text:
Ministry Today proudly presents Greenelines, a new blog from Dr. Steve Greene.
Dr. Greene writes on a wide range of topics important to leaders, church administrators and young leaders in development.
He has lead business organizations, served as a dean of a college of business and lead as a senior pastor. Greene's primary focus is to equip the leaders of saints.
Read Greenelines5 Steps to Take Before Beginning to Plant a Church
Pastors, if you're serious about being led to plant a church, make sure you weigh these important factors before you begin the process.
The Body of Christ Requires a Multicultural Society
Find out why Ray Chang, senior pastor of Ambassador Church in Brea, Calif., says racial and cultural differences must not keep us from empowering our brothers and sisters in Christ.
How to Survive Going From Awesome to Awful
It's difficult to please everyone all of the time. Here is some advice for the times when people do a complete 360-degree turn about their feelings for you and your work.
Why Didn't Jesus Do More?
Jesus' scope of ministry was incredibly narrow, but He meant it to be that way. Why is it difficult for churches to pattern their ministry after His?
What Does Authentic Leadership Really Look Like?
As a leader, how do you change from a top-down management style to one that will allow authentic leadership without losing credibility? Pastor Kim Martinez offers some insight.
John Blanchard: NCFIC's Findings 'Severely Misguided'
The senior pastor of Rock Church International says results of a recent study that revealed youth groups are to blame for the high dropout rate of young adults in church is simply erroneous. Read Pastor Blanchard's rebuttal to the claim.
What Does It Mean to Optimize Ministry?
Filmmaker and media consultant Phil Cooke recently sat down with Sam Smith of Medical Ministry International, an organization making a huge impact on the poor around the world. Find out what Smith had to say.
8 Reasons Believers Give to Your Church
Rick Warren says he's against fundraising but in favor of teaching people to give. Here are some ways they're motivated to do so.
Is Intentional Neglect Necessarily Bad for a Church?
As much as churches would like to focus on all ministries, it sometimes isn't possible. Pastor Artie Davis suggests what to do for church growth.
5 Firewalls Needed to Resist Sexual Sin
Lust is one of Satan's strongest tools against believers. Joseph Mattera says ministry leaders are not immune and gives suggestions on what weapons to use to fight the enemy.
Kyle Searcy: Birthing a Church 101
For pastor Kyle Searcy, planting a new church was like waiting for his first child to be born. Find out how exhilarating the experience was.
20 Ways A Pastor Can Weather a Storm
Pastors, there certainly will be times when you feel like your ministry is caving in around you. Here are some suggestions to keep Satan off your back.
7 Deadly Thoughts of Leaders
The warning signs are there. See how failure to stop these thoughts could result in great harm.
10 Commandments for Leading Church Volunteers
Leading a group of church volunteers can present challenges. Here are some tips to overcome them.
Leaders Who Declare Themselves as 'God's Anointed' Abuse the Flock
Do you know of any church leaders who act as if they are untouchable? Would you call them out for doing so?
Was Jesus Likeable, or Did He Care About That?
The world's hatred for Jesus was theological, not sociological. Should we care what the world thinks?
Youth Groups Driving Christian Teens to Abandon Faith
A new study might reveal why a majority of Christian teens abandon their faith upon high school graduation. Fifty-five percent of American Christians are concerned with modern youth ministry.
5 Assumptions That Could Destroy Your Volunteer Youth Program
Are you being a great steward of your volunteers' time? Here is some helpful instruction.
5 Suggestions for When People Leave Your Church
Not everything you do is going to please all the members of your congregation. How do you deal when people leave your church?
3 Reasons to Believe in Pastors
For those who have become highly critical of pastors, you might want to cut them a break. They're not perfect, and here are three reasons to have confidence in them.
3 Business Books All Pastors Should Read
Should pastors read secular books? Here are some that Thom Rainer, president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources, recommends.
Who Is Responsible for the Pastor's Joy?
October is Pastor Appreciation Month. Have you felt appreciation from your congregation?
Multisite Kidmin: Launching Your First Campus
Launching a multisite church campus can be daunting. Here are some strategies for setting up your kids' ministry.
7 Reasons You Should Develop More Leaders Now
Rick Warren says that in order to fulfill the Great Commission, we have to mobilize every member for ministry. Here are some lessons for doing that.
Geoff Surratt: Why Pastors Crumble
Pastor Geoff Surratt offers a guide for healthy ministry that reminds people your role—your only role—is to point followers to Jesus.
What Preachers Want Most and Pray for Hardest
It isn't rare for a pastor to get discouraged when he doesn't see fruit from his labor. Find out why pastor Joe McKeever says not to get discouraged—your time is coming.
5 Self-Truths to Realize to Become a Better Pastor
They may be painful to come to grips with, but there are some staunch realities that come with being a pastor. Here are some things to take to heart.
8 Ways Leaders Open Themselves Up to Spiritual Attack
Do you sometimes take the enemy lightly, or are you always leery of his cunning little tricks? Here are some things to watch out for.
How to Avoid Wasting Time in Staff Meetings
Staff meetings do not have to be a necessary evil. Here's how they can be productive.
How Authority Breeds Influence
Are you thinking of ways to gain more authority, or are you prayerfully discerning what God would have you do with the authority you have already been given?
Perry Noble: You Asked for It
Most don't want to know what happened to the goat in Leviticus, they want to know if God is real and if the Bible can be trusted. Find out what sermon topics may of interest to the unchurched.
Is Structure Removing Faith From Church?
Policies help build systems and processes that meet the demands of a growing church. But are we replacing an utter dependence on God with them?
How to Reach Those We Haven't Reached Before
It may not be well received by some, but stepping outside the box to reach the lost could work wonders. Here's one example that did for Pastor Hal Seed.
Dan Reiland: Leadership and Pressure
Sometimes it's lonely at the top, and the pressures can be intense and overwhelming. Pastor Dan Reiland says you can handle them your way or God's way—it's your choice.
The Biggest Hindrance to Your Life and Ministry
Do you have a problem with insecurity? Find out why you might be missing out on some opportunities due to shyness or an introverted personality.
Helping Your Ministry Succeed Without You
Keeping in mind that we are all on the same team—the team of Jesus Christ—if you were in the position of leaving your ministry, how would you pass the baton to your successor?
7 Reasons Your Church Needs to Go on a Diet
Busyness diets are not always easy or pleasant. However, LifeWay's Thom Rainer says they can make the difference between a simply busy church and a fruitful church.
Why Are Men Leaving the Church?
Is your church environment conducive for nurturing men? Here are some things men are desperately searching for in their church experience.
A Lost Art: The Ministry of Encouragement
Encouragement is a biblical imperative. Find out from pastor Geoff Surratt why we are confusing it with the process of networking.
Rick Warren: 8 Acts of a Healthy, Growing Church
Pastor Rick Warren says that if we echo the actions of the early church, we can expect God's blessing on our church. Find out what characteristics of the early church we must mimic.
Pastors, How About Less Inspiration and More Reality?
Author and media consultant Phil Cooke explains why the Bible is focused more on reality and why people need pastors to be direct.
Research: Protestants Increase Involvement in Social Justice
Many Christians believe they can't preach Jesus and not care about justice or, conversely, that they can't have true justice without pointing people toward Jesus the Just. Find out why the numbers seem to show that more churches are catching that mission.
Joe McKeever: The Church Membership in the Last Days
In these End Times, we must be prepared to deal with the presence of ungodly people in the mix at church. Pastor Joe McKeever explores what else the church will be forced to deal with.
8 Commitments for Small Group Leaders
Small group leaders have a tremendous responsibility. Find out what kind of example they should set for their members.
The 6 W's of Men's Discipleship
There are many elements to effective discipleship. Steve Murrell, one of the founding pastors of Victory Manila in the Philippines, explores them.
10 Reasons Why Church Leaders Should Continue Their Education
Pastor or church leader, have you considered continuing your education? Chuck Lawless, professor of evangelism and missions and dean of graduate studies at Southeastern Seminary, gives many good reasons why you should.
Why So Many Pastors Are Leaving the Ministry—and How to Stop It
Mark Brewer suddenly found himself with a new calling after dealing with numerous church leaders who left the ministry in frustration. Find out what his Ministry Lab is all about.
3 Things We Can Learn From Patch Adams
The movie Patch Adams is an inspiring, feel-good film starring Robin Williams. The real Patch Adams, however, is someone whose Christ-like character most people should aspire to emulate.
5 Ways to Boost Youth Ministry Teen Morale
When teens know they are loved, they will feel like they belong. When they feel like they belong, they'll be more open to hearing the Good News.
