Cash for Clunkers is a clunker

Is it just me, or is there something very, very wrong with the "cash for clunkers" mentality? Destroying working cars is a bizarre 180 on the depression-era approach of scrimping, saving, and making do with what you have. Giving people money that is not their own to encourage them to take out loans for cars they don't really need is even more wacko. Now that we have proof based on simple engineering calculations (which anyone could have surmised) that it is actually more harmful to the environment to produce a new car than to keep driving an old one, there is no good reason imaginable for this program. I'll keep driving my two clunkers (combined age of 27 years) as long as they will keep going. I have no car payments, so I tolerate the inevitable repair bills. As a bonus, my car tags are really cheap. Of course I understand the theory that this will kickstart the economy, but what happens in a few months? Even if the economy does pick up in general, the auto industry will be in a pickle because everyone already bought their new cars, and loan defaults will probably skyrocket - I don't imagine the dealers are being really picky about who they sell to right now. I hope the health care package includes ulcer treatment; I think I'll need it.

Health Insurance or Health Care?

Congress is all wrapped up trying to solve the wrong problem right now. "Health insurance for everyone!" is the cry as the debate rages on in Washington and across the nation. What we need is health CARE for everyone - a much different proposition. The problem is that we have become secularized to the point that the federal government is assuming roles that used to be performed by family and church. In the great Chicago fire, not one dime of federal money was spent to assist. None was ever expected. No one suggested impeaching the president because he didn't respond fast enough. No one imagined that as a role for the federal government. Now it's expected to fix every little scrape and bruise for everyone in the whole country. The wrong people are in charge of health care: money-grubbers and financial wizards who are focused on dollars instead of patients. We think it's normal to have giant health-care corporations. That's not normal, it's sickening. Hospitals should be non-profit, Christ-centered, people-oriented havens where love and health care are dispensed in equal measure. A trip to the doctor should involve questions like "what's going on in your life?" as a regular and normal part of the examination. The only people who really benefit from health insurance are the insurance companies. There was a time in our existence as a nation when no one had health insurance. Doctor fees were reasonable, treatment was much more careful and specific, drug companies were not in cut-throat competition to push out the latest copycat drug that they could charge outrageously for, and when a family faced medical expenses they could not afford, friends, family, and church gathered their resources to help. I believe that is much closer to the way God intends for us to live than anything being proposed in Washington.

Luke 10:27

"...'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"

Energy Policy as Religion

I was doing some research to guide my thinking about the current Energy bill before Congress, H.R. 2454, known formally as "American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009." I thought I was on to something useful in the form of a government-wide research program report from the United States Global Change Research Program. ("The USGCRP began as a presidential initiative in 1989 and was mandated by Congress in the Global Change Research Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-606)...") Sadly mistaken was I, as Yoda might say. In Washington, it seems that all responsible scientific inquiry has been thrown, nay catapulted violently, out the window. The particular report I just referred to is a vigorous defense of the human-induced global warming hypothesis, combined with an undisguised partisan diatribe against the opposing view. Your tax dollars at work. There are plenty of alternative viewpoints. For example, see the U.S Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works minority page here.

My personal view is that our Creator, the Lord God, has created the world and its environment for the benefit of his special creation, namely us. We have a very serious responsibility to use resources wisely and in a way that demonstrates our love for our Creator and utmost respect for His creation. Sadly, many people in the world have become worshipers of creation rather than worshipers of the Creator. My free-thinking, tolerant liberal friends, for example, can't seem to tolerate the idea that the climate might actually change (doesn't it do that anyway?). They keep changing the terminology on us. When (and why) did we switch from "global warming" to "climate change" as the name of the evil thing. I think God gave us oil reserves to use wisely, and so we should. The current idea that we should replace them with solar and wind is techologically, economically, and environmentally unsound. I recently calculated the area of solar cells needed to power my medium-sized town, population around 40,000. We would need about 1 square mile of panels to replace the grid. That's one square mile of sun not falling on the ground. Talk about environmental and economic impact. Wind farms are at least as bad- very costly and also harmful to the environment through low-frequency noise, bird injury, and airstream deflection. We should conserve energy (waste not, want not my parents always taught), but we need not be afraid to use it if it provides a benefit. Unmasked, "green" is a religion, not a science. It is idol worship, the idol being planet earth.

Exodus 20: 3-4

3 "You shall have no other gods before me.

4 "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Freedom of Choice Act

The so-called Freedom of Choice Act is a horrible attempt to sweep away all laws aimed at protecting innocent human life in the womb. Barack Hussein Obama has promised to sign it (thereby legalizing the murder of babies at taxpayer expense) as soon as he takes office. Here's a link to keep track of the Senate version:

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-s1173/show

and here's a link to the House version:

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-h1964/show

Freedom

Thanks to Kevin Webb, preaching at Lakeview Baptist Church in Auburn on Sunday, December 28, 2008, for this collection of verses from the Gospel of John. The sermon topic was the freedom we have in Christ. Not freedom to do as we please, but freedom from being enslaved to sin, so that we are free to do the will of God, and to receive the blessing of eternal life.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

John 6:35 Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. "

John 7:37-38 ...Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."

John 10:27-30 Jesus answered, "...My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. I and the Father are one."

