

2011-02-10T17:34:00.003-06:00

Ummm, not so much.

What part of this is so hard to understand?

"The average price for a gallon of regular gasoline costs 48 cents more this February than last."

OK, that is an increase of 16%. Hurts, yes, but it was entirely predictable. I must mention that I have no formal training in economics, except one class in High School (30 years ago).

Are we heading for $5 a gallon gasoline? Yes, as I said about 6 years ago. The only reason we haven't seen it already is the economic disaster of 2008/2009 delayed it.

There are some things that have changed. China is the big one. As I said last year, and about 30 months ago, China is a big player in this market now, and the winter decline in fuel prices will no longer be seen.

UPDATE: On review of this article, I noticed I did not include a link to the article that gave me the headline. Here it is: Gas Prices Soaring Amid Mideast Turmoil
.

Our Favorite Mode of Transportation

2011-02-10T02:58:00.000-06:00

I have neglected this topic for about a year now, but plan to write a series of articles on our favorite mode of transportation, and of course some other modes, as well.

The first thing I want to mention is that I believe most of the problems our auto industry has faced in the past 40 years have been mostly their own undoing. This is not to say that unions and government have not played a role, but that much of what circulates about those entities causing trouble for the automotive industry has been pure fiction.

Take for instance, the widely circulated myth that CAFE standards have hurt them. Quite the opposite is true. Had they not been forced to deal with the gas mileage problems, they would have been in bankruptcy years earlier than they were. Why do Toyota and Honda not have problems with gas mileage standards? They saw the problem before hand, and adapted more quickly.

Manufacturing up - among down numbers

2011-02-06T15:55:00.002-06:00

Economists are blaming the weather. Like January and February are different this year than any other year. Well they are different, but not by that much, that you can blame the economy on them.

Employment numbers are dismal this month, but with a slight bright spot in manufacturing. Manufacturing added 49,000 jobs last month, and that is just enough to call a bright spot. Manufacturing continues to look healthier than it has since Sep'08, however, it has a long ways to go to look as good as it did before the crash Strangely (in my view), markets did not fall much on the news that virtually all of the economic growth for the past couple of months is an illusion.

Inflation has already begun to show its face. Even though the government keeps telling us there is no inflation, as Carla Fried from MoneyWatch pointed out "the ring of the cash register doesn’t square with the government’s reports."

And more is on the way. Cost of energy is driving the prices of almost everything the average citizen buys, from motor fuel, to food, to ammunition. From aluminum cans, electric lights, to steel for cars, it all depends on energy, and its all going up. Virtually every commodity is going up. Everything except wages. And that is why the government's numbers are not showing inflation.

Hat Tip to John Keefe who writes "The Marco View"

I have mentioned before that I never invested in precious metals, and I still don't. (I also mentioned, had I, I would have made some money) On a few occasions I have said I might be persuaded if the price got low enough. There is quite a bit of hype and speculation in the prices. Gold might be a good deal at $1000 an oz, and Silver at $19 an oz. I don't foresee either of those prices showing up, unless it in the middle of a general melt down of some multinational economic system. There are a couple of sub-national economies on the brink of meltdown (Greece, Ireland, California, Illinois), but I don't see them impacting the price of gold enough to make it worthwhile. If China begins dumping its holdings in either gold or T-Bills, that might do it.

Another reason I wouldn't, and the primary reason I haven't invested in Gold or Silver is that those are places to park your money until after a meltdown. I expect to need funds during the meltdown, and as they say, you can't eat gold or silver, and in the middle of a meltdown, you can't trade them for anything worthwhile either. For those who are storing up their treasures on earth, and plan on emerging from the disaster as a tycoon, go ahead and invest in gold.

In the mean time, if your going to put your savings into something tangible, I have mentioned steel (as in tools, or a bicycle) in the past. It also looks like certain energy intensive metals might be useful places to invest. Like copper or aluminum. Be advised though, minimum time for return will be two or more years.

I should note, several of the "economic collapse" web sites(even some that I have quoted) are running advertisements (think "infomercials," for us older folks) for buying gold, other precious metals, or other survivalist stuff. That doesn't mean they are wrong, just one sided. They can be good source or links to good information, but over the long run, they tend to just repeat themselves in various forms.

All of the following headlines showed up on "The Economic Collapse Blog" in about a week's time.

10 reasons why the latest unemployment numbers are no reason to cheer
nothing is stable anymore
even Donald Trump is warning that an economic collapse is coming
12 facts which show that we are in the midst of the worst housing collapse in US history
warning signs
5 reasons why Barack Obama's state of the union address was completely wrong about the economy

None of them are wrong really, but if you ingest too much of this stuff, you will grossly overestimate the immediacy of the threat. Economics is a marathon, not a sprint.

Random items facing Christians

2011-02-03T18:33:00.002-06:00

I find myself to be wholly unprepared, this month, to write a cohesive article on any Christian or Theological subject. I will however bore anyone who wants to read further with a couple of random things I have recently run across.

Christianity and Christian Theology continue to be under attack from multiple directions. Virtually any and all so-called television evangelists are heretical hypocrites. However, one recently did have a coming to terms moment on CNN, when he was backed into a corner and forced to take a stand on homosexuality. He admitted he believed the Bible, and that the Bible calls it sin.

I was impressed. I didn't know Joel Osteen had any use for the Bible, other than as a tool to steal money from people who follow his feel good theology. Of course, so called human rights groups (violent extremists wearing sheep's clothing) and so called baptist pastors (preaching a watered down pseudo christian philosophy) attacked him immediately for telling the truth about what the Bible says.

Chic-Fil-A came under attack for providing box lunches to a marriage seminar. Tolerance among liberals? NOT.

A petition against Chick-Fil-A was posted on the human rights website Change.org, urging the company to do more to promote homosexual marriage. Of course, those who put it there even lie about the presence of the petition. After reading an article on "Good As You" stating there was no petition, I looked it up myself and found the petition myself. It was also attacked by college campus gay pride promoters. This is the same reaction as the criminal "pride" groupes that attacked Christian Churches in Califoria last year.

I am concerned that they may back off from their pro Christian, pro Family stance, but for now they seem to be holding firm.

Folly of Government Charity

2011-01-30T16:14:00.002-06:00

The folly of having government run charity.

It is folly to have government in charge of charity. Because it isn't their money, it soon tends towards wasting that money. Also, once funded, it almost impossible to de-fund a program that has gone astray because there will be outcries from those who are living off the program and sometimes they will also sue. Or they could just fake the de-funding of the project by sticking it under a new name. Sometimes the people will win in court and get back control of their money, but then too, someone may make a back door to refund the program that was de-funded.

"Charity" is a synonym for "Love." What has the government to do with love? Charity is best done person to person, or a small group of persons pooling their volentary efforts to help one or more people.

So called government charity always will go astray into socialism and to buying votes. Which then undermines the very foundation of charity itself - the individual.

One example of this was the so called Community Reinvestment Act, which expanded in many directions and ultimately was one of the primary causes of the collapse of our economy in 2007.

Every Nation is like a vessel on a stormy sea. Socialism is like cutting a hole in the side of the vessel to let the water out. -- (an original by the Crypto-Corinthian)

Successful LED Lights

2011-01-15T13:11:00.002-06:00

I intended to post this several months ago, as my last post on this subject said: "It will probably be next week before I post about my current assortment of lights, mostly made by Ray-O-Vac"

I have owned quite a few LED lights over the last 5 years. There has been much improvement in the quality of white light LED's over that time. The main improvement has been in the quality of white light. White LED's in 2001 were of such poor quality someone wrote an article titled "White LED's Suck" and they were fairly correct. Today's LED's are much better.

The flashlights around my house in the 90's and early into this century were the ordinary 2 D-Cell kind with fairly good bulbs and were decent quality. However, in the last several years, I have set out to replace each and every one of them with LED lights. And for mainly this reason: The cost of batteries is soon greater than the cost of the flashlight, if you use it very much. Also, while I have never had an LED flashlight bulb burn out or just quit, regular bulbs used to quit on me from time to time in the past.

The best LED replacement I have found for the most common house and car flashlight is the Ray-O-Vac "Brilliant Solutions" variety. These can be had at Wal-Mart, and are fairly inexpensive. Oddly, they are available on the Net for about double the price.

Naming convention for most of the Ray-O-Vac flashlights is fairly straightforwards. If you see 2AA in the name, it takes 2 AA batteries. If you see 3AAA in the name, it takes 3 AAA batteries.

Brilliant Solutions also includes a $1 conventional flashlight that takes 2 AA batteries, and might be useful somewhere you hope to never need a flashlight, but must keep one for safety reasons.

I believe I have written in the past about the headlamp I use at work, and I still think the Ray-O-Vac 3-in-1 LED Headlamp is the best headlamp on the market for under $30 apiece. I don't know if it is still in production, but it is still intermittently available from Amazon for about $13 (but you have to buy them in the 2 pack for $26).

For an extra bright flashlight, I recently bought Ray-O-Vac Sportsman 3W 2AA DC-DC Regulated Flashlight that is rated 80 Lumens. That model may not be available, but similar models are. Expect to pay between $20 and $35 each. They are water and impact resistant, and use a twist bottom switch with push button momentary. I don't particularly like that type of switch, but it is the most trouble free and longest lasting type of switch around.

The 5 LED basic headlamp I used to get on line for about $6.50 is now available at Wal-Mart near the checkout for $5.75 and will probably show up at places like Family Dollar stores soon. This is a very generic headlamp that shows up from time to time and place to place with inconsistent model and UPC numbers.

I waited for some time for Ray-O-Vac to make a caplight that I liked, but Energizer beat them to it. They make a caplight and a headlight that are virtually the same, for around $15. Has two red LED's and three white LED's. Runs on 2 AAA batteries.

Economic Outlook for 2011

2011-01-08T18:41:00.002-06:00

Hopefully this will be the longest post I make all year.

Here is a list of subjects I will cover:

Markets and Jobs
Gas price forecast extension
Governments roll in our current economy
Biggest holders of our national debt
A dismal future

Markets and Jobs

I heard on the first day of trading this year (3 Jan) that if the markets move upwards by at least 1% on that day, it will be a good year. By the 5th, they were congratulating themselves on how good the payroll numbers would look. Payroll numbers come out on the 7th of this month. I have news for them. The good or bad of a year does not revolve around the markets, but around good jobs for the masses. Payroll numbers, especially manufacturing payrolls are the key.

At first, it looked pretty good. The manufacturing sector expanded on several fronts, and orders for durable goods were up. But remember, the indexes were above the waterline most of 2010, and yet the manufacturing jobs numbers were not so good. I think, to be good, the ISM manufacturing index must be above 55, instead of the 50 we normally associate with improvement. That goes along with the need to add more than 200,000 jobs a month to the economy, and 20,000 must be manufacturing jobs. This month's numbers are just over 100,000 jobs and only 5000 in manufacturing. The manufacturing number is the most sobering.

Gas price forecast extension

The current market forces indicate gas will be over $3.50 in May, and over $4 by Christmas. And my numbers are for the areas of the gas price map that show green.

Governments roll in our current economy

The biggest drags on our economy are renege prices and expansion of government. In the past year, the Obamacare legislation, and the gifts of bailouts to bankers and unions were the biggest government drags. And the many moratoriums on energy production, both before and after the BP spill (and still today) are one of the biggest factors driving up energy prices.

So, currently, the Obama administration is the biggest cause of our economic problems. But it is not even close to being alone as a culprit. We have a fun and games mentality that will snap up anything shiny (I believe it was Dave Ramsey who called it a "culture of bass"), will not defer pleasure and is centered around instant gratification. This is the same mentality that led to the demise of both the Greek and the Roman empires. And we have more of it than they did.

Add to that the idea that government is supposed to be all to everyone (the builders of a perfect law and order society for the republicans, and the santa clause of the democratic party) and it is a recipe for disaster.

Biggest holders of our national debt

Just as a side note, here are the biggest holders of our national (government) debt. The website I got this from only lists about $3T of the reported $14T national debt. I suspect the disconnect may be the $14T is obligations (contracts have been signed) and the $3T is what is already payed out, but I am not certain of this.

Who holds how much of our federal governments debt - in Billions

Total 2845.8
Country or entity Oct 2010
China, Mainland 906.8
Japan 877.4
United Kingdom 477.6
Oil Exporters 213.9
Brazil 177.6
Hong Kong 139.2
Carib Bnkng Ctrs 133.7

Oil exporters include Ecuador, Venezuela, Indonesia, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar,Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Gabon, Libya, and Nigeria.
Caribbean Banking Centers include Bahamas, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Netherlands Antilles and Panama.

A dismal future

To make this clear, I don't think we will pull out of this. If we see any prosperity at all again, it will be a short and very hollow economic upswing. The only questions is when and how suddenly will we slide into desolation. The numbers lately (look at the third chart) are looking more and more like the slide is imminent, but I am no expert at this, and it could be months or even years away.

After repeated warnings by Moody's that they might be "stretching" the AAA credit rating of US Treasury bonds, many others around the world broke with Moody's and downgraded our credit rating last Spring. Of course, in my own personal opinion, Moody's also kept many bond ratings too high in the past, becoming part of the problem that led to the recession and bailouts. I once said we could know when the recession was ending by the interest rates on T-Bills going up, but at the time I could not visualize our national debt becoming so large we might pay higher interest rates because investors are unsure if we will slide into such an economic abyss, of unemployment and inflation, that the T-Bills would be nearly worthless.

Entering the End Game

2011-01-02T18:33:00.003-06:00

I believe we have entered the "End Game" (reference to Chess Strategy) between God and Satan.

Only time will tell. No man knows the day nor the hour. We have been very near the end game before. In 1982 we were within a hair's breadth of entering the end game, but then God raised up Ronald Reagan, and the timetable was set back 30 years. We approach it again, but this time I believe we have crossed the line, and the elements are in motion, that will bring about the end of the age of the Gentiles. (And the Church Age)

I ran across a good write up on this subject, that may be of interest to any who read my blog to find out what the future holds for us and our nation.

The Revelation Of Jesus Christ….Revealed

Since no two people completely agree on the interpretation of Scripture, I will say right up front that I have a couple of minor disagreements with his interpretation, about halfway through his article. That is it. Minor disagreements on a couple of points. The more two Christians engage in serious, prayerful study of the Scriptures the less disagreement they will have.

The watchmen on the wall are sounding the alarm.

From the midst of Jerusalem! Now blow a trumpet in Tekoa and raise a signal over Beth-haccerem; For evil looks down from the north, and a great destruction.
Jeremiah, Chapter 6

So, what should we be doing about this? Not much other than what we should have been doing, all along. As Luke 12:37 says: "Blessed are those slaves whom the master will find on the alert when he comes ; truly I say to you, that he will gird himself to serve, and have them recline at the table, and will come up and wait on them.

I wrote some time ago about the characteristics of a good Church. Well, that article could become obsolete really soon. Should things take a turn for the worse, it will be time to start looking for a good House Church ministry, as the True Believers move back underground. More on that later, if the Lord is willing.

End of Year Posting

2010-12-30T12:42:00.002-06:00

What happened this past year, and what I hope to do, if the Lord is willing, next year.

Blogger has added some new features for static files, similar to "sticky posts" on WordPress. I expect to capitalize on this feature real soon.

In the next year, I don't think my articles will be as long or as in-depth. Nor will I be concerned with having as many links to supporting information.

Combat Effective - around 20 Feb 2010 Combat Effective was taken down by multiple attacks, some of which may have been denial of service, some of which may have exploited flaws in either the software or service provider. It is back up, but due to the busy schedules of the site owner (both his job and his family) it isn't as heavily trafficked as it was two years ago.

I asked God repeatedly throughout 2010 to help me find a way out of the job I am in, and in December, He answered. He told me NO. It seems there is a steady stream of people He has been sending to me for encouragement and direction.

I am still hearing that Christians all around the US, and possibly the world, are very weak in their knowledge of the Bible. We are now deep into the days of Apostasy, with the days of persecution coming at us fast. Just a few days ago, a new law was passed, Christians can now serve in the Military, but only on a "don't ask don't tell" basis. This law is from the same government that dis-invited all Fundamentalist Christians from the National Day of Prayer.