Ministry Life
- 5 Reasons Why Pastors Have Guest Blindness
- How to Defuse a Youth Ministry Bomb
- 5 Commitments That Propel and Sustain a Thriving Small Group Ministry
- 5 Reasons People Aren't Volunteering at Your Church
- 10 Questions First-Time Church Guests Might Ask
- 15 Concepts to Make Sure No Man in Your Church Gets Left Behind
- Where Is the Great Disconnect?
- 5 Thoughts About Church Memorials
- 3 Decisions a Pastor Can Make to Help His Family
- Against the Odds, This Incredible Love Story Has Persevered For 75 Years
Ministry Leadership
- The One Thing That Holds Most Leaders Back
- Only God: A Pastor's Confession
- Ron Phillips: The Cost of Grace
- 3 Church Lessons From a Jigsaw Puzzle
- Is it Possible to Overpay a Pastor?
- The Good News and Bad News of Kingdom Economics
- 10 Things a Pastor Doesn't Like to Hear Right After His Sermon
- 7 Signs You Are Suffering From Mission Drift
- Those Tiny Vignettes We May Overlook in Scripture
- 7 Ways to Successfully Lead Change
Ministry Facilities
- Does Your Church Really Need a Bigger Building?
- Impact Ministry: The More-With-Less Church
- The Digital Gospel Goes Global
- Prayerful Consideration: To Build or Not to Build
- Stories of Transformation: Crossroads Christian Fellowship Improves Communication
- Century-old Nazarene Publishing House to Close
- How Your Church Can Get an Internet TV Channel
- 3 Reasons for Not Using a Tablet for Speaking Notes
- 15 Common Church Facility Issues
- Greg Atkinson: The Most Beautiful Churches in the World
Ministry Outreach
- 10 Ways to Read Your Community
- Attention Apostolic Leaders: Join the Call to USCAL
- Where Do You Start When You Want to Get Your Church Unstuck?
- 7 Principles for Church Planting According to the New Testament Pattern
- Do You Dare Audit Your Church's Communication Strategy?
- The 10 Most Influential Churches of the Last Century
- Scriptural Discipleship: Maturity is the Goal
- Why 'a Cup of Water' Can Mean So Much
- Where is the Miracle Healing in the US?
- 6 Traits of Effective Missions Programs Guaranteed to Impact the Future
- How Long Could You Stay in Ministry Without God?
- Here's Some Hard Truths About Church Culture
- Buck the Culture By Reinventing Yourself
- Spiritual Maturity Reaches Way Beyond Salvation
- 10 Ways to Make Visitors Feel Welcome
- Samuel Rodriguez: Lessons From 2012 Election
- When Our Theology Stifles Our Compassion
- 13 Modern Challenges to Awakening and Revival
- Multisite Churches : Come and Get, or Come and Give?
- Did You Miss This in the News?
Charisma News
- Ben Carson: Being Gay Is 'Absolutely' a Choice
- WATCH: Bold Tween Confronts Obama for 'Downright Hatred of America'
- WATCH: Spoken Words Artist Exposes Lies of Anti-Depression Industry
- Healing the Racial Divide Through Education
- Christian Florist Refuses to 'Sell' Her God-Given Freedom in Gay Flap
- An Open Letter to Russell Brand on the Detriments of Pornography
- Christian-Owned Bakery Shuts Down After Gay Wedding Cake Controversy
- This Retailer Wouldn't Let Customers Use the Words 'Jesus Christ'
- Evangelist Greg Laurie Shares What Scares Him About America's Future
- Mr. President, I'm Afraid You're Confused About Islamic Extremism


text:
ESPN.com: AFC North | [Print without images] |
"Cleveland Browns general manager George Kokinis is no longer actively involved with the organization. In response to rumors and reports that Kokinis was escorted out of the building today, the Browns deny those reports. In the interest of protecting the parties involved we will withhold further comment."

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Honda Ridgeline License Plates
To make your Honda Ridgeline unique, you might be required to have it tailor made to as to reflect on your personality. You do not have to go all out, spending a lot of money customizing your car, but you can opt to go with simple accessories like having license plates and frames mounted onto the back and front of your car. These are accessories that are very elegant and will attract a lot of attention to your car depending on the designs that you have chosen. There is a wide range of Honda Ridgeline license plates and frames at CARiD and if chosen properly, they will bring out your driving attitude. Since CARiD is an online shop, you will not be required to leave the comfort of your own home or office as you will order from there and have it delivered to your door step. They have in stock products from the most reputable brands in the industry and you will get to choose from brands like Auto Gold, DWD, WeatherTech, License 2 Bling and Defenderworx.
With such a huge range of these products to choose from, you can decide to settle for the simple yet classic plates or even go all out and have the Swarovski encrusted plates which sparkle because of their numerous crystals. The Auto Gold brand is known for having the most long lasting license plates and frames and if you are looking to avoid purchasing every now and then the Honda Ridgeline license plates then you should settle for this option because their products are made of stainless steel. The DWD brand is well known for its versatility while the Weather Tech brand is known for its practicality. If you are looking for a shiny plate and frame, then the License 2 Bling option will be the most suitable because it has the Swarovski encrusted plates which sparkle because of the numerous crystals.
- Covercraft® WeatherShield™ HP Two-Tone Custom Car Coverfrom $515.26 - $609.36# 11675242
- Thule® Hyper™ XL Cargo Box$959.95# 9221768
- # 12788954
- License FramesHonda Ridgeline
| Posted by Yesica | (Richmond, CA)
These look great on my Honda Ridgeline and they're very easy to install.
- Popular Ridgeline Part Numbers
- Honda Ridgeline Models
- Ridgeline DX License Plates
- Ridgeline EX-L License Plates
- Ridgeline LX License Plates
- Ridgeline RT License Plates
- Ridgeline RTL License Plates
- Ridgeline RTS License Plates
- Ridgeline RTX License Plates
- Ridgeline SE License Plates
- Ridgeline Sport License Plates
- Ridgeline Touring License Plates
- Ridgeline VP License Plates


text:
Despite their virtues, many conservative Republicans have an unfortunate habit of picking on the weak and disadvantaged, slandering the people least able to fight back. We saw a glimpse of this callousness in Mitt Romney's disparagement of the "47 percent" who are "takers" living off the hard-working "makers." The newly empowered GOP majority in Congress is going down the same road—targeting the millions of sick or injured Americans who receive Social Security disability payments.
This is a favorite old canard of self-righteous right-wingers. They label these unfortunate people as shiftless and suggest none too subtly that many are faking their injuries and illnesses. The GOP has been pushing this cold-hearted slander for at least thirty-five years, ever since the glorious reign of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s (who remembers Reagan's imaginary "Welfare Queen" who drove to pick up her welfare check in a Cadillac?).
McConnell-Boehner Republicans are now reviving the Gipper's big lie, claiming the Social Security system is in crisis because of swollen disability benefits. Allegedly to save the system, these so-called fiscal conservatives intend to cut benefits and throw out those supposedly able-bodied slackers. Once again, their facts are bogus. Never mind, their story line is concocted to arouse anti-government resentment among people who are themselves strapped for income.
This is why we need "bleeding-heart liberals"—politicians who will stand up to defend the scorned and tell the truth about the Republicans' propaganda. This season, the country has two tough-minded senators assuming that role—Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Sanders is ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and Brown is ranking member of the Finance Committee's subcommittee on Social Security. They will be heard in Washington. Given broad public support, they can smash Mitch McConnell's plot to disable and maybe destroy Social Security.
Some quick facts Senator Brown and Senator Sanders have put before their Republican colleagues: disability insurance goes to nearly 11 million Americans, including more than 2 million veterans and 1.8 million children. Like Social Security retirement, this is an insurance program that workers have paid into with their FICA deductions. Nobody gets rich on disability. The average benefit is less than $1,200 a month, and for 30 percent of beneficiaries that is their entire income. The GOP's ploy, an accounting rule change already adopted by House Republicans, would set up the disability system for a 19 percent reduction in benefit payments, casting millions into official poverty status.
The legendary fraud that Republicans claim to bemoan is itself a giant lie. The Government Accounting Office and the Social Security's own inspector general have both found that fraud in this program is less than 1 percent. Compare that to fraud committed by Pentagon contractors, by too-big-to-fail bankers, by auto companies concealing deadly flaws in cars, by elected politicians or by newspaper reporters.
