The Good Old Times

http://oldfortyfives.com/DYRT.htm

Haiti Special Request

This is from a friend of mine and Tracie Gray Jernigan's former pastor/boss in Houston. He is now in Maryland. Please pass this on to anyone who might be interested.

Paul

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	Haiti Special Request
Date:	Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:26:18 -0500
From:	Long, Gary

Hello friends,

Thank you for being a reader of my weekly column, "Long Story, Short."  Tomorrow I'll be sending you the regular edition, but tonight I'm writing with a prayerful request for you to help the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship with their relief efforts in Haiti following the horrendous earthquake this week.  CBF has field personnel on the ground in Haiti.  First Baptist Church Gaithersburg, the church I pastor, is being called to aid the victims of the earthquake in Haiti.  Our mission partner, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, has field personnel in Haiti and is challenging us to do four things:

• First you can pray: Prayer requests will be updated regularly.  CBF is updating prayer requests from Haiti at this link:  http://www.thefellowship.info/Pray

• Second you can give: Your gift will go to earthquake relief. Give to CBF online at www.thefellowship.info or give to your church and ask them to send along your offering.

• Third, you can get involved: If you want to help directly with response efforts, please let us know your skills and experience.  CBF is building a disaster response team and an application is available athttp://www.thefellowship.info/Disaster-Response-Application

• Fourth, you can stay connected: Read the latest news release,  updates on the CBF blog, and connect through CBF's Haiti ministry network's Ning site. That link is http://fellowshipportal.ning.com/group/haitipartnersforchrist .

This is one of those times I'm very proud to be a Baptist.  Members of the larger family of Baptists are joining together to do something bigger than we could ever accomplish alone.  Won't you consider participating in at least one of the ways above?  If you have trouble with any of the links, please respond to this email and I'll be glad to help you get where you're trying to go.

Prayerfully, Actively,
Pastor Gary

The Other Plot to Wreck America

By FRANK RICH
New York Times
January 9, 2010

THERE may not be a person in America without a strong opinion about what coulda, shoulda been done to prevent the underwear bomber from boarding that Christmas flight to Detroit. In the years since 9/11, we’ve all become counterterrorists. But in the 16 months since that other calamity in downtown New York — the crash precipitated by the 9/15 failure of Lehman Brothers — most of us are still ignorant about what Warren Buffett called the “financial weapons of mass destruction” that wrecked our economy. Fluent as we are in Al Qaeda and body scanners, when it comes to synthetic C.D.O.’s and credit-default swaps, not so much.

What we don’t know will hurt us, and quite possibly on a more devastating scale than any Qaeda attack. Americans must be told the full story of how Wall Street gamed and inflated the housing bubble, made out like bandits, and then left millions of households in ruin. Without that reckoning, there will be no public clamor for serious reform of a financial system that was as cunningly breached as airline security at the Amsterdam airport. And without reform, another massive attack on our economic security is guaranteed. Now that it can count on government bailouts, Wall Street has more incentive than ever to pump up its risks — secure that it can keep the bonanzas while we get stuck with the losses.

The window for change is rapidly closing. Health care, Afghanistan and the terrorism panic may have exhausted Washington’s already limited capacity for heavy lifting, especially in an election year. The White House’s chief economic hand, Lawrence Summers, has repeatedly announced that “everybody agrees that the recession is over” — which is technically true from an economist’s perspective and certainly true on Wall Street, where bailed-out banks are reporting record profits and bonuses. The contrary voices of Americans who have lost pay, jobs, homes and savings are either patronized or drowned out entirely by a political system where the banking lobby rules in both parties and the revolving door between finance and government never stops spinning.

It’s against this backdrop that this week’s long-awaited initial public hearings of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission are so critical. This is the bipartisan panel that Congress mandated last spring to investigate the still murky story of what happened in the meltdown. Phil Angelides, the former California treasurer who is the inquiry’s chairman, told me in interviews late last year that he has been busy deploying a tough investigative staff and will not allow the proceedings to devolve into a typical blue-ribbon Beltway exercise in toothless bloviation.