I suspect this is "End Game" (Chess reference, not "the end of the game") for the Church and the "age of the Gentiles" is coming to an end. Not just because of what is happening in the US, but what is happening around the world.

While I haven't looked very hard, I have seen no improvement in the Border Fence all this year. More people on the Border, and better enforcement of employment verification, but no more fence. People on the Border is a make work project, and employment verification will lead to more surveillance society, as mission creep sets in.

I hope to do more with book reviews next year.

The economics lessons of 2007-2008 seem to be forgotten. I thought rising interest rates would signal strengthening economy, but I neglected to forecast the downgrading of US Treasury Bonds (by Moody). Food inflation is just around the corner for the US, and is an ever present reality in some parts of the world.

Energy prices will be going up for the next few years, if there is not another worldwide economic crash. I locked in my electric rate early in November, just in time (before the rest of the world was able to react to the news about energy prices). As for anyone who hasn't done that, now is better than later for getting a contract (if you live in one of the states that allows customers to contract for electricity rates.

I started to do some articles on cars and trucks, but didn't have the time and energy to do it justice last year. I hope to do much more with it in the coming year.

If you haven't begun preparing for disasters, don't delay too long.

As a math fanatic, I can't help but play at being an odds-maker: here are some probabilities for the next year:
Global economic collapse 4% chance.
The Rapture might occur 2% chance.
War of Gog (see Ezekiel 37) 2% chance.
Solar Flare knocking out our power grid 1% chance.
Mass persecution of Christians in the US 1% chance.
Some other massive catastrophe, on a scale bigger than
anything seen by anyone living today 4% chance.

If any of the above occur, the possibility that a combination of more than one of the above will occur is very high. Combined likelihood of something (anything) really really big in the next year is about 7% chance.

Remember: the government isn't willing, and probably not able, to do what is necessary to protect you. They will always be more interested in projects to feather their caps and line their pockets, than to do what is right.

In intend to pay less attention to the Federal Government this next year.

I plan to split Observations and Definitions into two groups and do more, though smaller articles on Technology.

Our Economy at the Brink

2010-12-13T17:12:00.003-06:00

Not really, but the potential is there, either for real growth (which we had little of in the past two years), or a real slide into a second dip, next year. On the other hand, we seem to have a knack for choosing the route in between. Payrolls, factory orders and the stock market seem to agree on nothing.

If you ignore the temporary jobs for the Christmas shopping season, there has been a loss of both jobs as a whole and factory jobs for the past several months.

Congress continues to debate whether to raise taxes or not, and I don't think, in the long run, they will go up. But if they do, we will slide into another recessionary dip, possibly lasting a couple of years. If the renew the "Bush era tax cuts," we will continue to drive forward into a better economy. But how much better is anyone's guess. A lot of that has to do with how much of Obamacare can be killed off, and whether of not the carbon tax monster can be killed dead.

Gas prices have begun to rise in December. I believe the era of a price drop each winter is gone. China is now a major price driver in the gas and oil markets. And in all other commodity markets as well. Coal, Copper, Food, Gold, Iron, Silver.

Bernanke thinks it will take years, maybe five years, to recover to a "normal" unemployment rate, and thinks the threat of inflation is overblown. I think he is very much an optimist. My thoughts are much more along the lines of Tom Dennen, who bills himself as a Paranoid Historian.

The dollar continues to weaken, although it has leveled off for the past few days. The government insists there is no inflation, but the price of energy and food have been going up for more than a year. I have some news for the government. Prices going up are a sure sign of inflation. Just because you can juggle the numbers to count out all the factors that go up doesn't mean they go away.

This coming year might be more than interesting.

Encroachment of Liberalism

2010-12-06T10:41:00.003-06:00

The encroachment of liberalism can have a subtle, but destructive, influence on a Church. Liberalism breeds greed, envy, strife, and idolatry. I noticed this from time to time among my more "liberal" christian (and even Christian) friends, and now have an example from a news paper.

Recently Mary Hunt of "The everyday cheapskate" column answered a letter from someone about "social obligations" (the two links are the same) that involved people having home based businesses disguised as a "jewelry or candle "party." (The fact that it was "disguised" as a party was not mentioned in the letter, or the answer)

To make things worse, these "friends" were from her Church in a small town. She felt a moral obligation to attend and buy things from these so called friends, and I suspect these "friends" were using their Church as a social network to get her, and others to come buy things from them.

Her advise was well intended, though a little naive. She said if the writer stood her ground based on the fact that she held to a budget, she would be admired, if only in secret.

Let me say, she will not be admired. She will be hated, if only in secret. These so called friends are using and exploiting her, and likely others, for their profit, and would not take kindly to being exposed for what they are doing.

In an almost perfect world, she would make her concerns known to her pastor, and he would provide corrective council to these people. But this world is far from perfect, and the Old Russian Proverb comes to mind: "speak the truth, then leave quickly."

Since this is a small town, if she does anything, she will risk being vilified and otherwise persecuted. But I still think she should tell her pastor about her concerns. If the problem is not quickly corrected, though, she should be looking for another Church.

New Gasoline Blend E15

2010-11-29T16:52:00.003-06:00

This is a bit of a stub article, I didn't have time to fully flesh it out and show the conclusion.

Recently, the EPA decided to "allow" the introduction of E15, a 15% ethanol blend, at gas pumps across the US. Of course, allow is a bit of a misnomer, since once it is allowed, it will not be long before it is forced upon us. This decision to bring this product to the market was at the request of "Growth Energy," a coalition of U.S. ethanol supporters, and 54 ethanol manufacturers.

There had been an alcohol blend "wall" that allowed only 10% ethanol alcohol to be added to most fuel, except E85 blend, for use only in "flex fuel" vehicles. There has been a lot of hype and myth surrounding the mostly forced introduction of ethanol into gasoline, but some fairly balanced articles can be found, if one looks.

Of course, the problems are not made any easier to understand by some quasi-technicle web sites running obvious propaganda pieces. There is a fairly good rebuttal to this is found in blog somewhat off the beaten path. Among other things, he makes the point that, while the government is telling automobile owners etanol is perfectly safe, it is telling airplane owners and operators it is dangerous to their engines and fuel systems, and not to use it.

Some good information was published in the Orlando Sentenal.
(I don't have much experiance with the Orlando Sentenal or the Greenfield Reporter, but hope the link will remain good.)

The Google string I used to find most of this is:
gasoline ethanol alcohol problems older cars trucks

When researching these things, one thing to remember is that any recent article mentioning carbon emissions is likely propaganda, since man made global climate change was completely debunked in 2009.

Impact Now - Energy and Economics

2010-11-10T08:37:00.002-06:00

There is a tendency among otherwise reasonable people to think things have turned around for our nation, ever since the Obama administration got a "shellacking" at the polls on Nov 2nd.

Some things have changed, some things haven't. Energy is one of those things that has not changed. Supply and demand. And while energy usage demand is just chugging ever upwards, supply of cash via the nation's printing presses just expanded.

I see rumblings of the economy coming back to life ... in China and India. China is buying up commodities, as well as our debt. Especially important next year is Chinese import of coal, copper, and food. Food became important when the Russians lost 20% of their wheat crop this past summer.

With money supply rising, and energy demand rising, I see the value of the dollar decreasing and the price of energy getting a double dose of inflation.

This effect will be almost immediate, and will be felt before next spring. I don't know if this was built into the price of oil when I did my forcast last July, so I don't know (yet) if this will have an impact on that forecast.

The top three uses (not in any particular order) of energy by the average family are (1) their motor vehicle (2) heating and air conditioning and (3) food. These are the area's in which to concentrate efforts to get the most bang for your buck (so to speak).

November financial outlook

2010-11-05T18:39:00.003-05:00

Treasury bill interest rates hit an all time low recently, and the Dollar has been at its all time weakest (at least in recent history, as far back as I can remember). This is the result of both the "quantitative easing" (printing of more money), and the anticipation of what that extra money will do.

The US private sector payroll is better than many expected, and better than it has been in many months. 159,000 new jobs. Many gathering around the alters in Washington and Wall-Street are elated. But all is not rosy. The increase is just enough to offset the increases in US population. Manufacturing is not up, but rather, Lost Jobs. And the number of temporary workers is up, possibly due to the approaching greed and gluttony (Christmas) season.

There is some hope, though. Between politicians not wanting to commit partisan suicide, and the Republican takeover of Congress (but not the Senate, unfortunately) many business tax increases will be put on indefinite hold - maybe. Hiring in 2011 will be largely dependent on not raising taxes on businesses.

Meanwhile, the German Finance Minister calls US policy clueless. This is the typical hubris from a continent where people riot on a regular basis over how many free meals they can get from a society that has been bailed out at least six times by the US.

Elsewhere around the world, commodities such as copper and tin, oil, and even food are rising in price at an ever faster rate, but the "numbers are fascinating" crowd still thinks deflation is a problem that is here to stay.

2010-11-03T09:30:00.003-05:00

I noticed, as I was channel surfing a couple days ago, that the History Channel was spending a great deal of time on the first of November, exploring ways to "debunk" the Bible, and undermine God's True Word. They showed three shows. First the Gates of Hell, describing the "myth" that Jesus rose from the Dead. Then some date setting in "Apocalypse Island" trying to prove 2012 is "the year." (It might be. Or Not.) Then some more date setting in the "Nostradamus Effect."

One thing that shouldn't have surprised me, but did, was that some preachers or teachers (not exactly sure what title they had) from the United Methodist Church Seminary in Claremont California were helping to undermine God's True Word.

I say that it shouldn't have surprised me, because I have heard talk that the United Methodists have "gone liberal." That is, lost the God given knowledge that the Bible is God's True Word.

So, I went and looked up Claremont Seminary, and sure enough, it didn't take long to find evidence that they have lost their Way. In an article from the Christian Post, I found:

A Southern California seminary affiliated with The United Methodist Church is opening its doors to Muslims and Jews and offering clerical training for those of other Abrahamic faiths, school officials announced Wednesday.

"The world is changing. And so is Claremont," states Claremont School of Theology on its website.

The unconventional move is part of the University Project, the school's effort to promote interreligious cooperation and to teach students to "recognize the legitimacy and integrity of the other religious traditions."

And in an article at Apologetics dot com,
I found:

"Christian ministers, Jewish rabbis and Muslim imams and eventually clerics from other religions will be educated side by side, each in their own traditions but also with classes in common so they learn to work together to address the problems that face humanity today and that can only be solved if religions work together across their boundaries," Campbell, Claremont School of Theology

What is this? It is Apostasy. The "legitimacy and integrity of other religious traditions" is an affront to God, and to teach such is heresy.

And from their own web site, I found:

THE WORLD IS CHANGING. AND SO IS CLAREMONT.

Affiliated with The United Methodist Church, Claremont School of Theology has a long history of educating religious leaders. Founded in 1885, the School embraced an ecumenical vision upon its move to Claremont, California, in 1957. Today, it is making a similar adjustment of vision, to meet the cultural and religious demands of a world in transition.

While maintaining a strong School of Theology to prepare Christian ministers, Claremont is developing other schools to prepare teachers, counselors, scholars and community leaders for the interreligious realities of the 21st Century. We call this plan the University Project.

This is proof from their own mouths, the United Methodist Church is no longer a Christian Church, and is merely teaching Theistic Moralistic Relativism. An affront to God, and an enemy of the Gospel, which is that salvation is through the blood of Jesus and that there is no other salvation.

As Paul the Apostle said in Galatians Chapter 1:

⁶I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel;
⁷which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.
⁸But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!
⁹As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!

BAD NEWS about the economy

2010-10-08T16:05:00.004-05:00

Payrolls Decline

It appears private sector payrolls increased by a paltry 11,000 jobs last month, and an increase of 180,000 average for each and every month is what is necessary just to sustain the economy. Worse, manufacturing sector shrank by 6,000 after declining by 27,000 last month. While both the private sector and manufacturing have added jobs this year, the socialists who control the government have managed to keep the numbers below the amount needed to sustain the nation's economy.

The Bond Market

Interest rates on 2 year and 5 year T-Bills are at an all time low. Gold and silver prices are at record highs, gas and oil prices are moving up. The value of the dollar in the world markets has taken a dive. These things reflect a lot of big and smart investors are moving out of the main economy and into "safe" holdings, or investing in overseas "emerging markets." Especially, banks are getting themselves under cover.

And that means they expect things to get bad. Really bad. I fully expect next year to show even poorer jobs growth and I expect inflation. Both are due to massive the government spending in the past two years, as government attempted to get the economy moving forward. Most of that spending has been to try to increase consumer spending, a move that I have said was ill advised, from the beginning.

What Really Matters

In the end, there are only a couple of economic indicators that really matter. How much people are getting paid, and what it costs for them to live. That is why my economics column repeats itself so much about jobs and inflation. More jobs means more pay, less jobs means less pay. And inflation eats away at both what people get paid, and eats away at their savings.

The American Jobs Machine is Broken. And it has been for years. A century ago, men who owned American businesses and the manufacturing base were interested in building an empire. Now the "owners" are traders and only interested in "what can I get right now." The "instant gratification" generation became the stockholders of today, and they are only interested in profit taking, and luxurious living. Am I talking about the richest of the rich? No. Today's stockholders are middle class and working class people who fancy themselves to be "money smart" because they have some money "invested" in some mutual funds, or because they spend some time doing trades on web sites like e-trade or scottrade or td ameritrade.

Taxes Important

Taxes are one of the most important headwinds in this economy. A month ago, reports of Congress and the Obama administration allowing the Bush era tax cuts to continue buoyed the economic indicators by 10 to 20%. As the purported tax breaks the administration promised to business slowly evaporated and got pushed into political wrangling, the medium and long range indicators all began showing signs that the economy will get worse, not better in 2011.

Gurus of the bond market agree with me. Anywhere from 4 to 12 months after the bond market begins a slide, according to them, the economy takes a plunge. And the bond market peaked in April 2010. In addition, the Baltic dry index (one of the best indicators of global trade
in physical goods) went negative beginning is July.(look at the green line on the fourth chart.)

I am no Market Player.

I do have to admit, I am not good enough at this to be an investment broker or trader. I completely blew it on gold, never expecting it to continue to climb steadily for this long. Had I invested in gold ANYTIME in the past from 2 to 20 years ago, I would have made money by now. And the gold market is likely to stay bullish (follow the link and look at the bottom of the page, for a 27 Aug 201 entry) for the foreseeable future. Still, if the absolute worst happens, it will be kinda hard to trade gold for anything near what it is worth. I am thinking copper might be a good commodity to keep on hand for an end of the world scenario. I dismissed it in the past, because at $6000 a ton, it would be a bit bulky. But a ton will fit in a box the size of a refrigerator. It is not a great money maker, but the price mimics the price of oil, to some degree, and it is hard to store $6000 (2300 gallons) worth of oil. And some metals market enthusiasts are thinking along similar lines.

For a historical perspective on how this is all playing out,
check out the book:

The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression
Authors website: http://www.amityshlaes.com/

Excerpt from a review:

Its duration and depth made the Depression "Great," and Shlaes, a prominent conservative economics journalist, considers why a decade of government intervention ameliorated but never tamed it. With vitality uncommon for an economics history, Shlaes chronicles the projects of Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt as well as these projects' effect on those who paid for them. Reminding readers that the reputedly do-nothing Hoover pulled hard on the fiscal levers (raising tariffs, increasing government spending), Shlaes nevertheless emphasizes that his enthusiasm for intervention paled against the ebullient FDR's glee in experimentation. She focuses closely on the influence of his fabled Brain Trust, her narrative shifting among Raymond Moley, Rexford Tugwell, and other prominent New Dealers. Businesses that litigated their resistance to New Deal regulations attract Shlaes' attention, as do individuals who coped with the despair of the 1930s through self-help, such as Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson. The book culminates in the rise of Wendell Willkie, and Shlaes' accent on personalities is an appealing avenue into her skeptical critique of the New Deal. Gilbert Taylor

Theology - and Rocky Road Ice Cream

2010-10-01T19:00:00.002-05:00

When you first read the Bible, just on the surface, you notice the
stories and some history.

When you first bite into Rocky Road Ice cream,
you notice the creamy coldness of it.

Then upon a more careful reading, line by line, word by word, you might discover some subtle things you missed on first reading. Like, in Matthew's account of turning the other cheek, Christ said "on the right cheek."