Both Sanders and Brown make the same accusation. The alleged problem with disability funding, Senator Sanders said, is a "manufactured crisis which is part of the long-term Republican agenda of trying to cut Social Security." Senator Brown said, "Attacking disability insurance is only the first salvo in the Republicans' plan to attack social insurance and make harmful cuts to Social Security." The GOP created a false shortfall for disability benefits by blocking an accounting reallocation that is so routine it has been made eleven times in the past under presidents Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan and Clinton.
But here is my question for the Washington press corps. Why aren't reporters writing about this? Why don't they examine the Brown and Sanders analysis and determine if their accusations are correct? Instead of writing endless dope stories about a presidential campaign in 2016 and what might happen a year from now, shouldn't the news media be alerting people to the fight over Social Security the GOP is starting in early 2015?
The dysfunction of Washington involves the failure of major media to examine the gritty politics of issues that truly matter to citizens. Political reporters typically find these subjects boring, and reporters who cover the candidates and campaign usually don't know that much about how government really works. Both political parties work on warping the subjects by feeding pre-tested clichés and avoiding hot-button issues. The messaging thus reduces campaigns to empty slogans and opacque generalities.
Count up all the thumb-sucker articles you have read about wannabe Republicans touring Iowa. Then count how many stories you saw about the GOP plot to gut Social Security. The answer, I suspect, is none. The media failure pretty much guarantees the vapid content of campaigns and silly debates over whose slogan is more misleading. Reporters are safe to ignore substantive governing issues (except maybe going to war in the Ukraine or bombing Iran), but governing issues are what actual people mostly care about most.
I am reminded of an earlier era when the press was less manipulated by political handlers and reporters were more aggressive about breaking stories without permission from their official sources.
Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50!
When Ronald Reagan came to town back in 1981, he ran into an unexpected media buzzsaw named Spencer Rich, who was a colleague of mine at The Washington Post. A fellow Post editor dubbed Spencer Rich "the Ferret" because Spencer was a relentless digger of facts who repeatedly drove the Reagan White House nuts. His stories revealed insider details of what programs the new president intended to launch or old programs he planned to destroy. Spencer wasn't really interested in the political horse race, but he understood the substance of government's many parts and he did care about how government functioned. As it happens, so do ordinary citizens.
One of Spencer's front-page exclusives revealed the Gipper's plan to whack Social Security Disability Insurance. Republicans, he discovered, planned to denounce the liberal program as a scandal of fraud and waste. A fire storm of controversy erupted after his story appeared. The White House first denied it. Then the White House confirmed the story but said the facts were wrong. On the third or fourth day, the White House announced the program was snuffed.
This is what makes a free press so valuable to democracy—that is, if the reporters are truly free. I yearn to see a reporter with the courage to call out liars.
Read Next: Obama Is Leading the Way Toward Economic Catastrophe
Some white politicians in the state of Alabama evidently want to reopen the Civil War, only this time their "lost cause" is not defending slavery but prohibiting gay marriage. The chief justice of Alabama's state Supreme Court, Roy "Ten Commandments" Moore, has ordered county judges to ignore the ruling of a US federal judge and refuse to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Fifty-two of the state's sixty-seven counties obeyed his order.
This is last-ditch resistance against social progress and sure to fail. But it is not a laughing matter. It begs a crucial question that must be asked of all those ambitious candidates who want to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. Which side are you on?
I suggest political reporters of the national press corps—so eager to start covering the horse race twenty-two months before the election—should find out where these guys stand. Do people like Scott Walker of Wisconsin or Bobby Jindal of Louisiana or Lindsay Graham of South Carolina embrace the South's hoary doctrine of states' rights on gay marriage? Or do they accept the primacy of federal law and the US Supreme Court in this matter? If reporters don't ask the question, the press fails its duty to the public.
We do not need another war of rebellion to settle the issue. The press can simply revive President Lincoln's loyalty oath, the one required of Southern renegades seeking a pardon during the Civil War. Reporters should pin down the GOP wannabes, one by one. In the matter of gay marriage, do you promise to "faithfully support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and the union of the states thereunder?"
Tell the truth, no weasel-wording allowed. We know of course that the Republicans are pretty much in agreement in opposing gay marriage. If there are any supporters of gay marriage in their ranks, they apparently keep it to themselves.
But that's not the question. The question is: Will they accept the law and enforce it if elected president? They should declare themselves now. Before it is too late.
Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50!
The last-ditch opponents of gay rights who like Chief Justice Moore claim the Ten Commandments as higher legal authority will argue that the US Supreme Court has not yet made a final ruling on the issue. Their point is technically correct but irrelevant. Even Justice Clarence Thomas—Mr. Last Ditch himself on the Supreme Court—has bitterly conceded that his colleagues are going to decide shortly in favor of upholding the constitutional rights of gays.
In the meantime, we should all honor those fifteen probate judges in Alabama who told their state's chief justice to suck an egg. Let the joyous weddings begin.
Read Next: William Greider on Obama's path toward economic catastrophe
Disregard the happy talk from the Obama White House. The stagnant global economy remains at the precipice of something worse unfolding—full-blown deflation. And the so-called recovery in the US economy remains shaky, despite good employment numbers. Here and abroad, the governing authorities seem to have forgotten the most basic nature of our situation. We live now in a globalized economy where one nation's cold can lead to another country's heart attack. Their ignorance is shocking, but also dangerous.
In fact, the US and other leading economies are beginning to mimic some of the same grave errors governments committed in the distant past, circa 1929, when spreading collapses of banks and financial markets morphed into the Great Depression. I am not predicting such a catastrophic outcome, not yet anyway. But the risk is present. The road to the Great Depression was paved with similarly myopic strategies. This president is not Herbert Hoover. But he might someday be remembered as Wrong-Way Obama.
The misdirection of government power suggests that many leaders don't believe things were changed that much by the breakdown of 2007. They are still looking backwards, complacently doing the same stuff that failed sixty and eighty years ago.
First, the United States finds itself once again attempting to be the "locomotive" that pulls the rest of the world out of the ditch. America has done this successfully many times in prior decades to help allies get well. The problem is, the American economy is now much weaker and more wobbly itself, deeply indebted after thirty years of trade deficits and costly wars. There's a lot less US excess to spread around.
Second, important trading partners—Japan, China, others in Asia—are employing a nasty trade strategy from the early thirties known as "beggar thy neighbor." They are weakening the value of their own currencies (and boosting the dollar's value) so their exports will be cheaper than competing American products. The US trade deficit is now rising steadily, especially in manufactured goods, and sure to worsen as other currencies weaken. That means losing good jobs and wages for Americans.
Clyde Prestowitz of the Economic Strategy Institute, a longtime critic of the lopsided trading system, observed: "The whole bloody world has somehow figured they are going to recover by selling exports to the US. While the world is depending on American demand, we are shipping more jobs and industry abroad but we can't keep it going. I fear we are going to keep playing this game because we think we can get away with it."
Prestowitz ticked off nations whose currencies have fallen in value—some as dramatically as 20 to 30 percent. They include Japan, China, Singapore, Australia, Canada and the European Central Bank. The ECB's motive is legitimate—reducing interest rates to provide economic stimulus and fend off deflation—but the economic consequences are the same—more downward pressure on US production and employment. Japan's currency manipulation cost 896,000 US jobs in 2013, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Third, President Obama appears oblivious to these changed circumstances. The evidence is his insistence that he wants to approve yet another free-trade agreement, this time with eleven other nations in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (some of which are gaming their currencies to increase their exports to America). The administration has made extravagant claims that this will create something like 650,000 new jobs in America. Similar promises were made before previous trade agreements, starting with NAFTA in 1993, and all proved bogus.
The Washington Post, a hearty advocate of free-trade agreements, blew a big hole in Obama's promise. Glenn Kessler, the Post's fact-checker, chased down the statistics and discovered that White House experts essentially made up the numbers themselves. It was what you call a "back-of-the-envelope" estimate, but this one was written on toilet paper. Kessler was quite harsh in his judgment. He concluded: "Our advice remains: be wary whenever a politician claims a policy will yield bountiful jobs. In this case, the correct number is zero, not 650,000, according to the very study used to calculate this number. Administration officials earn four Pinocchios for their fishy math."
Finally, Congress will be asked to approve this new TPP concoction, but many Democrats and some Republicans are resisting on the grounds that it does not include a serious provision for stopping these currency manipulations by other nations. Their real intention, I suspect, is to kill the TPP agreement, since they know other countries would walk away if that issue is included. I am for killing TPP myself. But there are crucial flaws in focusing on currency manipulations as the reason. For one thing, it would shrink still further the sovereignty of nation states (including the United States) to manage their own financial systems. Globalization has already crippled governing rights of people and transferred power to the multinational banks and corporations. The world doesn't need more of that.
Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50!
My more fundamental objection is that a far more important imperative at this hour is to generate worldwide recovery and that requires a cooperative agenda for shared relief and aggressive stimulus—not more dog fights between central banks and governments or rival political ideologies. The fundamental problem blocking recovery is the shortage of consumer demand (too many factories, too few customers) and over-bearing abundance of debt. A real program for recovery would have nations joining to confront those two in a big way.
First, bang on the creditors and governments to make them write off lots of debt, especially for folks who need it to survive. The United States did a little of this but not enough. Obama was more generous with guilty bankers than he was with the borrowers they swindled.
Second, create jobs—real jobs with real incomes for real people (not abstract estimates by economists). Governments and stores of private wealth must be coaxed or compelled to finance big-scale projects of many kinds, the projects that create real jobs, real incomes. The Federal Reserve should get credit for staving off collapse but its monetary stimulus did not succeed in generating a genuine recovery. Europe, now in more desperate straits, is attempting to mimic the Fed, but I expect it will not do any better. The financial guys caused this disaster but they have proved they are incapable of correcting their sins or healing the society. Obama, unfortunately, listened to the money guys. This is why I fear the president may get a "wrong-way Obama" judgment from history. Surrounded by Wall Street expertise and conventional political actors, he didn't understand the larger bonfire raging in the global economy or else was persuaded not to take it seriously.
The next president will have to begin the great task of understanding what went wrong in the global system and reformulating its rules and functions in profound ways. Otherwise, we may limp along like this for quite a long time. Or things could get worse.
Read Next: The recent release of data about the US trade deficit is bad news for Obama.
I have a legal question citizens of New York might wish to ponder. What is the difference between Sheldon Silver and Jamie Dimon? Representative Silver is speaker of the State Assembly in Albany, and federal prosecutors want to put him in prison for taking kickbacks for doing political favors. Dimon is CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the nation's largest bank, which has richly rewarded him for political manipulations that saved the megabank billions in regulatory fines for defrauding investors and saved fellow bankers from criminal prosecution.
Something about this comparison doesn't smell right.
"Shelly" Silver is accused of steering plaintiffs to two law firms who sue big companies in behalf of people injured by asbestos or other cancer-causing substances. He arranged state research money for a couple of nonprofit health projects that deal with such issues, In return, the indictment charges, Silver received $3 or $4 million spread over ten or fifteen years. As political corruption goes, this is pretty small beer.
Jamie Dimon, by contrast, is political nobility, a leader of the Wall Street gang that raped the nation (financially). Trillions were lost by millions of families in the mortgage-securities racket that brought down the US economy. Dimon's kickbacks were from his board of directors, grateful that he used his skill and influence to dodge the legal consequences.
Yet when it came time to punish financial wrongdoers, the scandal did not go before a grand jury. Dimon instead sent squads of corporate lawyers to negotiate with the government on how much the bank was willing to pay for its misdeeds (Dimon called them "mistakes"). When the negotiations stalled, Dimon traveled to Washington for a personal conversation with the attorney general. The final deal announced by Eric Holder was a bit fraudulent itself. Holder claimed to have won a record penalty of $13 billion, but lawyers who read the fine print and did the accounting said it was actually closer to $6 billion—a pittance compared to the horrendous damage Wall Street bankers profitably did to the nation.
The sordid mismatch of crime and punishment was displayed in the pages of The New York Times, though the newspaper seemed unaware of its contradiction. The Times editorial page demanded Representative Silver's immediate resignation, never mind the trial and jury verdict. US Attorney Preet Bharara accused Silver of holding "titanic political power." the Times wanted a prompt hanging. Silver did not resign but did agree to delegate leadership to senior assembly members on a temporary basis. "I hope I will be vindicated," he said.
Meanwhile, on the same day back in its business section, the Times was reporting that for his efforts Dimon would get "a sweeter pay package in 2015." The board of directors decided Dimon's total compensation would remain at $20 million and he would get $7.4 million in "easier-to-access cash" rather than restricted stock shares.
The business story said, "Among the directors, the people briefed on the matter said, Mr. Dimon has been bolstered by a widely held view that he took on a crucial role in JP Morgan's settlements with the federal authorities." The story said directors "see the government's extraction of money from the banking industry as driven more by a desire to take a tough line against Wall Street than any actual problems at the banks."
In other words, the boys at JPMorgan did not learn their lesson. They did not take the government's complaints seriously because they assume Washington was just putting on a show to appease angry citizens. After all, $6 billion is a mere asterisk on JPMorgan's balance sheet, although Dimon continues to whine in public about the unfairness of the government regulators.
In fact, the Morgan Chase directors may be right about the feds. Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone wrote a blistering critique of Holder's claim that criminal prosecutions still might be possible. The AG gave a tortured explanation of how difficult it is to pin down individual responsibility in corporations. "Responsibility remains so diffuse and top executives are so insulated," Holder told an NYU audience, "That any misconduct could again be considered more a symptom of the institution's culture than a result of the willful actions of any single individual."
Taibbi responded: "In other words, people don't commit crimes, corporate culture commits crimes!" Perhaps Sheldon Silver's lawyers should put the blame on New York political culture.
I should acknowledge my own bias in this matter. I have family (children and grandchildren) who live in Sheldon Silver's Assembly District 65 on the Lower East Side. They are not naïve and they oppose corruption. But they also see "Shelly" Silver as a pretty good guy. He plays hard ball in behalf of certain interests and issues, they know, but he also involves himself in stuff that matters to ordinary people, like defending rent-control apartments against the ever-encroaching grasp of the real-estate lobby.
Shelly Silver lives in their neighborhood, and not in grand style, contrary to the heated insinuations of editorial writers. During Hurricane Sandy, when power was out, trucks showed up around Grand Street, where people could recharge cell phones and laptops. Without really knowing, residents heard or just assumed that Representative Silver had something to do with that.
In the legislature, he pushed the gay rights legislation, but also the default speed limit of twenty-five miles per hour so old folks and joggers could cross broad streets without getting run over. He demanded more building space for the new downtown high school my grandson attends. Shelly legislated a school holiday for the Lunar New Year (2015 is the Year of the Sheep), so Chinese kids could stay home and celebrate with their families without being recorded as absent. These are small matters, but people notice and remember.
Farther south, Silver's district also includes the financial district. Like most New York politicians, Representative Silver attends to Wall Street too. But he is an old-school politician, and the tension between neighborhood life and powerful money interests is a very old conflict in New York politics, still very active in current events.
Silver's reputation as the powerful boss who looks out for the folks is a model descended from the olden days of the Tammany machine but also the great social reform movements that arose on the Lower East Side in the early twentieth century—the popular politics that eventually evolved into the liberal-labor agenda of the New Deal era.
Tammany Democrats used to speak unapologetically of "honest graft," which meant politicians could take care of the public interest and take care of their own interests without legal contradiction. Of course, many bandits hid gross corruption behind that logic. But determining criminal motivation is not as self-evident as righteous prosecutors assert. The overly zealous pursuit of bad guys might "criminalize" what is the standard practice of bartering and trading in everyday politics.
The US Attorney must have noticed, for example, that a lot of money changes hands in politics—big money given to politicians by private interests—and a lot of that money comes from Jamie Dimon's gang. These exchanges are called "campaign contributions" but that dodges the real question: What's being bought and sold? Is Jamie Dimon bartering private deals with our elected representatives over how public funds will be spent or which laws will be altered to benefit Dimon's bank? Of course he is. We just don't know what he is buying or selling.
The US Attorney for Lower Manhattan should convene a grand jury to explore these questions, because very little is ever revealed about the dark-side transactions. The FBI, as it sometimes does with criminals it has caught, should put a "wire" on some middle-level bankers and collect recorded glimpses of who's trading away public assets behind closed doors—deals more secretive than anything Shelly Silver engineered.
Of course, that kind of investigation won't happen. The corporate justices who control the Supreme Court would never allow it. Examining the private motives behind Wall Street's political manipulations would violate the free-speech rights of Jamie Dimon and his crowd. Money is speech, the Court says. Therefore, the more money that pours into the hands of politicians from the corporates the better our democracy will become. What a hoot.
Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50!
My essential question is this: Who gets to decide how public resources are going to be spent or which laws should be altered to satisfy certain private interests? Democracy promises (in theory) that the people have a right to participate in the decisions governing their lives.