He wants to examine the financial sector’s “greed, stupidity, hubris and outright corruption” — from traders on the ground to the board room. “It’s important that we deliver new information,” he said. “We can’t just rehash what we’ve known to date.” He understands that if he fails to make news or to tell the story in a way that is comprehensible and compelling enough to arouse Americans to demand action, Wall Street and Washington will both keep moving on, unchallenged and unchastened.

Angelides gets it. But he has a tough act to follow: Ferdinand Pecora, the legendary prosecutor who served as chief counsel to the Senate committee that investigated the 1929 crash as F.D.R. took office. Pecora was a master of detail and drama. He riveted America even without the aid of television. His investigation led to indictments, jail sentences and, ultimately, key New Deal reforms — the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Glass-Steagall Act, designed to prevent the formation of banks too big to fail.

As it happened, a major Pecora target was the chief executive of National City Bank, the institution that would grow up to be Citigroup. Among other transgressions, National City had repackaged bad Latin American debt as new securities that it then sold to easily suckered investors during the frenzied 1920s boom. Once disaster struck, the bank’s executives helped themselves to millions of dollars in interest-free loans. Yet their own employees had to keep ponying up salary deductions for decimated National City stock purchased at a heady precrash price.

Trade bad Latin American debt for bad mortgage debt, and you have a partial portrait of Citigroup at the height of the housing bubble. The reckless Citi executives of our day may not have given themselves interest-free loans, but they often walked away with the short-term, illusionary profits while their employees were left with shredded jobs and 401(k)’s. Among those Citi executives was Robert Rubin, who, as the Clinton Treasury secretary, helped repeal the last vestiges of Glass-Steagall after years of Wall Street assault. Somewhere Pecora is turning in his grave. Rubin has never apologized, let alone been held accountable. But he’s hardly alone. Even after all the country has gone through, the titans who fueled the bubble are heedless. In last Sunday’s Times, Sandy Weill, the former chief executive who built Citigroup (and recruited Rubin to its ranks), gave a remarkable interview to Katrina Brooker blaming his own hand-picked successor, Charles Prince, for his bank’s implosion. Weill said he preferred to be remembered for his philanthropy. Good luck with that.

Among his causes is Carnegie Hall, where he is chairman of the board. To see how far American capitalism has fallen, contrast Weill with the giant who built Carnegie Hall. Not only is Andrew Carnegie remembered for far more epic and generous philanthropy than Weill’s — some 1,600 public libraries, just for starters — but also for creating a steel empire that actually helped build America’s industrial infrastructure in the late 19th century. At Citi, Weill built little more than a bloated gambling casino. As Paul Volcker, the regrettably powerless chairman of Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, said recently, there is not “one shred of neutral evidence” that any financial innovation of the past 20 years has led to economic growth. Citi, that “innovative” banking supermarket, destroyed far more wealth than Weill can or will ever give away.

Even now — despite its near-death experience, despite the departures of Weill, Prince and Rubin — Citi remains as imperious as it was before 9/15. Its current chairman, Richard Parsons, was one of three executives (along with Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs and John Mack of Morgan Stanley) who failed to show up at the mid-December White House meeting where President Obama implored bankers to increase lending. (The trio blamed fog for forcing them to participate by speakerphone, but the weather hadn’t grounded their peers or Amtrak.) Last week, ABC World News was also stiffed by Citi, which refused to answer questions about its latest round of outrageous credit card rate increases and instead e-mailed a statement blaming its customers for “not paying back their loans.” This from a bank that still owes taxpayers $25 billion of its $45 billion handout! If Citi, among the most egregious of Wall Street reprobates, feels it can get away with business as usual, it’s because it fears no retribution. And it got more good news last week. Now that Chris Dodd is vacating the Senate, his chairmanship of the Banking Committee may fall next year to Tim Johnson of South Dakota, home to Citi’s credit card operation. Johnson was the only Senate Democrat to vote against Congress’s recent bill policing credit card abuses.