Soon after you begin to savor the ice cream,
you notice the chocolaty goodness of it.

As you look at the context and historical background of the writings, the sinfulness of Corinth, or the vast grandeur of Herod's temple, you may find some nuggets of thought that contrast with what first appeared to be the flow of the surface text. You also can find "types" (we lay people call them prototypes) of Christ and The Church in the Old Testament.

Savoring the ice cream,
you then notice the crunchiness of the pecans.

As you begin to look at the scriptures, less as a series of stories, and more as a lens through which you can view history, and current events, you can see how God's Hand is always in control, always guiding events for our good and His Glory.

Then you notice the
sweetness of the marshmallows.

The fact that the ice cream is chocolate does not negate that it is creamy and cold. Nor does the crunchiness of the pecans. And the sweetness of the marshmallows does not conflict with or contradict the nuttiness of the pecans. They all work together to make up the whole.

The richness, the subtleties, the allegories, the types, the irony, and the sweetness of the Bible do not contradict each other. They all work together to make up the whole.

Being led astray

2010-09-28T17:44:00.002-05:00

I just ran across an interview with, now president, Barrack Obama. It was released last year on Beliefnet. It is crystal clear, from his own words, both in this interview and in his "call to renewal" a couple of years later. A couple of quotes from that speech are enlightening:

The path I traveled has been shared by millions upon millions of Americans – evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims alike; some since birth, others at a turning point in their lives. It is not something they set apart from the rest of their beliefs and values. In fact, it is often what drives them.

So, from this, he thinks that being a Christian is just embracing a set of values?
And, like any liberal, he is quick to trash Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson:

In other words, if we don’t reach out to evangelical Christians and other religious Americans and tell them what we stand for, Jerry Falwell’s and Pat Robertson’s will continue to hold sway.

This is pathetic. How is it that someone whose own words show he has no idea what Christianity is or what it means to follow Jesus, can fool a large portion of the Evangelical Christian community? And how can he trash Christian leaders and not raise the hackles of large numbers of Evangelical Christians?

This dovetails with a recent poll from Pew Research that shows most atheists and Mormons know more about the Bible and religion than most christians. Again, this is pathetic. We need to teach each other and our children about the Bible. And that starts with learning it ourselves. I began learning the Bible late in life, and have been struggling to catch up with where I need to be. Seems to me a lot of us need to struggle to catch up with where we need to be.

Without knowing the foundations of Christianity, and knowing the Bible fairly well, we will fall into trap after trap, endorsing wholly unchristian ideas that liberals deliver to us with a religious wrapping.
.

Distant Rumblings of Pandemic

2010-09-27T05:24:00.002-05:00

A recent article in a local newspaper alerted me to the rumblings of a future pandemic that would make the swine flu seem like a walk in the park.

The bacteria are equipped with a gene that enables them to produce an enzyme that disables antibiotics. The enzyme is called Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenamase, or KPC. It disables carbapenam antibiotics, last-ditch treatments for infections that don't respond to other drugs.

"We've lost our drug of last resort," Fishman says.

Doctors say the bacteria are more worrisome than another well-known superbug, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), because more drugs are available to treat MRSA, Fishman says. "When MRSA started to develop 15 years ago, the industry started producing antibiotics now coming onto the market," he says. "We're in the same position with KPCs as we were with staph aureus 15 years ago, except that the pharmaceutical industry isn't rushing to produce new drugs."

These strains of bacteria have been around for about a decade. Make no mistake though. The only way for these bacteria to have developed a resistance to this class of drugs is for them to have survived treatment by this class of drugs. Much like what I observed with Cipro, here in the US, after the attacks using Anthrax sent through the mail. Once the public learned about this new antibiotic, uncontrolled use of it soon followed.

There is no mechanism in medicine or government to control the use of new antibiotics. There used to be, but I think it has long since been abandoned, a victim of unlearned people screaming about class warfare and doing the work of the evil men who have been trying to destroy our civilization for the past 70 or so years. Now, because of the entrenched evil in our government, no program will succeed at keeping new drugs from being abused.

On a grander scale, this was forecast in Christan Prophesy about 1980 years ago.

Current State of our National Economy

2010-09-13T12:06:00.003-05:00

The Treasury Bill interest rates dropped to an all time low a couple of weeks ago, but then President Obama began talking about giving business a tax break on equipment depreciation, and they, along with some other indicators recovered by 10% to 20%. McCain called it a death bed conversion (but, he said, too little, too late), since Obama was now endorsing a tax cut that the liberals had been fighting against for a couple of years. And even this tax cut is only one small slice of the sweeping tax reforms needed to begin undoing the damage from the Obama administration.

Other good news, solid gains in private sector employment numbers were the opposite of the news that the unemployment rate had climbed again. Let me be clear: the superficial numbers of this week's or this month's unemployment rate are useless. The numbers that count are private sector payroll and manufacturing payroll.

Some banks and credit card companies raised their rates just before the final provisions of the CARD Act went into effect. No big deal, unless you owe a lot on your credit card. The long term effect of the CARD Act will encourage banks and credit card companies to be more open and honest in their dealings. This is a good thing, in spite of what many Republicans say.

The reason the T-Bill interest rates are so low is the same reason Gold prices are so high and oil prices have not gone up. Many of the people controlling large quantities of money are in a holding pattern. By this, I mean investment houses and banks. They are buying T-Bills and gold, instead of putting it back into the economy, where they might not get any return, since business has been at the mercy of coming tax hikes beginning in a few months. They are afraid of a "double dip" recession, and they still might get one. I say this, because I recently heard the markets in Europe are so unstable that now banks are buying up gold as a hedge against a collapse of the Euro.

Is inflation right around the corner? Well, if the European Union doesn't go into collapse, and the US gets its tax cuts (and gets its spending in line), the economy is chomping at the bit to accelerate. And that will bring a round of robust inflation. Some banks are already starting to get the tools in place to handle that round of inflation.

Is it time to buy gold as a hedge? I don't think so, but it is time to begin talking about it. Looking at the third chart (Gold recent with 200 day exponential average), I would begin looking seriously at it when the blue line drops below the red line. In the mean time, I am keeping a closer eye than I probably should, at the November elections. The "right wing" is very sure that they will replace the Leftists in congress, and thereby put the brakes on our slide into liberal despotism. Notice, I said put the brakes on, not stop or reverse. If they are over confident, and don't get the brakes on, it might be time to invest in guns and ammo.

How to make money

2010-09-06T18:14:00.002-05:00

There are, to oversimplify things, Three good ways for an individual to make money in this world

1. Do a job no one else wants to do. There are jobs that no one is lining up to do. Roofing work, cleaning and housekeeping in motels and nursing homes, servicing (cleaning and moving) porta-potties all come to mind.
2. Work in a location that no one else wants to work. Personally, I work about 15 miles out of town in a field, night or day, rain or shine. Jobs in Kuwait pay a lot more than jobs in Indiana.
3. Get some education and training. The truth is, most people are not willing to spend 6 months or more in a college (or trade school) classroom, doing "book work" for "no pay"

Similarly, there are basically three activities that nearly all wealth in society comes from.
1. Agriculture - in this, I include anything that grows food or changes animals or plants into an edible product
2. Manufacturing - in this, I include anything that changes a raw material into a product for sale to the consumer
3. Mining - in this, I include anything that removes materials from the ground for our use.

The rest of the economy is just moving wealth around
professional services
management
communications
service
security
consumer
transportation

And that is all for today's lesson.

Border Security Situation

2010-09-05T18:57:00.003-05:00

As I begin to write this, National Geographic is beginning a series "Border Wars," the Federal Executive Branch is actively fighting against Arizona's attempts to control illegal aliens. Multiple other states and cities around the country are instituting controls on illegal aliens, many drawing fire from LEFTIST, liberal and insurgent front groups, using disingenuous arguments to make the defenders look like the bad guys.

All the while that these forces are fighting the efforts of law abiding citizens to defend themselves and their properties, the drug lords and insurgents are pouring into our country, murdering our people, and spreading more disinformation.

Our federal government, while making great pretense, is doing little to stem the flow of illegals and smugglers into the country. The National Guard troops sent to the border areas are not there to apprehend of process illegals or smugglers, but merely to serve as lookouts, in case there are any of them coming across (never mind it is like a 6 lane highway).

And the disingenuous statistics they publish to confuse the issues are a dangerous for of subversive activity. Like the former governor of Arizona telling how the crime rate went down from 1994 to 2004, at the end of which, there were actually no-go areas where the police and citizens were not safe to enter. Tells me her policy was to not prosecute a lot of crimes, in order to make it look like things were better than the reality of the situation. And recently a graph in the newspaper show "illegals on the decline," ending at the end of 2009, while the economy is still in a shambles doesn't mean we are winning at all, but rather, might show that our government givaways were just about tapped out at that time.

I often liken this problem to a boat with a big hole (incomplete border fence) in it. You can plug all the little holes (the check points) and pump (deport) like mad, but until you plug the big hole, it won't make any difference. You can also liken it to a porch. You can close the screen-door and swat flies like mad, but if the rest of the porch isn't screened in, it won't work.

The highest priority must be given to these things:
1. Build the fence. All of the fence. And currently that includes Corpus Christy to San Diego, and about 300 miles or so of the Canadian border near Seattle.
2. Prosecute those hiring illegal aliens. And that means prison time for corporate executives. And remove from government, those who insist on giving aid such as a driver's license and resident rate tuition to them.
3. Insure the integrity of those securing the border. Find ways to ferret out those taking bribes for helping the the smugglers. And that includes the mayors or other officials of certain border cities.

After that, we can start talking about deportations and such. If that day ever comes, I would also be willing to discuss legal immigration, and refugees from South of the Border. In the mean time, though, Arizona is doing the next best thing, which is making their state less inviting to the illegal aliens and smugglers, but that draws the ire of the LEFTIST's in the Obama administration, who still seem to want to maintain an undocumented underclass for exploitation.

more good definitions

2010-09-02T17:53:00.002-05:00

Post Modern
- a disingenuous philosophy that denies the existence of truth
(There are no absolute truths? Hmmmm, is that absolutely true?)

Disingenuous
- promoting, as true, a viewpoint one knows is false,
for personal or political gain

Politically Correct
Belief or behavior commonly held to be true or good
at one particular time, but ultimately wrong.
Often used to prevent the truth from being told about some
subculture or insurgent group engaged in untoward practices.

Insurgent
- member or members of a group or or a subgroup of society,
working to destroy that group or society, from within.

The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off. ~Gloria Steinem
(So she said at least one thing right)
Hat Tip: http://truthparlor.com/

Days of Apostasy

2010-09-01T09:23:00.002-05:00

We live in an Apostate Nation, and are seeing many of the traditional Protestant Churches struggle with Apostasy in their governing bodies.

What is Apostasy?
The word apostasy means to revolt against what you have previously believed in. Our nation, once founded on the teachings of the Bible (including the biblical understanding that faith in God must be voluntary, which leads to the First Amendment, freedom of religion), has largely turned away from Biblical teachings, in pursuit of Narcissism, Naturalism, Environmentalism, Socialism, Relativism, and Globalism.

These days were spoken of, in general terms, by the Apostle Paul and more specifically by the Apostle Peter:

there will be false teachers among you,
who will secretly bring in destructive heresies,

Signs of the Times
Old Line Protestant Churches, many of which were founded for the very reason, that the Roman Catholic Church had decided the Bible was not the ultimate authority, have now turned away, and declared, either implicitly, or in some cases explicitly, that the Bible is not the ultimate authority.

The Evangelical Lutheran Churches of America
The Presbyterian Church (USA)

This has, in recent years led to the "Emergent" Churches, and now "Purpose Driven" Churches, which are far from true Bible based theology.

This, in turn, leads to boldness in the media, in misrepresenting the Bible
Pretty much the whole day on Easter of 2010, the History Channel ran item after item of things aimed at trying to undermine the faith of Christians in the true historical accounts of what happened in, and to, the Scriptures.

And the History channel produced their own disinformation DVD's "Banned from the Bible", a "study" of the history of our Bible, by those who don't believe and who don't want you to believe.

The real story of how the above fiction came about and a good rebuttal.

Something I heard on Christian Talk Radio is very important in the fight against apostate teachings. "Bank tellers are not given training on how to recognize counterfeit money, they learn by handling the real thing daily."

Persecution soon to come
As apostasy becomes the norm, our society will, more and more, become intolerant of true Biblical teaching, as it has already, labeling the preaching of the Gospel as a hate crime, first in Canada, then in England, and soon if not already in the USA.

What will be the next wars
As a footnote. These are undoubtedly the "end times," althought I don't know if that means we have a day, a year, or a decade till the Lord returns. Recently I have been looking into two wars that are supposed to happen in the end times. One is listed in Psalm 83, and the other in Ezekiel chapters 37 through 39. They may or may not be the same war, but some think they will occur withing months, or even days or minutes before the return of our Savior. Again, I don't know the timeframe, but the order of events seems right.

Nothing New in Economics

2010-08-12T10:26:00.002-05:00

Well, another month has passed, with nothing worth talking about. Of course, EVERYONE is talking about the slowdown in the world economy. Not really news. Just that SOME of the numbers are beginning to reflect reality.

The 2 year T-Bill rate has dropped to its lowest in recent history. No surprise. I said last month the chance of any real recovery in the next couple of years is pretty slim. Recent numbers are just reflecting that.

Keep the Faith.
Faith in Jesus, that is.
God is the only thing that is sure.

Prepare - While there is no epidemic

2010-08-04T09:59:00.003-05:00

If you look at the six articles I wrote last year on the subject of Epidemic, I first introduced Swine Flu, with the subtitle of "don't panic, but take precautions." Within a couple of days I followed that article with another, since the nation was already in a panic: even closing schools where no clear cases had been diagnosed.

In less than a week, panic and stupidity had gripped the nation. Some were closing every public event. Others were just looking for someone to blame.

One of the best quotes of the whole season was:

When a pandemic hits, you deal with it using the resources you've got. Like an unexpected invasion, it's a "come as you are" event. The trick is to foresee the pandemic and to build up the personnel, equipment, and organization to stop it.

But if your response to the threat of pandemic is to be stupidly sanctimonious, all your planning will be in vain.

So, two lessons can be learned already. One is to plan ahead, realizing an epidemic or pandemic is (always) likely to happen not many years, or even months in the future. The other is to deal with it in a level headed and even handed way.

Of course, for the public, and even more so, the politicians, this is not going to be the case. And especially if the current crop of politicians is still in office. As their forefathers, Saul Alinsky and Rahm Emanuel point out, they will never let a good crisis go to waste.

As I somewhat point out in my forth article both the public, and the government have two modes of operation: complacency and panic (hat tip to former energy secretary, James Schlesinger). My forth article was written while the pandemic was still going on - but had been overshadowed by political maneuvering in congress and was forgotten. While my forth article is a good read, I was discussing things the nation needed to do, and as I have pointed out, that is hopeless.

We need, as individuals, to respond to our own circumstances. At the end of my first two articles, I mentioned measures individuals can take. They still apply. And they apply before the first news of an epidemic. Those first four articles were written in a period of less than three weeks after the outbreak hit the news.

The government declared the swine flu an official emergency a few months later. The government had ramped up the machinery and created a vaccine. People, at first, lined up around the block and even resorted to crime to get the vaccine. Then it was forgotten again. Some of the vaccine even expired and was thrown out like garbage.

The time to prepare is now. Slowly and methodically. If a major epidemic were to hit unexpectedly, it will likely shut down our transportation system. Bare supermarket shelves will happen in just a few days. My first couple of articles mentioned measures to take, and they still apply.

Persecution in America

2010-08-01T19:26:00.002-05:00

Anyone who believes Persecution cannot happen in America has not looked, in the last thirty years, at our universities. And it is getting more and more obvious. For many years it has been known that you cannot get a good grade in many classes, unless you profess anti-American, Anti-Conservative, or anti-Christian views. And now, emboldened now be a President who is a Christian Impostor, some schools are even telling their students they cannot graduate unless they renounce their Christian views. And Federal Judges, graduates from these Apostate Universities, are ruling against the Constitutional Foundation of our nation.