But whatever the law and Constitution require, these decisions will in the end always be determined by people, mere mortals who may get things wrong and will always be influenced by self-interested motivations. That applies to elected representatives like Sheldon Silver. But it also applies to private bankers like Jamie Dimon, whose gang expends billions to buy members of Congress and high-level government appointees and to field thousands of lobbyists who help rewrite the laws for us to observe. Democracy's promise is still unfulfilled, but people are working on it.
In this imperfect world, I would rather have the Shelly Silvers decide things than the Jamie Dimons.
Read Next: Can Wall Street take down Big Pharma?
Here is a man-bites-dog story that might give comfort to those many Americans being gouged by the drug industry's larcenous prices. A Dallas hedge-fund operator named Kyle Bass who made a fortune attacking over-priced stocks now says he is going to attack Big Pharma for over-pricing drugs. Bass's announcement set financial industry bloggers aflutter because hedge funds are not usually known for public-spirited motives. Citizen Bass is in it for the money, of course. But he intends to do well himself by doing good for the rest of us.
His firm, Hayman Capital Management, won fame and fortune back in 2008 by "shorting" mortgage securities just before the crash. Bass recognized those packages of mortgage bonds would crash once investors realized the banks were peddling phony paper with false valuations. Now he wants to do roughly the same for fifteen pharmaceutical firms selling drugs based on phony patents.
"The companies that are expanding patents by simply changing the dosage or the way they are packaging something are going to get knee-capped," Bass boasted. This may make him rich all over again and fellow investors he recruits for Hayman Capital. But Bass added, "This is going to lower drug prices for Medicare and for everyone."
For industrial sectors like drugs, the mangled US patent system has become a well-known scandal—a sick joke in which lawyers and lobbyists get the last laugh. Through political manipulations in Congress, leading companies win the power to double or triple prices by extending their legal claims to exclusive production of widely prescribed and essential drugs. Normally, the patent expires after twenty years or so and generic substitutes come on the market with much cheaper prices.
Inventive capitalism finds ways to subvert this system. A drug company will reformulate a new version of the old drug and claim a new patent that renews their protection from competition. Or the big company essentially bribes or buys the smaller upstart rival that is threatening to upset its monopoly pricing. This is called "pay for delay"—a reverse patent settlement that gets challengers to postpone their intervention. These gambits are ostensibly legal, but an aggressive government would put a stop to them if it put the public interest ahead of drug profits.
Big, big money is at stake. Bass says the inflated stock prices of fifteen large drug companies reflect a combined capitalization of $450 billion. He wants to poke a hole in that balloon. Short-sellers like himself could reduce that by half, he thinks, as stock market investors begin to grasp that company profits are derived from fallacious patents. Hayman Capital intends to show them.
"We've dedicated half of our resources over the past six months to this," he told an investment conference in Oslo, Norway. "We are going to challenge and invalidate patents through the Inter Partes Review process…[and] we are not going to settle."
The IPR process was created in 2012 at the behest of big technology companies fighting off copy-cat producers in laborious and costly lawsuits. The new rules create a fast track for challenging dubious claims, instead of the court cases that can take years to resolve, postponing rulings and eroding profits in the meantime. Bass and possibly others have come to realize you don't have to be a drug company to use this new system to great advantage.
Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50!
Could Wall Street buccaneers force Big Pharma to clean up its act? Bass is not naming any corporate names or yet revealing his strategy. But he clearly is taking aim at a monstrous public injury. Just the other day, Peter Bach, a physician and director of health policy at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, had an op-ed in The New York Times bemoaning the pain and injury of outrageous drug prices for patients and healthcare providers.
Drug companies, Bach explained, not only suppress cheaper competitors but keep raising their own prices. In 2001, he said, Novartis charged $4,540 a month for a leukemia drug called Gleevec. Now it charges $8,488. Or drug companies simply buy up cheaper generic brands and raise their prices. Albendazole, a drug for parasitic infections, was approved in 1996 and sold for only $5.92 per day as recently as 2010. Three years later, the wholesale price was $119.
The Obama administration "reformed" the healthcare system to reduce costs but somehow managed to overlook drug prices. Of course, Europeans get the very same drugs, only much cheaper. As Bach cited, prescription drug prices in Europe are 50 percent cheaper than what Americans pay. The Novartis drug Gleevec sells here for $8,488, but costs $4,500 in Germany and only $3,300 in France.
But, hey, we Americans get to have a "free market," and they don't.
Read Next: The Republican governors thank you for your donation
The sordid business of closing out the do-nothing 113 Congress—giving the Wall Street bankers one more bite of the apple and a friendly kiss for the CIA torturers—has stained President Obama indelibly. We will never forget what he did and failed to do. He deserves our contempt. The president marginalized himself with his unreliable weakness.
The recent events in Washington are nonetheless clarifying. They tell us that the worst is yet to come. When McConnell-Boehner take charge of Congress in the New Year, the president will be standing with them on the wrong side of some fundamental issues, ready to make bad deals with the Republican wrecking crew.
In the past week, he lamely allowed the CIA to carry on as though the criminal behavior of torturers was merely a policy mistake. He called them "patriots." History will recognize this is a damaging lie that undermines our nation's values, not to mention our reputation.
Simultaneously, Obama collaborated in the piecemeal destruction of his own financial reform legislation. His White House advisers are no doubt surprised by the bitter objections, since they are Wall Street–trained themselves and think it is no big deal to give a regulatory break to JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and other malefactors of wealth. Besides, they explain, the president got more money for little children and the poor.
Obama will doubtless make other bad trade-offs in the final two years of his presidency, but he has already defined his own irrelevance. Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell will do the deal-making between them, joined by House Speaker John Boehner and a few old salty dogs from both parties. The president will be kept informed. At every step, he will tell himself this was the best he could get.
Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50!
The congressional showdown, however, has given us an exciting glimpse of what the future might look like if Representative Nancy Pelosi and Senator Elizabeth Warren lead the way for a liberal insurgency. Both stood up and fired back at the stink of what Obama and many Dems had accepted. Warren and Pelosi did not personally attack their party's doggedly passive president. But both essentially declared their independence from him. Their willingness to confront and counter the cynicism that passes for policy debate is a hopeful marker for larger change ahead.
Their independent-minded opposition could be the start of something big now that the Dem party is in the wilderness again, wondering why they aren't loved. Senator Warren has been trying to tell them for years. Pelosi is a team player who in the past went along with the Obama White House when she should have rebelled. Maybe the public will now hear more of her eloquent dissents. .
It's a starting point only. No one should imagine either Pelosi and Warren or other like-minded Democrats have an army ready to march and restore meaning to the Democratic party. What they do have, however, makes them potentially powerful. They have authenticity and sophisticated knowledge. In different ways, both know how the corrupted political system does great damage to American life. It makes them disgusted too.
Read Next: "Why President Obama Needs to Renew His Pledge for a Nuclear Free World"
Mitch McConnell, the soon-to-be anointed Senate majority leader, wants a "mulligan" on Obamacare, and he's counting on the Supreme Court to give him one. For those who are not golfers, a "mulligan" is getting a second chance when a duffer hits a lousy tee shot. In this case, McConnell means Republicans want to tear up the Affordable Care Act and rewrite it in their own terms. But the Republican-controlled Congress will not have the power to achieve this, so it wants the Supreme Court's right-wingers to do the dirty work for them.
"Who may ultimately take it down is the Supreme Court of the United States," McConnell told an audience of corporate CEOs assembled by Murdock's Wall Street Journal. In that event, McConnell explained, "I would assume that you could have a mulligan here, a major do-over of the whole thing."
His cynical expectations seem to confirm the illegitimate power alliance elected Republicans have fashioned with the supposedly non-political Supreme Court justices. But McConnell tucked an awkward message in his comments—an admission of his own weakness.
Forget his blustery campaign vows to destroy the ACA, which McConnell falsely characterized as an effort to "Europeanize" American healthcare (too bad that's not the case). McConnell is belatedly conceding the GOP still won't have the votes to break Senate filibusters or to override Obama vetoes in House or Senate. Has Mighty Mitch begun to mellow?
Throughout the Obama era, he starred as the belligerent Senator No, uncompromising and grimly effective. He and his party smeared Obama relentlessly, both the person and his policies, often with latent racial coding. But McConnell told the captains of industry the only hope for unraveling Obamacare depends upon Chief Justice John Roberts and the Right Wing Five.
The political landscape for 2015 is not about a nicer Mitch, but about the utter reversal of political priorities confronting the triumphant Republican party. To put it crudely, Mitch McConnell is like the dog who caught the bus he was chasing. What's he going to do with it? The reactionary factions in his backward-leaning party are eager for a grand ideological tear-down; but most folks are looking for shelter from the storm, not more chaos and upheaval.