John 11:25-26 Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die...."

John 12:44-46 Then Jesus cried out, "When a man believes in me, he does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. When he looks at me, he sees the one who sent me. I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness. "

John 12:49-50 "...For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it. I know that His command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say."

John 14:6 Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. "

High Resolution, Bye Resolution

In my college days, we invited each other over to listen to our favorite music on giant speakers hooked up to tech'ed-out stereos. The more, the merrier. The acceptable sources were vinyl records or reel-to-reel tape. We got fired up about hearing the highs ("hear that high-hat cymbal crash !") and feeling the lows rattle our bones. This was a shared experience, although usually the guys got the best seats, nearest the stereo "sweet spot." The girls were usually not as enthusiastic anyway, so they didn't mind being pushed to the side a little. We were careful to make sure the speakers were hooked up right so we didn't get a phasing disaster. On a good night with good equipment, we admired the lack of 60-cycle hum, high-end hiss, pops and clicks, and all the other analog distractions that could dampen our listening pleasure. Some geeks got into 4-channel surround, but that was way out for most of us. We dreamed up all kinds of technological developments - multichannel surround, walls full of individual speakers for each instrument, direct-digital recording.

What we never dreamed of was mp3.

If someone had told us that the next generation would be listening to their music through individual earbuds as small as a pea, using compression to purposely ruin the audio quality and dynamic range, we would have reeled with laughter. But apparently, portability trumps quality. Another case in point: telephones. My generation still clings to their "home phones" or "land lines" as we ex-sailors (well, OK, I know some ex-sailors) like to call them, even though we have become just as dependent upon our wireless devices as are the younger generation. This generation of college students will likely see no need for home phones when they graduate and settle into homes. But there is a catch. The reason we older folks like our land lines is because we know something the kids don't (and don't really care about that much): the voice quality is better, unless you are one of the three people left whose wireless service is from Sprint. There are very simple technological reasons for this, but the bottom line is that for those really, really important conversations, especially with older relatives, I want the absolute best connection I can get, and that is still a land line. The "providers" (aka the telephone companies) measure this numerically as QoS, which stands for quality of service. They use specific voice-encoding methods to trade off coverage for sound quality, cost, and a host of other stuff. I switched from Sprint to Verizon for the coverage, but quickly discovered I had suffered a major drop in QoS. But guess what? - I stayed with Verizon, proving that, even for me, portability trumps quality. Worldwide, voice service is a break-even, no-growth business for all the wireless companies. They make their money from text messaging (it costs them next to nothing to provide, and they charge oodles for it) and 3G services, like music & video downloads. Guess who does all that? Certainly not folks my age! (Yes, people actually do pay for ringtones. I still can't believe it.)

So.....right now, the big thing is home theater. Get the biggest monster high-definition monitor, subscribe to the high-def channels, get BluRay....get the picture? I'll bet in one generation it will all be gone, replaced by kids watching compressed videos downloaded on-the-go to their low-res wireless terminals, oblivious to what they are missing. We old folks will be snickering while we watch The Godfather, re-released on BluRay, on our 80-inch widescreens. If we get lucky, maybe we will be able to get the soundtrack on a vinyl LP on eBay and invite some friends over to listen to it with us on our big stereo with awesome speakers.

Christmas lights

I have been promising Tammy I would put up outdoor Christmas lights for years. I finally did it this year, but not without trepidation, a la Chevy Chase in Christmas Vacation. We have an older house with very limited electrical circuits, and no outside receptacles. After consulting with a relative who is an electrician, I was somewhat encouraged to learn that I could legally (though not necessarily safely) use my outside light fixutres as receptacles. On a nice day recently I went to the hardware store, where I sifted through the seemingly infinite variety of lights - LED, rope, mini, crystal, etc. to find just the right assortment. I wanted to make a refined, upscale statement, to the effect of "yes, your neighbors are putting up lights, but don't worry - we're NOT the goobers who design an entire outdoor panorama with flying Santas that attracts thousands of people a night and makes it onto Youtube. We are much more gracious and refined than that. We know this isn't that type of neighborhood." But then I realized how cheap they are. I brought home 1500 lights for our little front yard. I also got three 50-foot extension cords, adapters to convert light fixtures to receptacles, GFI multi-tap outlets, a timer, and....oh, my...I went kind of crazy. But on the bright side, the nice man in Home Depot offered me $25 off my purchase if I opened a store account. I figured hey, I'll save money AND I don't have to tell Tammy how much I spent....right now. The most fun purchase was the cable tacker tool, which costs $20. It's a staple gun with a channel in the center which makes it easy to staple light cords, using special staples. Anyway, I got the lights strung along the split-rail fence, the eaves, and various other structures. We got out the lighted, animated buck (gift from Tammy's Mom & Dad) and hooked him up too. From a certain angle he looks like he's grazing on the multi-colored lighted wreath on the cross-shaped flower hanger, but the theological implications are not intentional. I was extremely nervous about flicking on the outside light switch that operates the whole thing, but it went smoothly, and even seems to work fine (so far) after a heavy rain. I haven't told Tammy about the 150-light multi-colored, 16-function light set I bought to decorate the shed. That's my surprise for next week. I wonder if there's a 12-step program for holiday light addiction.