Parents need to be mindful that if they expect their children to graduate college with their faith intact, they need to be considering a college that will support their faith. To knowingly subject their children to authorities who hold to the ways of the world is courting disaster.

Churches need to be mindful of this also. There should be consideration of longstanding members of a Church family to send one or more of their own to a Christian University. These are the Days of Apostasy, and if we do nothing, we shall see those around us subject to persecution of this world.

LATE BREAKING
I actually assembled the above over the past couple of days, but then today on the way to work and back, I finally got a chance to listen to a recording from Albert Mohler (Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr. President, Southern Seminary) that I had on the back burner for the past few weeks, since I discovered his web site. It is “Cultivating the Christian Mind: Education as Soulcraft & Learning as Discipleship” which was a sermon he gave on 11 Mar 09 at The Augustine School (Jackson, TN).

It is very heartening that he holds at least some of the same opinion that I do.

Annual Gas Price Forecast

2010-07-27T11:20:00.003-05:00

As promised, here are my annual gas price forecast, and it looks a lot like last year. While I did blow it badly a couple of years ago, I have provided my readers with somewhat accurate forecasts for 5 out of 7 years, and last year was not that far off, even with the economy doing much worse than many people predicted. The only thing that caught me off guard was that China's economy did worse than I expected.

The Bottom Line, Right Up Front.
I am forecasting gas to be $3.54 early next May.

This is in areas where gasoline taxes are low, and where the price has been hovering around $2.49 to $2.56 for the last couple of months. This web page will give an idea of the price of gas around the country. For next spring's pricing, just add another dollar a gallon.

In reality, I don't think it will get quite that high, but as I pointed out in previous forecasts, I do this for budget forecasting purposes, so if it doesn't quite get that high, there is no harm.

The ever increasing role of China, the recession the ongoing and somewhat deepening recession, and the prospect of a high inflation rate (which I don't think we will see this next year) are challenges, but in this year's forecast, I think the ongoing recession will be the most important factors in the coming year.

Here is the formula I used this year:
The predominant price of crude oil in July this year
is $76 a barrel, divided by 25 (you can get about 25 gal
of gas at the pump from one barrel of crude) gives
$3.04 - to which I add $.50 tax (the tax in some states
is much higher) to give $3.54 per gallon.

I will likely, in coming years, add an inflation factor to compensate for the weakening of the dollar, and maybe a supply stress factor for increases in consumption, or for overt destruction of sources (think war). Neither of those are a factor this year. In addition, the price of oil seems, historically to rise at the end of July, and there tend to be disasters in Aug and Sept, as well as hurricanes in the fall, but the market prices already have these things built in so I don't think getting too concerned there is of any use.

One concern is the ongoing oil spill (even though the well is now capped) and the disastrous handling of it because of both the incompetence of British Petroleum and the congressional grandstanding in our Federal Government. One consequence that is just now beginning to materialize is the movement of drillers out of US waters. This has the potential of worsening our recession AND increasing the price of gas at the pump by more than a dollar a gallon within a couple of years.

The New Economic Name

2010-07-09T14:33:00.004-05:00

We have a new name for this economic crisis.
It is now known as the Great Recession.

The height and breadth of insanity in the world is just breathtaking. Many continue to insist that the only way out of a hole is to dig deeper. That people, corporations, or nations can borrow and spend their way out of debt.

Some small signs of recovery are evident, as private payrolls continue to climb, though very slowly. Manufacturing payrolls are off this month, although this is on a world wide scale, and that is likely to keep the price of oil (and other energy) down. Lower energy prices are good for US manufacturing, and the US economy in general.

A long talked about commercial real estate slump may be at our door step, but whether it will usher in a "double dip" recession is still in question. I don't think so, but I have been wrong before.

Recently the 2 year treasury bond rate plunged to less than 3/4 of a percent. While some of the above mentioned insane people think this is a good thing (though it does beat the Greek T-Bill rate), what it tells me is that the economy will remain in the crapper for at least another 2 years. The extremely slow gains in private payrolls are not yet enough to offset the increases in population, let alone the increases in government corruption we have seen since the Democrats returned to power in 2007 and 2009. (We need to have an increase of 400,000 jobs a month in the private sector, or an increase of 40,000 jobs in manufacturing per month, something we haven't seen since the mid 80's.)

I still foresee a round of high inflation, some time in our future. But, as always, I don't know when it will be. I can say it will be before we see any real recovery. But at this time, I can't even say if we will seen any real recovery. I thought in 2008 that it would be a couple years after the collapse, but now it still seems a couple years away. More, now it looks like 4 to 6 years away.

Gold is still too high to invest in.
(Needs to be down around $1100 an once.)
I still recommend investing in tools
and other things to help survive
this "Great Recession."

Some Definitions and Observations

2010-07-07T17:53:00.002-05:00

Apostasy - to turn away from a belief one once held. To deny, what a person once held to be true. Many old mainline Churches have fallen into Apostacy. They no longer believe the Bible is the final authority.

A liberal (also leftist) is someone who rejects logical and biblical standards, often for self-centered reasons. There are no coherent liberal standards; often a liberal is merely someone who craves attention, and who uses many words to say nothing. Liberalism began as a movement for individual liberties, but today is increasingly statist and, as in Europe, socialistic.

G Gordon Liddy : A liberal is someone who
feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt
he proposes to pay off with your money.
(May be originally attributed to Barry Goldwater)

I heard a new acronym, that might be of interest to some folks.
LEFTIST: Lying Everywhere, Fighting Truth In Society Today

Progressive - a liberal, trying to pretend they are not a liberal.

First - Three Things

2010-07-02T16:58:00.003-05:00

First: Three things to look for when buying a Bible.
Some advice for the elementary level, and some for the intermediate level.

Then below, three things to read after getting a new Bible.

The translation, and translation or copyright dates
Cover and Binding
Size composition and color of type, and page transparency

1. The translation and dates tell you what language it is in, whether Modern English, Old English, American English. I devoted an article to translations some time ago. I personally recommend anyone who is at the elementary level avoid any translation newer than 20 years old. Just so you can be sure to have one that has been tested by time.

2. Look at the cover and binding to see if it is suitable for what you want it for. To give away, you might go with a paperback, and they all have glued bindings. But these don't last long. A better one is to go with an imitation leather cover and sewn binding. If the book is going to be handled a lot or loosely stood on a shelf quite a lot, it needs a hard cover.

3. Look at the size of the type, whether it has center column references (more on that below). Does it have chapter or section headings (a single line providing the main topic of the chapter)? Does it have Jesus Words in Red? Is the type easy to read in moderate light? This is especially important when you reach middle age. Sometimes with thin paper, the ink from the other side of the page can be noticeable, making it harder to read in low light. The Bibles I linked to above are good in low light, but have fairly small type and no center column. Sometimes on Amazon it is hard to find that information.

1. After acquiring a new Bible, again, read the copyright page. One thing to look at, if it is not one of the Old English translations, is what foundation, publisher, or seminary is listed there. Someone may ask you that someday, and it is good to know about those publishers. And read the preface. Often it will tell how they balanced word for word accuracy against thought for thought ease of reading. More than just a conversation piece, this information is important when trying to discern subtle shades of meaning in many passages.

2. Many prefaces have a discussion of italics, block lettering and capitalization. The original languages did not use a lot of the grammatical building blocks we use today, so in many cases words are added simply to make the passage readable in English. Often these will be in brackets or italics. And any personal pronouns referring to God will likely be capitalized, although the details may vary from one translation and/or college to another.

3. Notice the center column and the passage headings. These are good for finding other passages on similar subjects to the one you're reading about. Remember though, these are some person's opinion of the material in the Scriptures. I have occasionally found a center column reference that I couldn't figure out why it was there. But I guess it made sense to someone. The passage headings are important to all us beginners, to help us find things when looking for a certain subject, assuming we know its approximate location. Same with Jesus Words in Red. Mostly just a location tool.

End-of-Quarter

2010-06-29T17:12:00.002-05:00

Between work and other miscellaneous distractions, I didn't put enough time into either my blog or my studies this quarter, but now that the early summer season is coming to a close, at least I won't have to spend as much time on yard work, I hope.

Combat Effective is back up. Not quite what it was before - yet. But then Combat Rob is a family man now, and if we "conservative men" were not family men and working men, we would be, well, liberals.

I have had some trouble with comment spam showing up, so I put a filter on all posts older than 90 days, so that it will refer them to me before posting them to the blog. (In Internet terms, this is known as "moderating" the comments.)

Over the past couple of years, I have repeatedly said it is time to wait and see. I have said this on many subjects. The government, energy, and the economy, just to name a few. But on studying the Bible, NOW is the time to do it. And on doing the right things as a Christian, NOW is the time. If you haven't made a decision to follow Christ, NOW IS THE TIME. (note: link takes you to a PDF file - might take a minute to load) We are living in the days of apostasy spoken of in the Bible. The "turning away" from truth. The heaping up of councilors to feed the "itching ears."

But on making any long term commitments to this nation's government, now is not the time. Our president, despite running on his word that he is a christian, he is nothing of the sort, as he most certainly worships himself above all. And the "smoking guns" of liberalism are beginning to emerge on his latest Supreme Court nominee.

Despite earlier decisions not to remove any material from my blog when I was thinking about the fact that in a few years many of us will be persecuted for our faith and or our political outlook, I have begun removing material from this site that has nothing to do with its central themes and nothing to do with where this site is going. Stuff that just adds nothing to the value of the site will eventually be removed.

I started out the quarter with a decision to make the first article of each month on the topic of Christianity and/or The Bible. This has turned out to be a good decision. I have covered several other topics over the past few months, but have neglected one of the biggest issues. Border security. The LEFTIST's (see definition, below) in our government want to keep the border open so they can have their illicit drugs smuggled in, and so they can have a source of cheap labor by way of an exploitable underclass, and so that they can accumulate excuses for turning our country into a police state. We must not let this continue.

I posted articles on a couple of new freeware programs, one of which I may withdraw my support for. Not that it is a bad program, but just not the best available, and I don't think I like where it is going in its development (Windows only). More to come.

Another area I have neglected is technology. I have several short items I need to finish up and get posted. On LED flashlights. On reading glasses. On printers. On MP3 players. Another neglected area is Books. I have a couple reviews to finish and post. Epicenter, by Joel Rosenberg and Bible Doctrine by Wane Grudem.

Keep me in your prayers, because "I must be about my Father's Business."

Note: LEFTIST is Lying Everywhere, Fighting Truth in Society Today.
.

Folly of this Day

2010-06-24T03:15:00.003-05:00

Just a few thoughts on the folly of the Day in our country.

The recent flap over General McChrystal is just the tip of the iceberg. Our civilian and military leadership are in crisis, and may be descending into chaos. For any Christians out there, if you have any thoughts of enlisting, or otherwise joining the military forces, NOW IS NOT THE TIME. Just hold off. Let us first see where this ship is heading. We may be facing a post-Christendom U.S.

In November there will be another election. The current crop of politicians in charge of this Nation may be on their way out. Or Not. To listen to the overly optimistic tone of talk radio, there will be a wholesale replacement of Congress and a sizable shift in power in the Senate. Too optimistic, I suspect. The conservatives in this country may be too optimistic for their own good. This nation is on the edge of sinking into the self destructive delusions that grip most of the rest of the world (which would have been in complete chaos by now if they were not able to parasite off of us).

So, now is not the time to take up sides
with what may be a lost cause.
Nor is it time to give up hope
that they will see the light.
Now is a time to wait.

Christ and Culture Revisited might be on my reading list

Rolling Stone article: The Runaway General
Stanley McChrystal, Obama's top commander in Afghanistan, has seized control of the war by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House

Christian Science Monitor
General McChrystal: Rolling Stone story a sign of frustration? The remarks by General McChrystal in Rolling Stone magazine reflect mounting frustration all around with an Afghanistan war effort seemingly in growing disarray – although that doesn’t excuse the conduct, experts say.
.

Economy getting better?

2010-06-08T18:40:00.003-05:00

Yes and no.

First a discussion of that question, and then some musings on global economics, oil, gold, and the possibility of the dreaded "double dip" recession, and Jesus Return.

I had earlier named this "Great Depression 2" but now many are calling it the Great Recession, so I think that is what I will call it now. And in spite of all the efforts of the Obama Administration, we are ever so slowly pulling out of it.

Sometimes it is almost humorous to watch as the numbers go up and down each month. As the month progresses, the numbers rise as reports of optimism show up, followed by reports of rising numbers. So, really much of it is rising numbers, based on reports of rising numbers.

Then the beginning of the month, the payroll
statistics roll in, and the numbers plummet.
Because payroll statistics
have a lot to do with reality.

On major part of the problem is the way we measure the economy. All of the economists have said for years that 70 percent of our economy is based on spending. The world economy stops if we all stop spending, and that has become a self fulfilling prophesy. If everyone were to stop (or even cut back severely) spending, the economy would be in chaos in very short order.

But payroll is where the forecasters need to be looking. Specifically manufacturing payroll. And while it is expanding, it is doing so at an excruciatingly slow pace. It is expanding against the combined headwind of the Obama government, moderately high energy prices, and a strong dollar. But it is expanding so slowly that it will not, at this pace, keep up with the increasing population, and decreasing world resources.

Musings on global economics

And still, the foolishness of the socialists around the world shows itself without shame. On CNBC, early this morning, I heard a couple of them discussing the budgets of countries around Europe. Someday, they said, we need to reduce the deficit spending, but right now is not the time. They actually think governments borrowing and spending more money on socialist programs, when they are already suffering the consequences of debt overload, will lead them to prosperity.

But you can't change the way
the world thinks and behaves,
you can only change
the way you think and behave.

Musings on oil

The gusher under the Gulf has brought the idiots to the forefront. From the BP execs and engineers who have shown a complete incompetence when it comes to capping the leak, and a contempt for telling the truth to the public about things like how large the leak is, to those who rallied in Austin to tell us that we need to change immediately to alternative energy sources, to Obama, who, this morning said he needs to know "whose ass to kick."

And then there is the ever present bureaucracy that would rather do nothing, insuring a certain failure, than to allow Louisiana to build a berm that might not be 100% sure. And two weeks after it became desperate, everyone is still bogged down in protecting their own butts.

This whole fiasco has not affected the price of oil, (it amounts to less than 1% of our supply) but it has affected the price of BP stock, as it should. Although the lunitics in Ausin espouse some wacky schemes energywise, I agree with them that ultimately BP should be dismantled and sold off to pay for the cleanup, which coult take more than two years.

Musings on gold

Gold still hovers about 20% (give or take) above its fair market value, so I wouldn't buy any at this time, but on the other hand, you'd be a fool to sell it, unless you need the money urgently. Eventually, all of the foolishness of the governments of the world will catch up with them. Optimistically, you will need that gold as an anchor for your investments. Pessimistically, you might want to trade it for ammo.
(12 gauge and 9mm are the most popular,
but 38 special will also trade well)

Musings on the dreaded "double dip"

There will be another recession. And there will be a round of excessively high inflation (I don't think it will be hyperinflation, by definition). When? I don't know. If we get the recession first, that will be the "double dip" everyone talks about. But it could be, that we will get the inflation for a few years, and then go into a recession. Then it will be called something else.

Either way, the road ahead will be rougher than anything seen since WW2. And it will never get better again. (I thought, at one time, that the US couldn't be beaten. I never thought about it being sold.)

Musings on Jesus Return

There will be wars ... and many other signs. Someday Jesus will return, but it will be on His own time. God is not impressed with our calendar. Do not despair. Do not let your love grow cold. We live in the age of apostasy, and can see the signs and prophesies being fulfilled by the numbers. But no man knows the day nor the hour. (Nor the year) Personally, I expect things to get a lot worse before He returns, whether that is in 2 years, or 32 years.

New start point - Bibles And Christians

2010-06-02T15:37:00.003-05:00

This page will serve as a temporary index to the most important articles I have written on the subjects of Bible Study and Christian Living. It will be replaced sometime in the future by a more organized version.

I began this project because so many people are claiming to be a Christian, and yet they show no real knowledge of Christ or what the Bible says Jesus requires of a Christian, that I have written some short essays expressing my views of their lack of Biblical Knowledge.

Are You really a Christian?