I suspect Mitch McConnell recognizes this. That's why he wants the Supreme Court to step up and take the blame for dismantling Obamacare. That's why he is suggesting small-ball legislative tactics—unravel ACA one step at a time, repealing the medical devices tax or the thirty-hour-week coverage for small business workers or other unpopular provisions like the health-insurance tax and penalty. These issues might pose tough votes for Senate Democrats even if Obama intends to veto them.
McConnell's first problem, however, is persuading the "red hots" in his own party to slow down. In their overwrought opposition, House Republicans "repealed" Obamacare something like fifty times (a free vote for them, since they knew their negative measures were not going anywhere). Trouble is, Republicans fell in love with their own propaganda. People "hate" Obamacare, don't they? Isn't that why Republicans won their big victory? Surely, the populace will cheer when the GOP slays this dreaded socialist monster.
They are dangerously mistaken. The "smart politics" that won elections for Republicans could suddenly look like very dumb governing policy if McConnell and company actually go ahead and do what they promised to do. The first result will be a major crisis in government if the complicated wiring of the ACA is suddenly torn out. But the much larger political crisis will be the personal shock and injury experienced by many millions of American families who discover the government has just cancelled their health insurance. Likewise, the insurance industry would be in turmoil, with companies scurrying to protect themselves if the ACA's delicate framework of subsidies and insurance premiums is abruptly thrown out of balance.
Who would most likely be blamed for the pain and chaos? Republicans, I predict, whether they are the right-wing justices on the Roberts Court or the GOP majorities in House and Senate. McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner seem to assume that, if the Supreme Court disables Obamacare, that will force the need for new legislation and their new majority power can dictate the terms. They've got it backwards.
If the right-wingers provoke this national crisis, trying to reverse the legislative battle they lost five years ago, President Obama will have the high ground once again. He can explain what happened in the clearest terms: the McConnell Republicans or the Roberts Republicans on the Supreme Court did this to them. Yes, there are problems with the ACA that need to be fixed. But it was impossible to make ordinary corrections because Mighty Mitch always refused to cooperate and compromise.
Now the McConnell co-conspirators in Congress and the High Court want to throw the American people back to the wolves—the insurance industry and drug industry and other special interests that gouged or neglected very ill people before Obama's healthcare reforms stopped them from cherry-picking their customers. In fact, healthcare companies were treated quite generously by the ACA. Insurers were essentially given millions of new paying customers subsidized by the federal government. In exchange the companies had to abandon cruel practices like banning customers with pre-existing conditions.
I bumped into an old friend who happens to be an industry lobbyist and asked him: Who will get the political blame if the Roberts Court kills Obamacare? "The Supreme Court could turn the country upside down on this issue," he said. He loathes the ACA and knows its flaws, but said that if you are going to take something away from people, you better have something to replace it.
A victory for Mitch (or the Right-Wing Five on the Supreme Court) is basically a decision to restore the old healthcare system that profitably abused or ignored so many sick people and poor people. That political decision is for elected politicians, not jurists. If McConnell doesn't have the votes or the nerve to force the issue, the Supremes should keep hands off. Chief Justice John Roberts upheld the ACA's constitutionality two years ago and was bitterly denounced as a sellout by many right-wingers (though not by McConnell, who has been closely aligned with Supreme Court conservatives on its money-in-politics decisions). Now right-wingers are pushing Roberts to make up for his "error" by killing Obamacare on ridiculous grounds. McConnell has joined them.
This squeeze play could be fateful for the chief justice and his lasting reputation. As I wrote recently, he is flirting with an "impeach John Roberts" campaign if he cooperates with politicians like McConnell. Roberts is clearly sensitive to the accusations of political bias and has frequently objected. That's why it is so important for people to make loud complaints now and make sure Roberts hears them. Precious purists will object that this politicizes the Supreme Court, but it is already politicized. The deed was done by the Right-Wing Five and their Republican party.
Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50!
The new post-election landscape challenges another familiar political deformity—the passivity of the Democratic party. We can understand why the president is reluctant to aim critical comments at the Supreme Court. But why are other Democrats and allied groups so silent? If they fear the political fix is in at the Supreme Court, they should say so now, not wait until a decision that sets off the chaos and crisis. Deferring to the White House is not an excuse. Indeed, that is a familiar element of the party's decrepitude—hiding behind the president, failing to resist dumb politics from the White House.
This will sound naïve, but a modest first step toward Democratic revival should involve telling the truth a little more often about the party's intentions. The mess in healthcare reform is a ghastly example of why. The White House couldn't admit that Obama's ACA was really a copy-cat version of moderate Republican ideas. Republicans pretended Obama's plan was socialism. From these initial fictions, the two parties stacked up simple-minded distortions and evasions. The sincere result was Rube Goldberg complexity.
Yet what never a got serious debate was the "public option," though a majority of House Democrats favored it. That would have authorized genuine trials for the "single-payer" systems resembling the ones functioning in Europe. Obama killed those alternatives or traded them away to conservative lawmakers. If the Roberts Court decides to destroy Obamacare beyond repair (I hope it doesn't), Democrats should start over and this time tell the truth about what they think and what they want.
Read Next: "Why Hagel's Departure Is a Victory for War Hawks"
The death of Nancy Teeters was properly noted last week (November 17), since she was the very first woman to serve as a governor on the Federal Reserve Board in Washington. But I remember Teeters for more poignant and powerful reasons—her personal courage in stubbornly resisting the harsh and devastating recession the Fed imposed on Americans.
This was thirty years ago in the early 1980s when Paul Volcker was the formidable Fed chairman and his conservative convictions triumphed. Volcker is remembered reverently in the annals of finance for saving the country from inflation. Nancy Teeters, the lonely dissenter, was soon forgotten but she understood some things about human society and arrogant power that her male colleagues failed to appreciate.
Those long-ago events during the Reagan presidency were at the dawn of the conservative era and—due especially to the Federal Reserve—began the triumph of finance capital over the broader economy. I wrote a book in 1987 that described the historic watershed, called Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country. Teeters was right. If other Fed governors had listened, this country might have been saved from a lot of pointless pain.
This is what I said about her unique role:
Nancy Teeters, almost alone, resisted. Month after month, as the economy spiraled downward, she repeatedly urged her colleagues to back off. The largest corporations were shutting down more and more of their production. As loan failures accumulated, the financial sector was threatened with crisis. The Fed's single-mindedness, she warned, was inflicting deep wounds that would not soon be healed.
"I gave the Federal Open Market Committee a lecture." Teeters said. "I told them: You are pulling the financial fabric of this country so tight that it's going to rip. You should understand that once you tear a piece of fabric, it's very difficult, almost impossible, to put it back together again."
Her metaphor, she pointed out to me, was understood by women. "None of these guys has ever sewn anything in his life," Teeters said. [page 465]
The objections she expressed thirty years ago in the closed-door meetings of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors are still highly relevant to our current national condition. The "social fabric" has been torn asunder, first by Volcker's deep recession, then by deregulation and Wall Street's high-risk adventures, and then by globalization and finance capital's hegemony over labor and production. These destabilizing forces led eventually to the collapse. They are driving the grinding deterioration that continues to afflict the society.
Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50!
Contemporary politics is still blind to the gravity of our situation. Even the Democratic president is still resisting the kind of big, bold actions that Keynesian economists like Nancy Teeters might have proposed in these circumstances. Defending the "social fabric" remains an inadmissible argument in the mechanistic logic of conventional economics. As Teeters argued then, innocent people are being sacrificed to crude abstractions. Meanwhile, some people are still getting richer and most other people are still getting poorer.
There is one great change in the landscape, however. The Federal Reserve Board is now chaired by a woman. Janet Yellen is perhaps not so upfront in her social concerns as Nancy Teeters was, but she is clearly trying to move the boys in that direction. Yellen met recently with a network of activist community organizations who are pushing for concrete action on work and wages. If the very masculine Federal Reserve can break free of the reactionary past, maybe there is hope for the country.
Republicans like to talk about impeaching President Obama, but there is a far more deserving candidate for impeachment—Chief Justice John Roberts of the Supreme Court. While the Republicans in Congress have blocked Democrats from enacting much of substance, the GOP majority in control of the Court has been effectively legislating on its own, following an agenda neatly aligned with their conservative party. Step by step, the five right-wing justices are transforming the terms of the American political system—including the Constitution.
They empowered "dark money" in politics and produced the $4 billion by-election of 2014. They assigned spiritual values to soulless corporations who thus gained First Amendment protection of free speech and religion. The justices effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965, even as they allowed state governments to create new obstacles for minority voting. The High Court made it okay to take guns to church and more difficult to keep guns from dangerous people. It rendered a series of decisions that collectively shifted political power from the many to the few.