Though bad history shows every sign of repeating itself on Wall Street, it will take a near-miracle for Angelides to repeat Pecora’s triumph. Our zoo of financial skullduggery is far more complex, with many more moving pieces, than that of the 1920s. The new inquiry does have subpoena power, but its entire budget, a mere $8 million, doesn’t even match the lobbying expenditures for just three banks (Citi, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America) in the first nine months of 2009. The firms under scrutiny can pay for as many lawyers as they need to stall between now and Dec. 15, deadline day for the commission’s report.

More daunting still is the inquiry’s duty to reach into high places in the public sector as well as the private. The mystery of exactly what happened as TARP fell into place in the fateful fall of 2008 thickens by the day — especially the behind-closed-door machinations surrounding the government rescue of A.I.G. and its counterparties. Last week, a Republican congressman, Darrell Issa of California, released e-mail showing that officials at the New York Fed, then led by Timothy Geithner, pressured A.I.G. to delay disclosing to the S.E.C. and the public the details on the billions of bailout dollars it was funneling to its trading partners. In this backdoor rescue, taxpayers unknowingly awarded banks like Goldman 100 cents on the dollar for their bets on mortgage-backed securities.

Why was our money used to make these high-flying gamblers whole while ordinary Americans received no such beneficence? Nothing less than complete transparency will connect the dots. Among the big-name witnesses that the Angelides commission has called for next week is Goldman’s Blankfein. Geithner, Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke should be next.

If they all skate away yet again by deflecting blame or mouthing pro forma mea culpas, it will be a sign that this inquiry, like so many other promises of reform since 9/15, is likely to leave Wall Street’s status quo largely intact. That’s the ticking-bomb scenario that truly imperils us all.

What Makes a Great Teacher?

Great article.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201001/good-teaching

Letter from Jesus...

Amen.

Letter from Jesus about Christmas --

 

It has come to my attention that many of you are upset that folks are taking My name out of the season.

How I personally feel about this celebration can probably be most easily understood by those of you who have been blessed with children of your own. I don't care what you call the day. If you want to celebrate My birth, just GET ALONG AND LOVE ONE ANOTHER.

 

Now, having said that let Me go on. If it bothers you that the town in which you live doesn't allow a scene depicting My birth, then just get rid of a couple of Santas and snowmen and put in a small Nativity scene on your own front lawn If all My followers did that there wouldn't be any need for such a scene on the town square because there would be many of them all around town.

 

Stop worrying about the fact that people are calling the tree a holiday tree, instead of a Christmas tree. It was I who made all trees. You can remember Me anytime you see any tree. Decorate a grape vine if you wish: I actually spoke of that one in a teaching, explaining who I am in relation to you and what each of our tasks were. If you have forgotten that one, look up John 15: 1 - 8.

 

If you want to give Me a present in remembrance of My birth here is my wish list. Choose something from it:

 

1. Instead of writing protest letters objecting to the way My birthday is being celebrated, write letters of love and hope to soldiers away from home. They are terribly afraid and lonely this time of year. I know, they tell Me all the time.

 

2. Visit someone in a nursing home. You don't have to know them personally. They just need to know that someone cares about them.

 

3. Instead of writing the President complaining about the wording on the cards his staff sent out this year, why don't you write and tell him that you'll be praying for him and his family this year. Then follow up... It will be nice hearing from you again.

 

4. Instead of giving your children a lot of gifts you can't afford and they don't need, spend time with them. Tell them the story of My birth, and why I came to live with you down here. Hold them in your arms and remind them that I love them.

 

5 Pick someone that has hurt you in the past and forgive him or her.

 

6. Did you know that someone in your town will attempt to take their own life this season because they feel so alone and hopeless?  Since you don't know who that person is, try giving everyone you meet a warm smile; it could make the difference.

 

7. Instead of nit picking about what the retailer in your town calls the holiday, be patient with the people who work there. Give them a warm smile and a kind word. Even if they aren't allowed to wish you a "Merry Christmas" that doesn't keep you from wishing them one. Then stop shopping there on Sunday. If the store didn't make so much money on that day they'd close and let their employees spend the day at home with their families

 

8. If you really want to make a difference, support a missionary-- especially one who takes My love and Good News to those who have never heard My name.