And some longer ones. This one begins with a paragraph defining my view of the Gospel, a view I can defend each and every word of, from Scripture. Grace, The Law, and Works

Now, many will tell you that the first thing a new Christian should do after getting saved is to find a good Church. (I may agree or disagree with that statement, but that is for a later article) But what is a good Church? How is one to tell? Here I have written a short (about 3 pages) essay on what to look for.
Characteristics of a good Church

Now, on to the central theme: Bible Study

Why Study the Bible

Not everybody reading this will be on the same level of knowledge.
Different levels of knowledge in Bible Studies

Where to start reading and studying: I have always advocated starting with the Gospel According to Luke, when beginning to study the Bible. There are many reasons for this. It is easy to read and starts with the Christmas story.

But if you are going to study the Bible, you might want to know which translation to read. Well, one that you can understand is a good start. For more details

Translations of The Bible

And for studying the Bible, you also might want a Study Bible.

Now that we are clear on "which" Bible
to study, let's begin to really study.
After Luke: Beginning Study

And on the other hand, if you come here just totally
overwhelmed and struggling to understand any of this
- or -
What do you do if you are still struggling to understand
what you read in the Gospel according to Luke?
Ephesus Project: Cheats and helps
(I need to update that one)

In case you need more reason to study:
Crisis in the Church - Apostasy

Just a note here: Bank tellers are not given training on how to spot a counterfeit bill. The learn to spot the phonies as a side effect of handling the real thing day after day for months at a time.

And in case you have some doubts about the authenticity of the text we have in our hands today. You might want to know how we can know the Bible in our hands today is the same as what was written hundreds and hundreds of years ago.

The economy begins to turn - maybe

2010-05-08T11:26:00.004-05:00

The insanity in the economic culture of our society today is so entrenched that I really don't see, short of a complete awakening like a religious conversion of at least 100 million of our citizens. Our society is doomed to destruction because our society, on both the right and the left, have followed the council of the entitlement god, believing lies and seeking destinations of destruction.

And as Dave Ramsey put it one day: "we are a culture of bass." You don't need any kind of fish food to catch Bass. Bass will strike at anything shiny. Throw a shiny object in front of them and they will take the hook. Our culture is like that. Shiny new car. Shiny new home entertainment center. Shiny new spouse. Shiny new house. We take the hook and pay for it later.

But we as individuals do not have to take part in the insanity.
Start with my five rules of economics.
Learn the fallacies of the prosperity preachers.
Learn about the economic system.
I'll get the links and say more on this stuff later.

This month's economic news.

This month's economic news is good on several fronts. Most importantly, manufacturing is expanding. This, as I say is real money. There is only three sources of real money in a society. Agriculture, mining (including drilling) and manufacturing.

GDP seems to be on an expansion, but the service sector and government can do that without any real national growth. The unemployment rate is up, but that is deceptive, meaning more people got back into the workforce and are looking for a job. The "under employment" index may finally fall for the first time in a couple of years.

Payrolls, and most importantly, manufacturing payrolls expanded both in March and in April, for the first time in years. A couple of months ago, the manufacturing index went into the positive side, but not enough to expand payrolls. Manufactures were able to keep up just by working a little faster. Now they are adding employees.

The threat of inflation is right on our doorstep, and even the Fed Reserve Bank President is a little worried about it, but Washington and Wall Street aren't saying much.

More good news for Americans, the troubles in Greece and a slowdown in China are providing us with a strong dollar and lower energy prices. Despite what anyone may think of the oil spill, it hasn't impacted our supplies all that much. The effects of these things are temporary, and energy will go up again in the future, but we can enjoy it for now.

On the long term, China is beginning to import coal, (just a little) as well as oil and gasoline, so we need to be planning ahead for higher gas and electric prices in a few years.

After Much Thought - Levels

2010-05-04T12:41:00.004-05:00

After giving it much thought, I have decided to loosely categorize Bible Study tools into four categories.

1. Complete Novice
If you don't know many Bible stories, don't know the books of the Bible, or the characters, and are frankly intimidated buy the sheer magnitude of the whole thing. This is you.

I discovered one person I gave a Haley's Handbook to was intimidated by the size of the handbook. True, it is thicker than the Bible itself, but that is mostly because the paper in the pages is thicker. And it has more pictures. But just the same, they were intimidated. Sign of a Complete Novice.

I didn't used to think there were many people in Church at this level. Now I know differently. After half a century of steadily deteriorating public school training, we now have a large portion of the US population functionally illiterate when it comes to real books. They can function on the job, read a magazine, or read some of the junk food fiction that passes for literature today, but they can't get through a serious non fiction book.

If you are at this point, you need tools for orientation.
Childrens Bible Stories
Picture Bibles
Elementary Handbooks

2. Elementary Learning Level
If you do know several of the stories of the Bible, but don't really know where to start learning more. Maybe you tried "getting into the Bible" one or more times, but crashed and burned. But you are willing to try again, and realize that if you can take it a bite at a time, you can do it, then this is you. At the Elementary Learning Level.

In the past, this is where I always used to start with people.
Mainly because I remained at this level for about 20 years.
If you are at this level, you need tools for understanding.
Dictionary and Cultural context tools.
Maps and History guides
Bible Handbooks
Catechism type Books (Books that ask a lot of questions for you to explore)
Thesaurus

3. Intermediate Leaning Level
This is really an extension of the Elementary Level. OK, so you know your way around the Bible stories and you have some knowledge of the times and places where the events of the Bible took place, and have some idea how to break down Bible passages to gain a deeper understanding of what is really written.

Now you need tools to help find answers to the more difficult questions, usually posed by nonbelievers, but also posed by some of the more Elementary believers, and by some heritics (although for vastly different reasons).

These are tools for historical context
ExtraBiblical Tools to support the Bible
Archeological and Apologetics tools.
Simple Doctrinal Tools

3a. Some other stuff that might be of interest at this level are things others have written about the Bible. Stuff that Christians may or may not agree with, as far as doctrine or interpretation. These can give you insight about the disputes that arise over interpretations, and insight as to just what non beleivers do not understand, since much of what you know about the Bible may seem easy and straightforwards to you as you progress through the intermediate level of understanding. These can prevent or remedy complacency in interpretation.

3b. This may also be a good point at which to begin learning about various other religions, Christian and pseudo christian religions, and some other religions around the world.

4. Higher Learning Levels
I can't say much about this level, as I have only begun to explore at this level.
Studies of Apologetics
Studies of Doctrine
Original Language Translations and Lexicons (Vines)
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance

Ok, now that I have laid the ground work here, I will begin, in the future to lump study tools into one of the above categories. You can always use, though maybe with some difficulty, tools from a higher level. You can also use, though with diminished effectiveness, tools from a lower level. And, actually, you should be reviewing tools from the lower levels, for others who may be coming to you for guidance.

FreeWare program of the month - KeyNote

2010-04-28T15:49:00.003-05:00

I have been searching for a replacement for an old DOS (before Windows) editor that I use to keep my journal. Since I keep several kinds of information in it, and some of it is sensitive, this has been a daunting task. I need a tool which can keep multiple kinds of data, some in fairly massive amounts, can keep it private, and keep it "bookmarked" for easy access.

I think I found it in KeyNote

KeyNote is basically like having Wordpad that opens up to a complete set of files in a tree of folders. And it can stay minimized in your desktop (system) tray. Each time it opens, it can open to the last place you edited a specific file, making it useful as a log or journal.

In addition to begin able to import and export text and rich text files, you can edit rich text files from inside Keynote by using a link to that file (called a virtual node). Switching from one note to another or one file of notes to another is much faster than opening a new window (or new copy) of Wordpad, and again, they open to the last place you edited them.

Keynote provides for the (strong) Encryption of the entire file of notes, and also can do ROT13 (a quick substitution of the alphabet) on any particular text inside the file (to prevent someone from inadvertently reading it), making the word "particular look like "cnegvphyne". It can also reverse any text you highlight, making the word "particular" look like "ralucitrap." This means you can keep your notes, as a whole, safe from prying eyes, and if there is anything particularly sensitive in one or more of them, you can use ROT13 to keep it from being inadvertently read if someone walks up behind you while you are working.

I haven't found the spell check, thesaurus, or glossary yet, but there are program add-on's available (plug-in's) for those and other functions. I just haven't had time to explore those things yet. Also this tool is mainly for those of us still using WindowsXP or Win2K (it also works in Linux Wine), one of the current development projects is to port it to dotNET for Windows7, but that has not happened yet. Some people have been using it in Windows7, and some have reported problems with it in Windows7. Porting it to dotNET will fix Windows7, but it may kill it for Linux users.

This is not the ultimate fix for my search for the Perfect Journal Keeping Tool, but it looks like it is far better than any other I have looked at.

Liberalism is a mental illness

2010-04-22T10:20:00.002-05:00

Well, we have known for some time that the modern liberalism that is so prevalent in our government is a mental illness. Now we also know that it is a fatal conceit. It can also be reasoned that liberalism causes brain damage from a secular perspective, but could also be considered an entry point for Satan and his demons to attack and cause their damage. An Atheist once asked me to justify why I would not allow foster children to Atheistic guardians, and I wish I could have been so eloquent. (Lawrence Auster, author of "The Path to National Suicide" is LA)

More links to thoughts on this matter.

We are seeing liberalism morph into totalitarianism.

The Six Problems With Modern Liberalism, by John Hawkins

On the Ideals and Dangers of Liberalism

Let us hope and pray we can turn our nation back to the right road.

America's Hidden History

2010-04-15T15:53:00.002-05:00

America's Hidden History by Kenneth C. Davis

288 pages, date 2009 From Harper Paperbacks

From the Amazon Review: [this is] "a collection of extraordinary stories, each detailing an overlooked episode that shaped the nation's destiny and character"

From one of the 4 star customer reviews: "High School American History is what it is, a large composition of dates and names with little dimension of cause and effect."

My review:
I often say that history is best learned by studying it a little at a time for many years. Of course, each of us needs to get a foundation that can be provided by Junior High and High School, but that is little more than a framework to build real knowledge of history. America's Hidden History helps provide some of that real knowledge.

Most of the books I have reviewed in the past are beginner's books, and I have a particular affection for the "For Dummies" and similar kinds of books. This is not a "For Dummies" kind of book, and it is not a beginner's book. It goes into a great deal of detail about the lives and times of some of those who shaped our nation, and without some fairly detailed knowledge of those times, these stories are beyond understanding.

If you already have a fairly well rounded knowledge of pre-revolutionary America, this is a delightful little book of historical stories.

Health Care fatality Bill

2010-04-14T09:34:00.002-05:00

An article in the Wall Street Journal, about the fatally flawed healthcare program the Obamessiah rammed through congress seems to be getting quite popular around the BlogoSphere.

FreeWare program of the month

2010-04-11T18:37:00.001-05:00

Process Explorer

I have had some problems in the last few weeks with my PC getting choked on some kind of rogue programs. After running AntiVirus and SpyBot programs to insure it wasn't some kind of infection, I started looking for the circumstances under which it chokes.

Using task manager, I was able to determine some instances of it choking on certain web sites, but I always had to remember to start task manager each time I started working, and if I closed it for any reason (I have a habit of closing all of my windows, in rapid succession when I get a choke condition), I lost any history it had.

There is a really excellent utility to replace Task Manager (for Win2k and WinXP) that provides a lot of flexibility that Task Manager does not make convenient, such as starting up as soon as you log on, and when you hit close, it simply shrinks to a tray icon (you can actually close it from there if you wish).

Freeware program, the author does not ask for anything in return for its use. "Sysinternals," the author's website was acquired by Microsoft, but still seems to function as an independent resource, and has a lot of neat utilities.

Used with another program (Autorun) from the same sight, I found a couple of things loading at startup that I didn't know about, but in the long run, I am not enough of a whiz at computers to fix whatever is choking my PC. I did learn, from the author's blog, that I am not the only one that is having this problem, and it seems to be some poorly written programming, possibly in Java, for displaying web pages.

One caviot, Process Explorer has been "Upgraded" from the edition I am using, to work on Vista and Windows7. There may or may not be some bugs with the new release (there have been complaints). I would wait another month before trying the new edition, just in case.

A Christian MUST

2010-04-08T19:37:00.003-05:00

Support a local Church - if any exists. If you are a missionary in a hostile country, well then, there should be a Church, somewhere, supporting you. But if you are here in the U.S., you need to be supporting a local Church.

I have written, before, on how to find a good Church.

Support them financially, if you can. If you are one of the 30% of our country that is having trouble putting food on the table, hen this does not apply to you. If you can afford cable TV (other than the $15 a month "limited basic" package), then you can afford to give, at least a little. You are not required to Tithe, or give 10%. Or any other amount. Giving is voluntary, and more importantly, the amount of giving is up to you. I covered that in an earlier article.

But even if you cannot give money to the Church, you can give the pastor a word of encouragement. Did he cover a point of scripture you have been wondering about? Did he give you encouragement? Did he provide a point of view that you had not heard before? And support them by praying for them. Pray for the Pastor. Pray for the Elders. Pray for those in need. Support them by prayer and giving an encouraging word. Both to their face, and to others
in the community.

UPDATE: Here is an article on a similar subject, that might have planted the seed for this one.

The big event this quarter

2010-03-30T16:22:00.003-05:00

The big event in my personal blogosphere this past month was the (hopefully temporary) destruction of the Combat Effective BBS. I still don't know the motives behind this crime, but I believe the owner of the board is working on resurrecting it, and we may eventually discover who the criminals were.

I began a campaign to comment on other blogs around the country, but have not had much time to do enough of that, but did notice that at least one of my comments (and not a controversial comment) was deleted. Will have to watch responses to my comments more closely.

In the past couple of months, I posted a lot of random material about Christianity and Bible Study, and even got corrected on an event in Britain where it, at first, looked like a case of persecution, but turned out the news paper had jumped the gun and the rest of us followed suit.

I still plan more on Bible Study, but will be taking it on somewhat of a different track, since all people are not equal in their needs, when it comes to study material. I also plan more articles updating my previous ones from years ago on net neutrality and on the cost of producing and or storing electricity.

I have decided to make my first post of each month on the subject of either Christian Living, or Bible Study. This just seems to make more sense to me, if for no other reason than economic statistics are not ready until several days into the month. And it will add some consistency, which is something I need.

I spent some time trying to restore some recent substantial material from CombatEffective (dead link) on France dealing with Shariah Law. This link from Politics Daily might substitute.

But I could not find anything to replace his article on Comparing War to Hockey (another dead link).

Hopefully the next few months will be better.
.

Finally Somebody Takes Action

2010-03-24T19:27:00.003-05:00

From the BBC:
A suspected pirate has been shot dead as private guards repelled an attack on a cargo ship off Somalia, in what may have been the first such incident.

Now, all we have to do is wait for the LEFTIST's to attack these law abiding shippers.

Or maybe not. If all goes well, piracy will be a lot less fun and profit in the future.

But then again, that is why the LEFTIST's will attack them.

(LEFTIST: Lying Everywhere, Fighting Truth In Society Today)

Border Fence - Quick Update

2010-03-22T19:35:00.002-05:00

I didn't post on this topic in February, but I think from my January posting, we can see four things.

First is that a border fence, despite propaganda and disinformation to the contrary, is an effective deterent. And this can be seen, even with the incomplete fence we now have. Second, the U.S. population is distracted, at this time, by high unemployment and the Obamacare fiasco. Third, we have a long way to go. The goal is not to increase the number of smugglers and other illegal crossers. Our goal is to make the border so impenetrable that the number of smugglers and other illegal crossers actually is reduced, due to the perception that it can't be done. Forth. we need a website that details the progress of the border security project. It should all but ignore things like busts, numbers of border agents, deployments of troops, and other "make work" distractions. We need a site that consentrates on when and where the security infrastructure is being beefed up.

Some notes on Border Patrol press releases.

Among the many articles are tons and tons of Marijuana, and millions and millions of dollars worth of other illegal drugs. Much easer to catch this stuff if it is funneled into narrow corridors at the legal border crossings (and funneled into ever smaller 'holes' in the fence) In addition, there are stories here of capture of sex offenders, and of smugglers getting creative. Even to the point of trying to use SCUBA to go through the sewer system.

What is missing from the month of Feb are the stories of illegals. Can't be certain why. Could be the weather, or that jobs were so scarce here that the illegals just stayed in Mexico. In March they were back in the news, with a story every couple of days.