This power grab by the unelected—and supposedly non-partisan—justices has already produced a historic rewrite of America democracy. But it was done by blatantly usurping the decision-making authority that belongs to the elected government in Congress and the executive branch. The Republican justices are not finished with their undeclared revolution. They will continue unless and until people rise up and stop them.
The Roberts Court's latest target is once again President Obama's singular achievement, the Affordable Care Act. Under peculiar circumstances just three days after the midterm elections, the Court announced it will hear another legal challenge that threatens to disable and perhaps destroy the new healthcare system.
The timing of this new intervention has a distinct odor of political collusion. The Republican takeover of the Senate is already invoked by Court allies to suggest the justices are merely responding to the will of the people. Some conservative Court watchers tout the new case as a chance for the chief justice to make amends and get with the program. The latest challenge was fashioned in Washington by the same club of right-wing legal foundations and pricey corporate lawyers who have been attacking affirmative action and other liberal reforms since the Reagan administration.
Michael Carvin of the Jones Day law firm is a cocky veteran of the right's long crusade and the lead lawyer for the new case. He is already boasting of the outcome, even though the intermediate DC Circuit Court of Appeals has not yet ruled up or down as would normally occur before the Supreme Court agreed to consider it. Carvin dismissed the DC Circuit Court, now dominated by Democratic appointees, as a meaningless anomaly. He told a Talking Points Memo reporter he doubts that Supreme Court conservatives "are going to give much of a damn about what a bunch of Obama appointees on the DC Circuit think." Goodbye to deference and regular order.
But might Carvin's case still lose at the Supreme Court? "Oh, I don't think so," he said. That was his cute way of saying this time Chief Justice Roberts will be on board with the other four conservative justices. Carvin didn't say why he is so confident, but he and Roberts seem to be old chums. At a Federalist Society event last year, Michael Carvin indulged in a bit of classy namedropping. The admiring conservative society reported that Carvin "told an anecdote in which Chief Justice Roberts approached him and jokingly chided him for having favored appointing Samuel Alito before Roberts." What does this say about their relationship? Maybe nothing, but one would like to ask a few follow-up questions.
Roberts himself takes offense at accusations that the Roberts Court renders politicized decisions. He has frequently denied the charge. "We're not Republicans or Democrats," Roberts told students at the University of Nebraska law school. Unlike some of his right-wing colleagues, Roberts wants to have it both ways. He's not an ideologue, just an earnest umpire calling balls and strikes.
Baloney. If Carvin and other conservative legal eagles are correct that this time the Chief Justice will rule against the healthcare law, that should give people a prima facie case for considering impeachment. At a minimum, people should demand a thorough public investigation into whether surreptitious political interference occurred (who said what to whom offstage?). If politicians are reluctant to go down that road, people can start their own inquiries. The chief justice should be forewarned what will likely happen if he does scuttle the ACA. I expect "Impeach John Roberts" signs and billboards to start popping up all over America as people finally figure out who did this to them. Hint: it was not Barack Obama.
A prime witness should be Linda Greenhouse, who for decades was the influential New York Times correspondent covering the Supreme Court (now at Yale law school). Greenhouse was admired for her fair-minded analysis and great clarity in explaining esoteric legal arguments, She finds the current state of affairs "profoundly depressing."
Greenhouse explained in her blog posted at NYTimes.com: "In decades of court-watching, I have struggled—sometimes it seems against all odds—to maintain the belief that the Supreme Court really is a court and not just a collection of politicians in robes. This past week I found myself struggling against the impulse to say two words: I surrender." (Linda Greenhouse has not herself called for impeachment.)
The new case against Obamacare reads like "a politically manufactured argument," Greenhouse wrote. She called the maneuvering "a naked power grab by conservative justices who two years ago just missed killing the ACA in its cradle." As evidence, she cited the unusual twists in Supreme Court behavior. Normally it waits to see if there are conflicting views among circuit courts of appeal before taking a case for consideration. This time, the Fourth Circuit based in Richmond, Virginia, upheld the law. The DC Circuit in Washington has all twelve judges reviewing and seems very likely to uphold the law, since that court is now top-heavy with Democratic appointees. The Supremes went ahead regardless.
Greenhouse cited Michael Carvin's confident boasting as suggesting the political flavor. She also invoked remarks by Professor John Yoo of UC Berkeley—famous in Bush years as the "torture lawyer" who defended brutal interrogations and a former clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas. On National Review Online, Yoo felt sure Roberts will now support the ACA challenge because the case "gives him the chance to atone for his error upholding Obamacare." Yoo wrote: "What judge can resist the chance to reach the right legal result, fix mistakes from the past and act with popular support? It's a Supreme Court trifecta."
Over-confident Republicans naturally assume the public will be grateful if the Supreme Court rescues them from Obama's healthcare system. But the first result is bound to be utter chaos and confusion and millions of people—mostly in red states—who discover they are the losers. If the GOP legal challenge succeeds, the High Court will rule that the federal exchanges—created for states that declined to create their own state exchanges—operate illegally because the ACA does not give them explicit authority to dispense the tax credits that subsidize health insurance.
A blizzard of low- and moderate-income buyers of insurance would be suddenly stripped of government assistance—around 5.2 million of them. But there is a cruel twist Republican leaders fail to acknowledge: their own red-state constituents will be the most victimized. Leading right-wing politicians have endorsed the very lawsuit that will punish the Southern and Western states if it prevails, while blue states and northern cities that are operating their own state exchanges may not suffer at all.
The lawsuit now before the Supreme Court, for example, has been formally joined by Senators Cornyn and Cruz of Texas, Hatch and Lee of Utah, Portman of Ohio, Rubio of Florida, Representative Darrell Issa of California and the state governments of Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, West Virginia, Nebraska, South Carolina and Kansas. If these politicians win, their states are the big losers.
But of course the citizens who will be screwed in the red states are mostly working poor or moderate-income families. Republicans are okay with that. They ostensibly believe that belt-tightening helps build character. The GOP may have a time with blowback from the insurance industry and other providers in the healthcare system. While it's not widely understood, many billions in federal subsidies help people of limited means buy health insurance but they never actually see the dollars themselves. The money flows directly from the Treasury to the private enterprises. Insurance lobbyists are already on the case, explaining real life to clueless conservatives.
Up to this point, I have barely mentioned the logic of the conservative assault on Affordable Care. Because there isn't much logic to it. It depends entirely on a narrow-minded reading of the original legislation—so ridiculously literal that only gnomes in a medieval castle could take it seriously. In a nutshell, the right-wing lawyers claim that the law describes how state-run exchanges will be able to dispense federal subsidies to people in need, but the law fails to say explicitly that federal exchanges have the same powers.
Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50!
Okay, the drafters could have repeated the requisite language to reassure fly-specking lawyers, but really there was never any doubt about the congressional intent. As the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has ruled, the logic of the entire system over-rules any blurred language. The law says explicitly that the secretary of Health and Human Services has the authority to create federal exchanges when and where states don't want to do it. In other times, any such ambiguity would have been quickly eliminated with a technical fix, routinely adopted by mutual consent.
But the new Republican Party refuses to go along with anything that resembles cooperation and might shine a good light on Democrats. What the right-wingers really hope to achieve is a total breakdown of the ACA's complex architecture. Throw sticks in the spokes. Force the Obama administration to open the legislation for Republican tinkering. The Supreme Court appears to be pursuing a similar strategy In other words, right-wing senators want Supreme Court right-wingers to accomplish by edict what GOP legislators could not accomplish for themselves.
Barack Obama can win this fight by not giving in to the Supreme Court, even if he temporarily loses there. The president has to call out his opponents and tell the hard truth about their illegitimate abuse of power. People may listen if he genuinely fights for them.
People may recall the last time Americans wanted to impeach a Chief Justice was in the 1950s, when Earl Warren—a liberal Republican from California—championed Brown v. Board of Education in the long legal battle to defeat Jim Crow segregation. Chief Justice Roberts has been leading in the Court in the opposite direction. Instead of comforting the afflicted, he is comforting the comfortable.
Read Next: Thanks to the Roberts Court, corporations have more constitutional rights than actual people
Just when you thought the Republican slime-ballers had run out of muck, you discover, no, they have more mud to throw at honorable people. And they are not just smearing Barack Obama. This time, they are disparaging the doctors and scientists at the National Institutes of Health and depicting them as weak-willed tools of the Democratic Party. If Americans fall for this, they may get the government they deserve—stripped of honest science and trustworthy decisions.