 

9. There are individuals and whole families in your town who not only will have no "Christmas" tree, but neither will they have any presents to give or receive. If you don't know them, buy some food and a few gifts and give them to the Salvation Army or some other charity which believes in Me and they will make the delivery for you. (In Plano we have our Christmas Cops boxes everywhere)

 

10. Finally, if you want to make a statement about your belief in and loyalty to Me, then behave like a Christian. Don't do things in secret that you wouldn't do in My presence. Let people know by your actions that you are one of mine.

 

Don't forget; I am God and can take care of Myself. Just love Me and do what I have told you to do. I'll take care of all the rest. Check out the list above and get to work; time is short. I'll help you, but the ball is now in your court. And do have a most blessed Christmas with all those whom you love and remember:

I LOVE YOU,

 

JESUS

Preserving Planet Earth, an Interview with Jane Goodall

What is our responsibility?

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11272009/watch.html

God Issues: Caesar and the Secret Service

By Dr. James C. Denison President, Center for Informed Faith, Dallas, Texas November 30, 2009 Topic: intimacy with God   Caesar and the Secret Service   What did Julius Caesar really look like?  The image you remember from high school history class comes from statues made long after the conqueror was assassinated in 44 B.C.  Historians have never been quite sure of the man's true appearance, since Romans tended to idealize their leaders after their death.   Today's New York Times shows us what is likely the earliest known bust of Caesar, made during his lifetime and excavated two years ago in France: "The Roman appears with little hair, a wrinkled forehead, a prominent Adam's apple."  Not exactly the stuff of legend.  Apparently his portrait was sculpted on a Monday morning after Thanksgiving.   Are you having a hard time getting motivated today?  Eating turkey until you never want to see another drumstick?  Shaking off the dopamine in turkey meat and 29 football games?  Cheer up: At least you don't work for the Secret Service.   Washington continues to be preoccupied with the Virginia couple who sneaked into a White House state dinner last Tuesday evening.  Today's Times tells us that Michaele and Tareq Salahi are apparently trying to be selected for a new reality show, "The Real Housewives of D.C."  They met the president and other dignitaries, but no one is quite sure how.  Or what to do to prevent a similar security lapse as the busy holiday party season approaches.   We may never know personally the Caesars of our day, but take heart: the real King of the universe wants to know us.  Romans 5:8 contains the good news of Christmas in a single sentence: "God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."   The One who came at Christmas wants a personal, intimate, continual relationship with you and me.  He wants to be more than the subject of a Sunday morning worship service and occasional prayer or Bible study.  He wants to be the center of our lives, the Object of our thoughts and affections, the King of our choices.  He wants to lead us into "life to the full" (John 10:10), but we must open his gift.   This morning's reading in Oswald Chambers' My Utmost For His Highest is my favorite essay in this classic devotional guide: "There is only one relationship that matters, and that is your personal relationship to a personal Redeemer and Lord.  Let everything else go, but maintain that at all costs, and God will fulfill His purpose through your life.  One individual life may be of priceless value to God's purposes, and yours may be that life."   How will you maintain your relationship with Jesus "at all costs" today?  _____________________________    _____________________________ Join Our Community:             Copyright © 2009, Center for Informed Faith. All rights reserved. Read previous essays

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Ku Klux Klan - Blonde Version

A Blonde in a Baptist Church   An Alabama preacher said to his congregation, 'Someone in this congregation has spread a rumor that I belong to the Ku Klux Klan. It is a horrible lie and one which a Christian community cannot tolerate. I am embarrassed and do not intend to accept this. Now, I want the party who did this to stand and ask forgiveness from God and this Christian Family.'   No one moved.   The preacher continued, 'Do you have the nerve to face me and admit this is a falsehood? Remember, you will be forgiven and in your heart you will feel glory Now stand and confess your transgression.'   Again all was quiet.   Then slowly, a drop-dead gorgeous blonde with a body that would stop traffic rose from the third pew. Her head was bowed and her voice quivered as she spoke, 'Reverend there has been a terrible misunderstanding. I never said you were a member of the Ku Klux Klan. I simply told a couple of my friends that you were a wizard under the sheets.'   The preacher fell to his knees, his wife fainted, and the congregation roared!