Successful LED Lights

2010-03-19T15:39:00.002-05:00

This article is mostly historical, as I give some thoughts on most of the LED Flashlights I have owned in the past. Eventually every light must be replaced. Especially working in a somewhat harsh environment, like I do. If God is willing, I will write an article on my current lights and post it in a few days.

One of the first Headlamps I owned was a "Kids Adventure" headlamp, that I can't find any more. It would run for a night or two on 2xAA batteries. I replaced it with a cheap headlamp I got from a supply house that used 3AAA batteries and had 5 LED's. It would run for several nights and gave off more light. Around the same time I bought a 14 LED flashlight that also took 3AAA batteries, and it did a pretty good job, but the color spectrum was decidedly deficiant, so I would also carry a little krypton bulb flashlight to check colors when I needed to do that.

This was back around 2005, and about that time a serious cave explorer near Boston published an article that said White LED's Suck. Naturally, that slowed down my desire to buy a good LED flashlight, even after the rough treatment and harsh environment killed off my 14 LED flashlight.

However, around that time, I got a 3 LED Mag-Light conversion kit, and while it wasn't perfect (no focusing), it did create more light for much longer battery life. And the light color out of it was pretty good.

Also, by chance I ran across a TaskForce 1W LED flashlight that bragged: "Super High intensity LED flashlight" (it used to be available at many department stores and hardware stores for about $20 but not available any more). It was marked half price, so I snatched it up and it was the best flashlight I owned for a couple of years. It ran on 3 AA batteries, had pretty good water tightness (better than the one above). It was brighter than the 14 LED flashlight above, and the better focus provided far more reach. The body of the flashlight had a couple of weak points, but those were fixed with electrical tape and I used it for about 4 years, until the switch wore out.

As I used it, though, I noticed the LED got progressively dimmer over the years, unitl at the end, it was about half the brightness of when I got it. I found out that this is normal, although it happened a little quicker than normal. LED's don't usually burn out, but they grow progressively dimmer after hundreds of hours of use.

In the mean time, I bought a cheap 3W LED flashlight that did no better than the 1W TaskForce light and did not last long at all. One of the problems with this light is that it ran on 2AA batteries, and without a regulator (an expensive add on, at that time) it could not achieve full brightness, nor would it stay bright very long. The beating it took riding around with me on the job soon broke the parts loose inside and it died.

One other nice thing I bought a few years back was a 12 LED lantern. Runs on 4 D cells, the light is blueish and not very bright. But it does the job I got it for. It gives me an area light, brighter than candles and will run for days during power outages.

It will probably be next week before I post
about my current assortment of lights,
mostly made by Ray-O-Vac

Todays LED Lights

2010-03-16T17:28:00.002-05:00

While the hype of Green House Gases and Global Warming has been shown to be a complete hoax, there have been some good technologies that came out of the push for being greener than green. One of those better technologies is the vast improvments in LED's

While white LED's have been around since before the year 2000, the quality of light was very poor. One article, written several years back was actually titled "Why White LED's Suck," The author had a point. The brightness available from the early "bright white" LED that he tried was lacking, and the color rendition was horible.

I did some previous research and
posted three articles on LED's back
in December 2006 on this blog.

Geek Alert: the following discussions repeatedly refer to 1W, 3W, 5W and 7W. The W is short for Watt. These are power consumption ratings of various lights, and generally just mean we are using more power from the batteries, getting more light, producing more heat, running the batteries down faster, and in some cases (like 5 and 7W LED's) running risk of damaging the LED's.

But things have gotten better. The light from 1W LED's is somewhat brighter, but much more importantly, the color of the light has improved. And over past several years, not only have manufactures learned to coax more power through the LED's for even brighter light (hence 3W LED's and even a few 5W and 7W LED's) from essentially the same 1 W Luxeon

Even more resently, a couple of new LED's have emerged. The Seoul SSC P4 and the Cree XR-E. Both produce more light and can be used for 1W to maybe 5W lights. These show great promise for brighter lights and longer lasting batteries, but are just out of reach for my budget right now. There are even more advanced LED's, but these get progressively more expensive, putting them out of my reach.

As LED lights have improved, they have rapidly gained a well earned acceptance as the light of choice for almost all battery powered applications. This is because of the high cost of electricity from almost all battery (and some generator) sources. I touched on the cost of batteries and generators for power back in October 2008 in this blog. Suffice it to say that power from rechagable batteries or a generator will cost you 20 or more times what it costs coming out of an outlet, and power from non rechargable batteries will cost you about 10 times as much as rechargable batteries (over the long run).

Still, with limited exceptions, like the under $3 LED night lights and some Christmas lights, LED's are not really a good deal for household lighting. The difference in efficiancy between them and flourescent lights isn't enough to reccommend their use.

Sources for more information. Nearly all of the information in this article comes from discussions on the CandlePower Forum and from the Flashlight Reviews website. At these websites, you can find people who can only be described as addicted to lights of all kinds, especially flashlights. Some even modify or manufacture their own devices. (Actually, I suspect some of those who post there are flashlight or other tool manufactures.)

I expect to post on some specific flashlights I use, sometime in the next couple of weeks.

Reposting of some Climategate stuff

2010-03-16T05:13:00.002-05:00

Since Combat Effective is down for now, I will be reposting some of the more important stuff we covered there.

I covered this topic in December last year, but it
deserves some more coverage.

From the Daily Mail

Scientist at the heart of the 'Climategate' email scandal broke the law when they refused to give raw data to the public, the privacy watchdog has ruled.
...
But the scientists will escape prosecution because the offences took place more than six months ago.

And some more from the Daily Mail.

Top climate change adviser calls for honesty from scientists in global warming debate

The bottom line is this. The gig is up. It is all a Hoax.
And now we know it is a Hoax.

Prosperity and Unification Herasies

2010-03-16T03:34:00.003-05:00

I noticed some years back, that there seemed to by an upswing in the "prosperity gospel" heresy. It seems to have caught on in the corporate world, where it led many down the path of destruction in both the very late 90's and again in the Economic Bubble (really bubbles on top of bubbles) of 2004 -2007.

Here is an article from Bloomberg Financial News that sheds a little light on the origins of how this heresy caught on in the corporate world.

Here is an excerpt (if you can't stand the messed up formatting,
see the original):

Lundborg: When did the business world adopt positive thinking?
Ehrenreich: It came into the corporations beginning in the late 1980s as a way of calming people down during layoffs.
You send the laid-off people to the out-placement firm, where they get pep talks on changing their attitude. The
survivors need motivational speakers so they can do the work of two people.
Lundborg: But it didn’t stop there?
Ehrenreich: No. I thought it was something brought in cynically, but I was surprised to learn it came to
be believed by the higher-up managers themselves.
There was an amazing change away from rational analysis, and toward an idea that leadership meant
having brilliant intuitions, charisma and almost mystical powers.
Lundborg: How did it turn toxic?
Fire Negative People
Ehrenreich: Positive thinking became the ideology of the business world in America. You could not raise
criticisms or doubts because there were policies to fire negative people, those who brought other
people down with their skeptical thoughts.

So, the upshot is that the corporate guys brought in this stupidity to cover themselves when they laid off their employees, then became infected with the same disease themselves.

Unification

Everybody remembers the "Moonies." Those guys who used to sell things and ask for donations at airports. They haven't gone away. Jesus, in Luke 21:8 (and other places) warned "See that you not be deceived, for many will come in my name, saying, 'I am he,' and 'The time has come.' 3 Do not follow them!" (New American Bible)

Well, successful cult leaders have to reinvent themselves from time to time. Now (and probably always) called the "Unification Church." Rev. Moon is reinventing himself, while trying to unite all of the various religions under one roof.

Excerpt:

Sun Myung Moon today seems more bent upon his quest to recasting himself in global public opinion than ever. As J. Isamu Yamamoto put it well in the mid-1990's: "Like any man in his late 70s who has tons of cash to throw away, who is obsessed with how people perceive him, and who still yearns to fulfill the glorious dreams of his youth, he is trying to purchase an exceedingly expensive face-lift. He wants to appear more culturally relevant and less religiously arcane by transforming the image of his movement from a church-oriented crusade into a family-affirming organization" (1). Unificationism has long hidden behind the veneer of respectability that its support of academic, political, industrial and conservative front groups has provided for it. But Moon's self-imposed mission of ecumenically-oriented values crusading has been openly seeking for years to create a base of interracial and interfaith support for his real agenda, the advancement of his antichristian Unification platform. This is perhaps the most disturbing development in the Unification Church's ambitious efforts in recent years.

Hasn't this been tried before? Ever heard of the Baha'i Faith?
Excerpt:

The Bahá'í Faith has been an active part of religious and social life in America since the late 1800s. We are a recognized advocate for spiritual solutions based on the Teachings of Bahá'u'lláh on issues such as the elimination of prejudice, the equality of women and men, the universal education of children, and the establishment of world peace.

The Bahá'ís are part of a worldwide religious community united by the belief that there is one God, one human race, and one evolving religion.

Nothing New Under The Sun (or the Moon)

Update on sluggish economy

2010-03-14T09:08:00.002-05:00

The past few weeks have seen a lot of optimistic talk, and just a few naysayers. Some people, mostly the Democratic Party Clueless and Obama Worshipers think this thing is behind us and even when confronted with evidence to the contrary, will say things are rosy.

A recent speech by Obama shows he is out of touch with reality. And a quote from that speech is all I need as evidence of his delusion:
"it is largely thanks to the Recovery Act that a second depression is no longer a possibility,"

The "recovery" (not even a real recovery yet) is so fragile at this time, that the weather can bring it down.

And in addition, China is facing its own banking crisis, this time because of their role in the Chinese stimulus programs.

Looking at a six month chart on the manufacturing sector shows after last month's little jobs growth the growth in manufacturing is now back to flat.

The Wall Street Journal has a little blurb that, while the facts are correct, over all gist is bologna. (Many think that this is a conservative paper, but really, it is just one segment of their staff and much of their readership that is conservative.) Even in a six paragraph article, the author tries to spin bad news to sound good.

Surprisingly, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel presents the same facts, without the spin (but I don't know if that link will stay up).
A quote from that article shows the real story:

"This 2.9% loss of jobs over the decade continues to be the first decade-long decline in jobs since the Great Depression," the firm wrote in a report Friday. Reflecting the nation's growing trade deficit, "the manufacturing sector suffered most over the past decade," losing 5.7 million jobs - "perhaps the worst decade for manufacturing in U.S. history," the forecasting firm noted.

So, dig your heels in for the long haul. Real recovery, with jobs and good wages, is still years (maybe 3 years, maybe 10 years) away.
.

Charaties - Salvation Army and GoodWill

2010-03-07T14:46:00.004-06:00

From time to time I find that people don't know what Goodwill and the Salvation Army are all about, so here is a short piece to clear up matters. There are two primary differences between the Salvation Army and Goodwill. The Salvation Army is an Evangelistic Mission that grew out of a Fundamentalist Church, with the dual purpose of reaching the hearts of the people through their stomachs and building a respect for the Church through a clean and consistent presentation of their people.

Goodwill, more correctly, Goodwill Industries International is a secular organization that works to train and find employment for people. All of their donations and sales work towards the furtherance of getting people trained and into meaningful employment.

While there is almost no similarity in their final mission, there is similarity in their methods and in their intermediate goals, and thus the confusion. I feel that both are necessary in our world, both are reaching out to the poor and probably providing more benefits, in the long run, than any governmental organization ever could.

another review of CFL's

2010-03-07T04:30:00.003-06:00

Well, it is getting warmer - or at least less cold. If you are at all concerned with your electric bill, one of the things you probably consider is whether to switch to compact fluorescent lights (CFL's) I write this at the end of winter, since any extra heat from your lights in the winter is no problem, as it merely warms your home. In the summer, which will be here soon, extra heat must be pumped out by your AC, so a 100 watt incandescent bulb actually costs you for about 120 watts of electricity.

I have written about this subject in the past:
In my first article I recommended them and warned that LED lights are still not ready for household use. In the second article, I clarified that I didn't mean to go out and buy one for every light in the house, discussed improvements they have made in quality of light and size of the bulbs. And in the third article, I said that I am still not satisfied with the state of the art, that they need to get a little smaller yet, but that it may put a little green in your pockets if you switch some of your bulbs. I have switched about half of mine.

So, here is this year's update:

Most of us have pretty good electric rates this year, so I am of the opinion that this isn't too critical yet, and anyone who thinks they don't want to buy CFL's this year won't really lose a lot. And for that matter, I am disappointed in how little progress there has been in the quality of CFL's. They are still half an inch or so longer than their incandescent counterparts (I thought I found some that were the same size, but am very disappointed with the quality of the light output).

On the other hand, the price has come down, so you can get good quality CFL's for $3 or 4$ each (the ones I bought that I didn't like the quality of were 6 for $10, so stick to brands you trust) rather than the $6 to $8 they used to cost. Don't believe the reports you hear of them quitting after only a month or so, those people either had an ax to grind, or were just extremely unlucky. I have bought about two dozen over the last 10 years, and use dozens of them at work, and I have only had one of mine, and maybe a couple at work, die prematurely. Buy four at a time, from a descent quality name brand, and the economics should work in your favor.

LED lights are still not ready for home use, except if you find the little 1/4 watt LED night lights for a couple dollars. Those seem to be good. And a friend of mine has had good luck with LED Christmas lights. But overall, I only recommend them for things that run on batteries, and I will write more about that later.

A Lot Happening

2010-02-27T15:54:00.003-06:00

A lot has been happening the past few days.

Most of the people reading this will be aware of the Earthquake and subsequent tsunami in the South Pacific. As I was watching the news coverage on Fox News, I was appalled at the ignorance of those reporting. Many referring to Mother Nature, and none giving credit to God. Many questions about earthquakes and tsunamis that should have been known by those reporting on it. I mean come on folks, pick up an encyclopedia and read up on the phenomenon before you go on the air. And one cameraman and reporter, covering the story seemed to have more interest in video shots of the reporter's shirt than anything else.

I was quite surprised to hear that even as the tsunami came to shore on Hawaii, that they couldn't say when it would actually arrive and did not yet (12 hours after the quake) know how many waves there would be. I would have thought there would be sensors about 100 miles out from the shore line, announcing the arrival, and there are certainly many sensors throughout the Pacific to count how many waves occurred.

On a more local front, Combat Effective was attacked and effectively shut down for now. Rebuilding will take a while, but the web site is not the owners highest priority, so it may be down for weeks. I guess we should take that as meaning we were on the right track, and became a threat to America's enemies.

In the mean time, I intend to get this blog back on track, after neglecting it for the past three weeks, and will begin tracking the approach of the elections this fall.

Big News Nobody Saw

2010-02-06T16:52:00.003-06:00

The biggest news story of January was missed by almost everyone.

China made an unexpected move to tighten credit, by increasing the reserves maintained by banks. These reserves act as ballast, to keep the economies upright and reduce the bouncing up and down that otherwise would occur in the credit markets. Lack of these reserves is one of the things that led to the giant bubble economy of a few years ago. (Actually, it was and is bubbles upon bubbles, but that is a story for a different day.)

Here is an excerpt from that BIG STORY that ran on 13 Jan:

The People’s Bank of China yesterday raised the proportion of deposits that banks must set aside as reserves by 50 basis points starting Jan.

18. Economists hadn’t anticipated the move until at least April, the median of 11 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey showed last week.

Policy makers may follow up by raising their benchmark rate in coming months, rather than waiting until the second half of the year as most economists in the survey had projected. By moving ahead of the [U.S.] Federal Reserve, which plans to keep rates near zero for an “extended” period, pressure will rise to allow the yuan to appreciate for the first time since mid-2008.

The repercussions from that move caused the markets to move lower over the next several days, coinciding with President Obama's speech about taxing the banks. Thus he got the blame for the markets tanking, and for once he wasn't the guilty party.

News also found here
world’s largest lender by market value falls

and here
"Asian stocks fell for the first time in four days,
while copper and oil declined after
China raised the amount banks have to hold in reserve."

Two weeks later "Asian stocks snapped their longest losing streak since 2004, European shares and U.S. index futures rallied and the yen fell after Federal Reserve policy makers said America’s economy is in a recovery,"

But this is just an example, repeated every month for the past year, of talk of good times and the markets will rally. Soon after, they proceeded lower again, as skittishness over jobs reports (released about a week into every month) drained enthusiasm.

And just how are we doing on jobs?

The news had a good, but fake number right up front. So thin even the mainstream media picked up on the underlying bad news. The unemployment rate dropped, but the economy is still shedding jobs. People have been out of work so long they have dropped off the back end of the safety net and are no longer counted as unemployed. The real unemployment rate is still near 18%. And while we need to be adding 200,000 jobs a month just to maintain our current state of employment, this month they "adjusted" so many numbers from so many months that it makes me wonder how many jobs we really are losing.

One report said "The government’s survey of households showed employment increased by 541,000 workers last month and the number of people in the labor force rose. The gain brought the participation rate, or the share of the population in the labor force, up to 64.7 percent in January from 64.6 percent." There were other reports showing we had lost workers. It is getting hard to know what to believe.

But there is a small kernel of very, very good news hidden in all of this.
(Feb 5) Factory payrolls increased 11,000 in January, the biggest gain since April 2006, after falling 23,000 in the prior month.

And I don't know where this next article gets its history. The manufacturing index has been above water for the past 3 months, but manufacturing jobs continued to shrink until this month. The article says:
"Manufacturing, which accounts for about 12 percent of the economy, has been a driver of the recovery and is projected to continue to expand. The strength has yet to translate into more factory jobs. "

But overall, this expansion in manufacturing is one of two good bits of news. The drop in oil prices, and a drop in the price of fuel at the pump, is partially attributable to the sudden contraction in credit in China, and that too will fuel increases in U.S. manufacturing. U.S. manufacturing tends to be very energy intensive, so it will help us more than it will help Europe, which is already being hamstrung by a "Cap and Tax" system that impedes it from properly utilizing vast amounts of energy for its industry.

On the government front, we seem to have dodged the double barreled bullet of Socialist Medicine under the Obamacare label, and the "Cap and Tax" economy killer. Both are at least comatose, if not dead. This is fortunate, as I forecast back on the 29th of July, that the two of them would be the end of us.

Why study the Bible

2010-02-04T18:32:00.002-06:00

There are several reasons Christians (and many others) should study the Bible. First and foremost for Christians is to provide resistance to the many heretics that rise into public view, mostly on Television. It is important for Christians to be able to discern real and unreal Christian leadership.

This important skill has been known (but not well used) since the days of the Puratins. The first public education bill passed in the colonies was the "Old Deluder Satan Act"
which said, in part:

It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men form the knowlege of the Scriptures, as in former times keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these later times by perswading from the use of tongues, that so at least the true sense and meaning of the Originall might be clowded by false glosses of Saint-seeming deceivers; and that Learning may not be buried in the graves of our fore-fathers in Church and Commonwealth, the Lord assisting our indeavers: it is therefore ordered by this Court and Authoritie therof;

Don't be discouraged if the above sentence is hard to read, (in addition to being in "old English") you can jump from "unknown tongue" to the simicolon after "deceivers" when reading to get the majority of the meaning. The remainder is parenthetical.

Note also: Tongues mean languages, both spoken and written. The unknown tongue refers to the Catholics keeping the Bible in Latin so that people could not read it for themselves.

In addition to Biblical Prophesies being fulfilled in Europe and the Middle East (as well as maybe here), we have the threat of many in our own Republican Party attempting to hijack the Scriptures for their own purposes of greed and dishonor. And the Pseudo Christian governments in Europe, South and Central America have been so totally corrupted (except maybe some in the British Isles) that they are no longer of any use at all to our cause.

And what is our cause? Proclaiming the Glory of God, and the Good News of Salvation through Grace in Jesus Christ.

One thing Obama got right

2010-01-30T12:08:00.002-06:00

And the Supreme Court got wrong.

Corporations should not be buying our electoral process.

From Politifact.com

"Why Alito shook his head: Obama exaggerates impact of Supreme Court ruling on foreign companies"

I don't think it is an exaggeration at all. Read the article.
It is full of "we don't know the scope of the out come of this"

And for what reason do we give corporations the rights of citizens?
Can we hold the accountable?
Can we jail a corporation for misbehavior?
Does a corporation have a conscience?
NO! They are immoral ( they claim amoral, but that is another article) constructs designed to allow many people to do what a single person cannot. And they are designed to make money.
They should have NO say in our elections. They should even have very little presence in Washington for lobbying. They are a government entity, or a foreign government, depending on how you look at it, and should be treated as such.

Reading Amazon Book Reviews

2010-01-26T09:31:00.002-06:00

It has come to my attention (by way of talk radio) that certain factions are working in a concerted effort to poison the reviewer remarks for some books on Amazon. Specifically, there appears to be coordinated efforts by Atheists and Socialists to leave disparaging comments and mark other comments as "not helpful." And specifically these remarks are being made towards books by Christians and conservatives writing about America. I don't know how much of this is going on (and honestly, I see only sporatic evidence of it), but I thought I would share my method of avoiding such nonsense. My technique was originally designed to avoid concieted reviews by the friends and relatives of the author, and general nay-sayers who just don't like what they are reading.

This is primarily useful for books (or products) with lots and lots of reviews. On those with only a couple of reviews, I just read all of them. On products with enough reviews to make reading all of them impractical, I just read the 4-star reviews. Or just the three star reviews. Whichever seems to be a reasonable number to read. This avoids those who wrote a review but forgot to mark how many stars. Avoids the ones that are just glowing reviews with no substance. And avoids the vandals that are just there to run the product down.

The real purpose of reading reviews is to find out if the book or product is a good match for the customer, not really to find out if it is a good match for the world. Sometimes, if I am particularly taken by a reviewer, I might even click on their name and see what else they reviewed. This isn't useful for hunting donw the Atheists or other vandals, however, as they are likely to be cowards that will create mulitple personalities to tear down Christian writings.

There are also comments left on the reviews, but I don't find them useful for book reviews, as they just tend to be argumentative. For product reviews, however, they can sometimes clear up misconceptions about the product or company.

Persecution in America and Allies

2010-01-20T10:56:00.003-06:00

For some time, I didn't know what to begin making of this. I don't think I will create a label, but I will begin a regular (monthly?) series of articles on the Persecution of Christians in North America, and in some of the (formerly) christian countries of Europe.

It should not surprise us that this is happening. Jesus said that if we follow him, we should expect persecution. In fact, we can draw a conclusion from some of the things He said, that if we are not experiencing persecution, we might only be fooling ourselves about our salvation. Most christians are not experiencing persecution, because they are practicing Christianity Lite, and will be surprised when meeting Jesus in the afterlife, at what He really expected of them. And that they are surprised should not be any surprise. How can they follow Jesus, if they have no idea what the Bible says about following Jesus? (Thus, my quest, to get Christians to study the Bible.)

I think the first story, and currently the most visible to come to mind is Brit Hume's comment about Tiger Woods needing Jesus Christ. This set off a firestorm among the secularist, socialist, and even some of "Christianity Lite" circles.

The first to speak out against Brit Hume were "journalists" of the drive by media. But this can be expected of them, as the world, and especially the Secular Humanist (Socialist) religion of the drive by media is offended and threatened by hearing The Truth and The Gospel. They are not offended by hearing about Buddhism (or Hinduism, or Atheism, or Islam) because it is NOT The Truth, and does not convict them.

Example Links:
MSNBC host Keith Olbermann twice claimed that FNC contributor and former anchor Brit Hume’s public recommendation that Tiger Woods convert to Christianity to help solve his personal problems amounted to trying to "threaten" Woods

Olbermann also plugged the segment before a commercial break: "Brit Hume has tried to force Tiger Woods into becoming a Christian again. - That in a moment."

Brit Hume: 'Jesus Christ' the 'Most Controversial Two Words You Can Ever Utter in the Public Square'

(CNSNews.com) – Brit Hume said he was “not surprised” by the media backlash over his remarks to Tiger Woods on “Fox News Sunday” this week. There is a “double-standard” when it comes to speaking publicly about Christianity versus other religions, he said.

Hume, a Fox News analyst, told CNSNews.com: “There is a double standard. If I had said, for example, that what Tiger Woods needed to do was become more deeply engaged in his Buddhist faith or to adopt the ideas of Hinduism, which I think would be of great spiritual value to him, I doubt anybody would have said anything.”

And an example of that double standard,
even from some Christian Lite sources:
Religion on Fox: News or evangelism?
(Washington Post quotes a "Baptist" columnist)
The picture on the television screen and the audio of reporter Brit Hume's words struck me as contradictory. Just below the image of the reporter's face, the insignia "Fox News" appeared in three different places.

Among our "allies," persecution has begun in earnest. While they are not yet being dragged out into the streets or thrown into jail in England, their jobs are at risk:
Olive Jones, a former teacher who gave at-home math lessons to children too weak or ill to attend school, was told after she offered to pray for the child that the family were nonbelievers. The student's mother complained to the Oak Hill Short Stay School and Tuition Service in Nailsea, North Somerset. Jones' proposition was regarded as "bullying," and she ultimately lost her job.

I wrote about this subject last spring,
and mentioned about Canada the year before.
.

Border Fence - the cause is right

2010-01-15T08:29:00.004-06:00

With this being an election year, the status of the border fence (and other border security issues) should be one of the more visible issues presented to our candidates. Especially those going to Washington. And let's not forget, every single Representative (along with a third of the Senate and quite a few Governors) is up for re-election (or replacement).

Those who wish to destroy us have managed to promote a myth so far and wide that even a lot of otherwise reasonable and rational people have come to believe it. That a fence does not work, because it can be breached or bypassed. Look at any auto salvage or auto repair business and what do you see? A fence. Look at any military installation and what do you see? A fence. There is also a similar myth that a fence only keeps us in. Where does this come from? Law abiding people don't sneak across a border or jump the fence. They come and go through the gate. This, of course comes from our enemies, and is aimed at those who have not given this much thought.

And there is some proof that the fence, only about 20% (or less) complete, is already providing some protection. And, of course, it is the same evidence that our enemies would point to, trying to persuade us to stop defending ourselves. As an example:
Incomplete Border Tunnel Found In San Diego (Dec 2009)

DEA said Mexican authorities discovered an incomplete tunnel from Tijuana, Mexico running across the border. It was over 1800 feet and as much as 90 feet deep. This took a great deal of effort (two years) and expense (millions of dollars) to build, and would not be necessary were it not for an effective border fencing system they had to bypass.

From time to time, there are stories of checkpoint personnel or other Border Patrol personnel taking bribes to help smuggle people or contraband across the border. Again, if the fence were not providing any protection, these bribes would not be necessary, and again, this provides proof that the fence is beginning to work.

But, it is not like people have completely forgotten the subject. A recent (Nov 2009) Washington Post Poll showed 61 Percent of Republicans and Republican Leaning Independents Say GOP Puts ‘Too Little’ Emphasis on Illegal Immigration, (The poll asked respondents their opinion about the degree of emphasis the Republican Party puts on eight issues: gun rights, same-sex marriage, abortion, federal spending, taxes, the environment, illegal immigration, and the economy and jobs.)

Meanwhile, the news page for the Border Patrol is choked with trivial stuff, causing articles to scroll off of the page quickly. However, a periodic update link was helpful.

I discovered this article (5 Jan 2010), showing that attention given the border provides a good return on investment, among the many listed. Excerpt:

The statistics of the Yuma Sector of the U.S. Border Patrol do not tell the entire story but the go a long way to explain the significant improvements in security over the last five years.

Back in 2005, there were 138,000 arrests along the Yuma Sector's 126 miles of border they are responsible for, Beeson noted. But in 2009, those arrests were down to just 7,356. That is a 94 percent decrease in illegal activity.

The Yuma Station was the busiest of all 146 Border Patrol stations in 2005, Beeson reminded his hushed audience. "Vehicle drive throughs" (failure to stop) at the border was 2,700 five years ago while last year it dropped to 109.

"We've made a significant impact on illegal activity all along our sector. We say, we have 'operational control' over all 126 miles. So that's the ability to protect, classify, respond, and resolve all cross border threats."

But Beeson gives credit where it is due and praises the efforts of the National Guard who were temporarily stationed at the border in 2006. The Guard helped significantly with the Border Patrol's tactical infrastructure which included vehicle and pedestrian fencing, lighting, and all weather patrol roads, Beeson said.

"From the time the Guard showed up illegal traffic dropped precipitously. The Guard gave us a big leg up with our infrastructure."

Coupled with that beefed up infrastructure was a substantial increase in personnel, jumping from 358 agents in 2005 to 977 agents last year, Beeson noted. They also have a very strong air branch now, including helicopters and fixed wing aircraft deployed on a regular basis to support their ground surveillance.

They also received mobile surveillance systems, trucks with radar and cameras that can scan the whole area and greatly helped the Yuma Sector gain control of the border, he added.

The border is a very remote, harsh desert climate, Beeson said. Along with arrests they performed 19 rescues. In addition, they had 6,951 apprehensions of Mexican Nationals crossing illegally and 405 apprehensions of other nationals in 2009.

Just a note, on that last line: "other nationals."
Smugglers? or Terrorists?
The article doesn't say.
But without the fence, absolutely no one would know.
We must remain steadfast.
.

The Future Of Blogging

2010-01-13T10:27:00.002-06:00

In the past, the science of blogging has been mostly benefited the liberals. There are a number of reasons for this, but some very important ones include less work ethic means they have more time for blogging and other social interaction, and they have fewer morals and less restraint on techniques for attracting attention.

This is a volume, as well as quality game, and if we are to make headway in this culture war, we must learn the lessons they have given us to improve our visibility to others.

I think I have learned some lessons over the past couple of years. First, I have a pretty limited amount of time to contribute, and second is that traffic is driven to a blog through two means. One is the number of posts, and the second is the number of other blogs that link to it.

The liberals have for the past several years used that second criteria to their advantage. Posting many comments on other peoples blogs, each with a link to their own blog. This is a sort of spam attack that allows even conservative blogs to unwittingly lend credibility to liberal blogs.

One thing I intend to do over the next year is to attract attention to one political blog that I mostly agree with (not my own, I am far too obscure). I will do that by registering with, and regularly posting comments to, several well balanced blogs that have fairly high traffic, located around the country and around the cyberscape. Each comment will have a link to the target blog. Note that I won't be spamming. If I have nothing worth saying, I won't just post garbage. That is one of the moral limitations we conservatives must keep.

The Drop in Unemployment that is NOT

2010-01-09T09:36:00.002-06:00

There was quite a bit in the news last about a drop in unemployment. This was a convenient fiction. It got some people some good publicity and others a bump up in their stock portfolio. The economy continues to shed jobs, although at a slowing rate. Worse news is that we continue to shed manufacturing jobs (although at a slowing rate). We can make unlimited gains in all other sectors, and if we don't gain manufacturing jobs, we will never prosper. Understanding that the population continues to grow, even if the economy were shedding zero jobs, the number of unemployed would continue to rise.

Unemployment remains steady?

Why? It merely means this recession has gone on long enough that a lot of people are dropping off of the back side of the safety net. They are no longer counted. I said, a couple of months ago, that there is about 7 percent unemployment unaccounted for in the official numbers. That "uncounted" unemployment is slowly rising towards 8%, and from what I have read, it may pass 8% this month. This problem may be further masked by a temporary hiring of over a million temporary government workers for the census, the first half of 2010.

When the economy really does improve, many of the formerly fully employed will find themselves scratching for crumbs while working one or two part time or temporary jobs. Real improvement at all levels of our society is not yet even in sight. Bloomberg had a good article in early November that exposes our long term outlook. Look for the phrases "risk of deflation"
and the phrase "Treasuries are still worth buying"

The "W" I thought I saw a few months ago in the economic outlook, now looks it may be just pause in the downward spiral of our national economic health. Economists are still looking for the second dip in what they would call a "double dip recession" (As an historical note, the Great Depression was a triple dip) It is impossible to say at this point, but remember, when looking at these charts, our population is increasing by about 1% per year, so a level line indicates a downward trend.

We are still looking forwards to a sharp increase in inflation. It may still be a year or two away, but it will be almost impossible to avoid. Hopefully improvements in the employment situation will happen at the same time. Those improvements are not likely to come first.