 

God Issues: 156 billion years of grace

InformedFaith.com   By Dr. James C. Denison President, Center for Informed Faith, Dallas, Texas November 11, 2009 Topic: unconditional grace   156 billion years of grace   World War I formally ended on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, when Germany signed the Armistice.  As a result, Veterans Day is observed each year on November 11, a holiday honoring all military veterans.   In a tragic reminder of the price our military pays to defend us, the Associated Press is reporting this morning that divers have found the body of one of two American soldiers missing since last week in Afghanistan.  They were attempting to retrieve airdropped supplies that fell into a river when they were swept away by the current.  The second soldier has not been found.   If God is all-loving and all-powerful, why is our world so broken?   This week we have considered the shortest verse in Scripture: "Jesus wept."  He proved his compassion by his Christmas incarnation.  He was the only baby who chose his parents and place of birth, and he chose peasants in a cave.  If he would be born there, he would be born again in your heart and mine.   This is not a God the world knows.  Muslims have a God of legalistic enforcement but not a weeping heart.  Buddhists and Hindus have no category for a personal, suffering God.  Most Americans think that God helps those who help themselves.  Honestly, do you picture the Lord of the universe with tears in his eyes?   And tears in his heart?  God's word says, "We do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are-yet was without sin" (Hebrews 4:15).   I know it seems nonsensical to say that Jesus faced every temptation we do.  The first century didn't have marijuana, or sexually explicit movies or web sites.  But sins in principle have not changed, just their expression.  Substance abuse, sexual temptation, integrity issues and moral failures were just as real then as today.   Jesus faced them all, and more than we do.  The longer you withstand a temptation, the harder and more subtle it becomes.  If you won't embezzle funds at work, perhaps you'll shade an expense report or tax deduction.  Because he never sinned, Jesus faced sin and temptation we know nothing about.   And so he knows your temptations, your pain, your suffering, your disappointments, your problems and questions and dilemmas.  He knows them better than you do.  He sees them with the infinite insight only possessed by God himself.  He knows your hurting heart.  And he weeps.   Why do you need a God of such empathy today?  What temptations or trials are you battling this morning?  Name them, and give them intentionally to Jesus.  Tell him that you are placing your problem in his hands.  Know that "nothing is impossible with God" (Luke 1:37).  Claim the biblical fact: "greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world" (1 John 4:4).  Rejoice in the truth that you can "do all things through Christ who gives you strength" (Philippians 4:13).   Some scientists believe that it takes light 156 billion years to cross the universe.  Scripture says that God measures all of that in the palm of his hand (Isaiah 40:12).  Now, what's your problem?  _____________________________   The Center for Informed Faith is sponsoring a Bible study tour of Israel February 21-March 2, 2010.  The "In His Steps" tour brings Scripture alive as it traces the steps of Jesus and his early followers through the Holy Land.  Sites include Nazareth, Bethlehem, the Sea of Galilee, Capernaum, the Jordan River, Jerusalem, Caesarea, and other sacred places.  This walk through biblical history and culture will deepen your faith and understanding of Scripture as Dr. Denison explores the historical and spiritual background of each site and Dr. Mike Fanning discusses its archaeological significance.  A $300 per- person deposit is due by November 20, 2009 to insure a spot on the tour.  Inquiries after that date will be filled on a space-available basis only. All monies paid before the December 20 final payment date are fully refundable except for a $100 cancellation fee per person. For more information, please visit www.InformedFaith.com. Copyright © 2009, Center for Informed Faith. All rights reserved. Read previous essays

Nubs the Miracle Dog

Great story!

http://www.pawnation.com/2009/11/03/nubs-the-true-story-of-a-mutt-a-marine-and-a-miracle/?icid=main|main|dl3|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pawnation.com%2F2009%2F11%2F03%2Fnubs-the-true-story-of-a-mutt-a-marine-and-a-miracle%2F