Those who are still thinking of investing in Gold? I don't think so. The window of opportunity came and went a year ago. I currently don't see it happening again for quite some time. Gold today should be around $930 an ounce. The rest is run up from excess demand (that means bubble). Currently I am beginning to look into the idea of Rare Earth Minerals. This would be futile on an individual basis, but could be possible for a corporation (think "bank," but holding minerals instead of cash).

Gas and Oil Rising

Gasoline this winter is dropped, about 20 cents or so off of its peak last summer, But don't get used to it. It will rise again, peaking around 50 cents higher than last summer. The reason for these fluctuations (and keep in mind there is several months lag between oil prices and "gas at the pump" prices) is a dip and then recovery in oil prices. Complicating this, and maybe exacerbating the run up in prices,. is the falling value of the dollar, and the coming inflationary period. Gas could easily increase by another dollar between May 1st of this year and May 1st of next year.

Oil, bouncing back from a catastrophic fall in 2008, will likely resume its climb to $100 a barrel and beyond. The good news is that means it will be worth enough to pump some of it right here at home. Unfortunately, we don't have an infinite supply of it. China is importing and using a steadily increasing amount, and unlike US, they have a pretty good grip on how to handle the supply and demand on a national level. If we are smart, we will invest heavily in coal fired power plants, nuclear, and natural gas. If we are mislead by the Global Warming Crowd (which we now know to be a hoax) , we may foolishly think solar, wind, other alternative fuels and conservation will fix everything. Those things will be useful, but they will not do the job by themselves for at least a hundred years.

Articles of interest:

U.S. Homeowners Lost $5.9 Trillion Since 2006 Peak (Bloomberg Dec 9)
Banks Take Losses on Short Sales as Foreclosures Soar (Bloomberg Dec 4)
Household Net Worth in U.S. Increases by $2.67 Trillion (Bloomberg Dec 10)
[for a substantial portion of that look above at foreclosures]

Gold Isn’t the Best Protection Against Inflation (Dec. 8 Bloomberg)
Quote: "Economic chaos? The dollar crumbling? Central banks printing money like crazy? Probably the only real surprise about the surge in gold prices over the last few months is that it took so long to arrive. "

With unemployment passing 10 percent and millions of jobs gone for good, the recession is taking a brutal human toll. Quote: "they receive temporary state and federal unemployment benefits—which for most workers total about 60 percent of their former pay. But unless Congress extends them, unemployment benefits run out after 26 weeks" Nov 19

Reuters Blogger James Penthokoukis
Gluskin Sheff economist David Rosenberg, formerly of Merrill Lynch, thinks the unemployment rate is going to at least 12 percent, maybe even 13 percent. Optimists, Rosenberg explains, underestimate the incredible damage done to the labor market during this downturn. And even before this downturn, the economy was not generating jobs in huge numbers. If he is right, all political bets are off. I think the Democrats could lose the House and effective control of the Senate. I think you would also be talking about the rise of third party and perhaps a challenger to Obama in 2012.

The Aproaching Primary Elections

2010-01-07T03:37:00.002-06:00

This is an "off year" election season. What does that mean to an intelligent citizen? Our vote counts double. And counts triple in the Primary Election coming up in a couple months. Here in Texas, the primaries are the 2nd of March. In years past, I advocated telling everyone you knew that the primary season is a good time to vote and try to get everyone to the ballot boxes for every election.

NO MORE.

Now I have seen that too many of our citizenry are seduced with the modern drugs of socialism and liberalism, political correctness and post modernism. And, of course, celebrity worship. And too many of them have no idea what government's true purpose is, or what the Constitution says about our government and our nation. Too many of them, "educated" by the liberal government schools, do not know the true foundations of our nation, and do not know the true underpinnings of our society.

Today I advocate discernment. Find out which of your friends and acquaintances have been seduced with the drugs above, and which have not. And tell those, which have not been seduced, how important it is to get out and vote.

Of course, this being an election year, many of the projects that were pretending to be "shovel ready" for last year's stimulus will actually be worked on this year. This will provide some temporary work for some of the people seeking jobs. And make it look, temporarily, like the current liberal administration is actually helping the country get back on its feet. In reality, it was the liberal policies of the current and past political machine that got us into the mess our economy is in, and the programs that were put into place last year will ultimately make things worse. This will make our job harder.

Listening to conservative talk radio, one might get an idea that the next elections are all wrapped up. I estimate that, at least 8 times an hour, I hear how the public is so peeved that the Democrats cannot hope to win the next election, and that any Republican with any sense will embrace conservative values. Get real. About half of the public has no idea what is good for the country and will only vote for which ever candidate is a pretty boy.

We cannot be complacent. Nor can we simply concede defeat. Nor can we just sit idly by and wait for the return of Jesus (if He returns today, we lose nothing by espousing Christian values of liberty and economy, if He tarries long, we lose much by allowing tyranny and despotism to destroy possibly the last remaining place on Earth we can be assured of our freedom to practice Christianity in Peace.

We must be harmless as sheep, but we must never forget that the Bible tells us to be as wise as serpents.

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. - Edward R. Murrow

Are You Really a Christian?

2010-01-03T11:34:00.002-06:00

So, What makes you think your a Christian?

As I have talked to many christians recently, I have found that a great number of them have no real idea what it is to be a christian. Many are living in direct conflict with what the Bible teaches about being a Christian.

How can that be, and what are the differences that I am seeing?

Differences come in two forms. Things we do that are opposed to God, and things we don't do that God commands us to do. In years past, the first was the problem. Many so called christians would do things in direct opposition to what the Bible teaches. But I am convinced that now, and in the immediate future, the larger problem will be so called christians, and also many real Christians, not doing what the Bible teaches we must.

The major problem with Christians not doing what the Bible teaches is that they don't know what the Bible teaches. In fact, many are so uneducated about the Bible that any so called Pastor can teach them what ever they want and the Christian will not know the difference.

This problem did not come about over night (in fact, it was the reason the Lutheran Church and the King Jams Bible came into existance), and it won't be solved overnight. But we Christians must attack this problem on a daily basis, through our own Bible study and through encouraging any professing Christian to study the Word.

End of year post

2009-12-30T17:46:00.002-06:00

Well, it has been quite a year.

We started this year by placing the most anti-American and anti-Christian socialist president in our nations history into office. While I tried to ignore national politics this past year, I could not help but notice, as he installed a Racist to the Supreme Court, an advocate for having sex with children for a Safe School Czar, and someone who wants to censor Christian and Conservative talk on the radio as an FCC Czar for diversity.

All through the year, we have been keeping watch on swine flu, the economy, and the Obama-Care bills and almost watching the Obamessiah's 40 czars. Meanwhile the war on terror (not to mention the war on drugs) and the border security issues have gone almost comatose.

We ended the year with the exposure of the global warming hoax. What we formerly thought was just a lot of sloppy science and naivete on the part of the climate change crowd, we now know is a sustained and concerted effort to deceive and defraud us. And the drive by media is in it up to their eyes. Now that it is exposed, the Drive by Media is ignoring the truth and the political hacks are acting like no one has said the emperor has no cloths.

Next Year Should Be a Doozy.
If I get a couple of comments, I might consider an Obama Watch
(random thoughts) section in a related blog, as opposed to
this year, when I tried to ignore him.

Meanwhile:
Articles with significant updates or comments.
Characteristics of good Church updated links to expository preaching
Lending to Ourselves significant comments added

My Comments and other stuff to read Elsewhere
Pilgrim: entertainment-is-god-of-impressive
Christians should be armed (I did not comment)
Is the World Getting Worse?
Political Correctness is the ultimate gag order
Good Manners
anthropogenic-travesty (global warming)
Future Millionaire: predatory lending has an ugly tail end

As anyone can see from my last quarter summary, I post extensively on Combat Effective I catalog them here merely for my own benifit, so I can look up some of the topics later, but if anyone else wants to check out one of these articles, just click on this link, then go to the address bar in your browser and change the four digit number you find there to the number below.

http://www.combateffective.us/content/view/3360

3360 Broken economy must not lead to revolution
3368 A ValueAddedTax might be the means for Obama
to maximize the damage he can do to our economy

3369 Obama nominated for Nobel Prize, adding his name to a long list of
bogus recipients, and completing the journey began in 73 that the
Nobel Prize took from being legit to being a complete joke.
Those who would trade some of their liberty for the illusion of security
Shall soon find they have neither.
Discussion of some previous near disasters in our history

3371 Steep Losses for pension funds

3375 Governed by Callous Children

3376 Rising Elephant
Which way should the Republican Party go

3381 Short comment on Nidal Hasan, and OTB makes a reappearance

3382 Pfizer took her home by force, now they abandon it
a triumph of corporatism over liberty

3385 Housing Recovery Built on the Sand

3387 Capitol (faux) Rage over Federal Reserve Bank actions
Is it time to overhaul it?

Published by TRex 3388
A massive release of e-mail traffic and data has
blown the lid off of the Global Warming Scam.

3390 Las Vegas City Workers must take a pay cut,
while the city builds a new City Hall

3391 No matter what the reasoning, Huckabee is through

3395 The audacity of Banks

3396 Obama and the Nobel

3398 Rolling Stone on what Obama did (comedy)

3399 Global Warming Blizzards

3400 Are Strategic (Rational) Defaulters Deadbeats?

3401 Should we lose sleep over our debts owed to China?

3403 Is our burden of Debt going to crush us?

3404 Paying bonuses to Freddy and Fannie exec's when they are losing money

MicroSoft Does Something Right?

2009-12-19T11:16:00.004-06:00

I have, these past few weeks, been taking a look at Windows 7. Maybe it is the competition from Linux (highly likely, since a lot of the "new" features in Win7 were already available in Linux), or maybe it is just how badly they screwed up some things in XP and Vista. But either way, it looks like they have done something good with Win7.

I normally wait a full year before looking into any new product from MicroSoft, but between the way they screwed up with Vista and some favorable reviews I saw this year on Win7, I thought I would take a look at it before the year was up. Plus, I got my wife a netbook, and the only thing I could find was either Vista or Win7. After doing about a week of research, it was an easy choice.

From the fact that all of the programing loads from a single disc - no matter which version you are buying (and there are about 5 versions) - to the way it handles hibernation and switching users, it looks like they have done a better job than any previous editions.

That is not to say I will be totally enamored with it. First, it costs over $100 a copy. Although you can get a family pack of 3 copies for less than the single copy price, a feature only useful to businesses in the past.

I still think, ultimately, Linux will be the way to go. But Win7 ain't bad.

ClimateGate Broke And

2009-12-10T04:44:00.003-06:00

It was a major "leak," and 64 Megabytes of e-mails, data and computer programs have been spilled onto the Internet. These e-mails show that a not so large group (a few dozen to maybe a few hundred) scientists have been deliberately altering data through "tricks" in computer programs, destroying data that didn't fit their preconceived notions, and ignoring what might be considered deliberate errors in methods of collecting data on climate change. And the e-mails show that it has all been very deliberate.

In addition, these same people have sought to destroy any competing theories. Not by scientific methods, but by denying access to data, smear campaigns, denying access to peer review process, and manipulation of publishing standards.

In trying to justify these actions, they didn't deny the contents of the information spilled onto the Internet, but were outraged that the information was spilled. The fact of the matter is, though, that they were breaking the law by hiding it, as it was gathered at taxpayer expense and therefore legally required to be released to the public. In addition, at least one "scientist," and I use that term loosely here, attempted to justify their manipulation of the data thus: "we had a theory and had to find a way to make the numbers fit the theory." In science this is known as fraud. If the data doesn't fit the theory, you are supposed to find a new theory.

The Obama administration has been moving with deliberate speed to limit the damage. The have come out and said that the facts are irrelevant - Carbon Dioxide is harmful because they said so. They are proceeding with Obama going to Copenhagen. They don't want to know the facts. But they, in fact do know the facts. And with full knowledge that they are perpetuating a fraud, they are pressing ahead to regulate the, now known harmless, so called greenhouse gasses. And pressing ahead towards signing a treaty that will severely undermine US sovereignty.

Climate gate first broke to the BBC, who sat on it for more than a month, then to the public at large on the Internet. It shows that the global warming alarmists and the major media outlets, just as the conservatives had alleged, have sought to crush dissident opinions. The sought to suppress them by any means, fair or unfair, legal or illegal.

The mainstream media has been working hard to keep the information revealed by the spill suppressed mainly by being extremely quiet about it. Fox News has run several stories on it. The UK Telegraph seems to have done some on it, but BBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN haven't really done much with it, but are still propagating the myth that the past decade has been overly warm. And in other ways, loading their stories with bias.

The press is supposed to be one of the pillars of liberty. That is why Freedom of the Press is one of the freedoms guaranteed by the Fist Amendment. But the Mainstream Media, fulfilling their description as the Drive By Media, has been acting as if they are just the latest arm of Pravda. I guess that is why the Blogosphere has become so important.

Living Biblically 4

2009-12-08T10:40:00.003-06:00

This is the 4th and final part to my review of the book "The Year of Living Biblically"

One of the reasons I recommended this book in the first place is that it provides a bird's eye view of the whole of Christianity. The author sets out, among other things, to look at every facet, denomination, sect, and cult of both Jewish and Christian (although, primarily the Jewish) religions. It is a breathtaking look at the variety of viewpoints and interpretations of the Bible, and despite being centered mostly on Old Testament, I think Christians should find it greatly interesting.

My first three reviews:
http://crypto-corinthian.blogspot.com/2009/01/book-pre-review.html
http://crypto-corinthian.blogspot.com/2009/02/book-mid-review.html
http://crypto-corinthian.blogspot.com/2009/04/book-review.html

I have been told by reliable teachers, once you think you have a good grip on what you think you believe, it is always good to look around at those whom you might have a disagreement with. Sometimes they will give you insight you didn't previously have. Otherwise, it is still good, they can make you do the hard work of justifying your beliefs more precisely.

As I have mentioned before, the author misses the big picture, but he does get some impressive insights right. One of the ones I hadn't seen clearly before was the Sabbath. He got this one more right than I did.

Other reasons for reading (and owning) this book are the excellent lists of "footnotes," the index and the lists of (most of) the books he read while researching and writing this book. He really does have an impressive bibliography.

And I should also mention that, as it is written in diary format, it is a lesson in how to keep a journal, and how to examine that journal - both, for insight and for a good historical reference.

Lending to ourselves

2009-12-02T08:16:00.003-06:00

To make us look richer.

Those who stop by here that have a real understanding of economics should understand that nothing I post here in economics is prophetic or guinious. What I do here is distill some of the important news of recent times, and flavor it with my own philosophy. Nothing more. My goal is simply to make it understandable to the average Joe.

The numbers used by Wall Street and the govnernment show the economy is truning around, but this is partially an illusion, due to the decline in the value of the dollar.

The biggest recent news, for me, is the slide in the 5 year bond rate, from the boring little dance it did around 2.3% from last spring until this fall. It is now around 2.05%, and I saw 2.00% for a monment last week. The surface reason for this drop in intrest rates is the banking crisis in Dubai. The underlying reson, and the reason it has been staying so low for so long, (remember, a few months ago I said it was formerly 2.9%) is a stealth economy growing in the Washington-Wall Street circles. Seems the Fed has been buying up long term bonds, both government and corporate bonds and securities.

Keeping in mind that the Fed is loaning money to banks
and some other financial institutions at .1% (yest that is one tenth of one percent) this amounts to flooding the markets with free cash. And who is buying up this free cash? Well, it seems the banks are. It seems that, while Washington is publicly telling the banks to loan to homeowners and small businesses, it is quietly structureing the rules so that banks will invest in something safer. Like US treasury bonds. Yes you read that right. The Fed is lending to banks at near zero interest, and the banks are turning around and investing that money in the Fed at 2% to 4%. Free money for banks.

Brave New World
This has sparked a new era of "the dollar carry trade." The term is new, so you might have better luck looking up "yen carry trade" which was a phenomenon in the 90's. Meanwhile, many paniced investers all across the globe (including the coountry of India) are buying up tons of Gold. Not for the first time, the US Mint is short on one once gold coins. While I don't think this is the end of the world in any since, this with what I wrote about the past couple of months, does foretell a new era of increased hardship for the American worker.