Republicans are not stupid, but they are shameless. They know people are rattled by the stealthy emergence of Ebola and that media hype has reflexively pumped up the danger and public confusion. NIH experts calmly explained what has to be done to defeat the disease and assured nervous citizens that healthcare teams are on the case. The GOP saw opportunity in unfolding tragedy and rushed to exploit it.
A political hack named Ed Rogers, corporate lobbyist and White House insider under Republican presidents, chortled gleefully over the political twist. His op-ed in The Washington Post hailed the brave governors of New York and New Jersey—Democrat Cuomo and Republican Christie—for intervening with a common-sense response. Any doctor or nurse who had gone to West Africa to treat Ebola victims should be automatically locked up in quarantine when they return home.
Rogers boasted, "If there is a Republican wave in the elections next Tuesday, pundits may well claim that it fully formed when Christie and Cuomo decided to go their own way with an Ebola strategy, despite objections from the White House." People will be reassured by their common-sense intervention, he said, because "voters don't trust the president to do the right thing and they are less likely to vote for those who echo the president's blasé response."
Actually, this know-nothing attack was launched by two well-known cynics of politics, both of whom lust after presidential ambitions. What Ed Rogers left out of the slime ball aimed at Obama is that it actually smeared some of the most experienced, knowledgeable and principled employees of the federal government. The real question at stake is whether the GOP demagoguery will succeed in destroying yet another citadel of advanced science and public values.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, who played a significant role in the successful war against AIDS/HIV, has explained patiently and repeatedly why rigid quarantines of healthcare workers would actually increase the dangers. "The best way to protect the US is to stop the epidemic in Africa and we need those healthcare workers so we do not want to put them in a position where it makes it very, very uncomfortable for them to even volunteer."
Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50!
If political pollsters were more devoted to the public interest than their political clients, they would ask people this question: Whom do you most trust to handle the battle against Ebola—Dr. Fauci, the longtime leader of the national Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or Chris Christie, the author of political vendettas against Jersey mayors who failed to support him? Or do people think Andrew Cuomo knows more than Anthony Fauci about how to organize the global counterattack against this dread disease?
The questions sound ludicrous, but they need to be asked. Once these guys finish with New York and New Jersey, they want to run the country. Let me restate the question in a harsher way people can understand: Who do you think will manage to kill more people with Ebola—Dr. Fauci or Governors Cuomo and Christie, the political twins?
Senator Elizabeth Warren, as she often does, is pushing back hard against the irresponsible politicians. On CBS This Morning, she said Christie "should bring out his scientists who are advising him on that because we know that we want to be led by the science. That's what's going to keep people safe—science, not politics."
She went further and suggested the Republican party may have blood on its hands because it has pushed hard to cut NIH spending and thus research on the Ebola virus. "So now we're in a position where instead of making those investments upfront, we wait until people die and now we're going to spend billions of dollars and some real risk to our country."
Good question. Why don't reporters ask Dr. Christie and Dr Cuomo?
Read Next: Misguided media hysteria pervades the 24/7 news cycle.


text:
Official 2012/2013 Providence Bruins Thread II
View Single Post
Spoked P
Registered User
Join Date: Feb 2012
Posts: 58
vCash: 500
Originally Posted by
Dropped my season tickets down to 5 games. So only been to a few this year. They don't have it all together. They either get it done or they don't do anything at all.
Playoffs? I don't think so, but the front office treats the team like they are the cup champs. They raised ticket prices for the 2nd year in a row. And they had no playoffs last year either. Thus why I dropped to 5 games. To keep the seats and because I'm not gonna pay a grand for my 2 seats when they suck!
FYI: there is no increase for next season 2012-2013.
You had to expect a price increase with the improvements to the Dunk. Even still though, I feel its worth it. The $100 team store bucks is great, plus the cash back programs I always seem to get between $75-$100 off my season ticket invoice.
Spoked P
View Public Profile
Spoked P's albums
Find More Posts by Spoked P


text:
Carolina Chair & Table Co. Hepburn Pedestal Accent Table
Item # WX2-200025
- Google+
This item is shipped directly from the factory. To see the expected shipping date, please add to your Shopping Cart. Sorry, no express shipping available. We are unable to ship factory direct items to Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico or APO or FPO addresses.
- Details & Specs
Carolina Chair & Table Co. Hepburn Pedestal Accent Table... dazzling design to step up the style in any room!
Classically designed, this Hepburn Table's versatile styling will be a beautiful complement to any room! The lathe-turned pedestal has an elegant appeal, perfect bookend to your love seat or couch in the living room. Minimal assembly required. Measures 19 1/2" in diameter x 25 1/4" tall.
- Reviews
<!--BVSEO|dz:Main_Site-en_US|sdk:v220.127.116.11-n|msg:Error: Request errored out - The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden. -->
- Articles & Tips
You May Also Like
CASTLECREEK Full Deluxe Cedar Log Bed
Buyer's Club $224.99 Non-Members $249.99 -
Lodge Furniture Cover
Buyer's Club $26.99 Non-Members $29.99 -
CASTLECREEK King Cedar Log Bed
Buyer's Club $269.99 Non-Members $299.99


text:
Pronunciation: накопленный
Added on: 2012-09-18
Listened: 21 times
Add categories to накопленный
Pronunciation in Russian [ru]
- Pronunciation by KsanterX (Male from Ukraine)
- Pronunciation by AlexanderNevzorov (Male from Russia)
- Could you do it better? different accent? Pronounce накопленный in Russian
Accents & languages on maps
- Random word: свернулся
by Yandex Translate English translation:
накопленный = accumulated
Not satisfied?
Modify word:
· Add languages
· Add categories
Report word:
Is there anything wrong with this word?
Please report it here.


text:
Abel to Yzerman
Just When You Thought He Couldn't…Kulfan Digs Deeper
by IwoCPO on 03/13/07 at 05:00 PM ET
Comments (0)
With the playoffs around the corner, Ted Kulfan is ramping up the intensity. Tenacious in his quest for any bit of news that would lead to an idea of the condition of the "decimated" Wing roster, he's turned up the biggest story since last year's Lockergate.
"You know everything is made up, everything is about the story, but if you go and have good seats, you see these big guys and they're good athletes," Hasek said. "They can jump, do flips -- I was amazed. They're huge, 6-foot-4, even 7-feet tall, and they're like gymnasts. It's a hard sport, I tell you."Yep, Teddy's afternoon blog entry...four hours before the Nashville game...breaks the big news that Dominik Hasek's a wrestling fan. Truly a banner day for the Detroit News.
Filed in: | Abel to Yzerman | Permalink
Bubba Beckons
by IwoCPO on 03/13/07 at 02:23 PM ET
Comments (0)
And so really it boils down to three games, starting tonite in front of a raucous, toothless, mostly related and phonics-challenged crowd of baby-poop clad Bubbas and Bubbettes. As I stated earlier, the Detroit News doesn't care. As I've stated MANY times earlier, 99.9 percent of the state of Tennessee doesn't care either. But the fact remains, they have to play tonite. Little Gary says so, despite the same injuries that plagued the same teams (with a few more thrown in for Detroit) as the last time.
Filed in: | Abel to Yzerman | Permalink
Is There A Game Tonite?
by IwoCPO on 03/13/07 at 07:50 AM ET
Comments (0)
Perusing one of our Detroit dailys (or is it dailies?) this morning, just glancing, browsing, skimming. You know the drill. Above the fold, predictable MSU coverage a few days from the tournament. Not unexpected. Hard hitting feature on high school refs. Below: a column from Big Bob on the tournament and the drill down on public golf courses. Is there a hockey team in Detroit?
Nope. Must be a scheduling snafu. No game tonite folks. The Wings can't be playing Bubba with the division on the line, right? I'm sure if they were the Detroit News would at least mention it on the Sports front.
Filed in: | Abel to Yzerman | Permalink
Ides Of March Upon Us
by IwoCPO on 03/12/07 at 08:45 AM ET
Comments (0)
Yep. As if the occasional three-syllable word doesn't confuse Bubba enough, we decided to throw a Shakespeare reference in there to really spin their heads a bit. Who was it, Cassius, Caeser or Brutus that actually warned of 15 March? I don't remember, and I certainly don't have the initiative to look it up. But it is relevant this year, because come Thursday, any hopes the Wings have of securing the #1 seed could be all but done.
Filed in: | Abel to Yzerman | Permalink
Wings Slowly Getting Healthier
by IwoCPO on 03/09/07 at 04:08 PM ET
Comments (0)
Helene St. James reports in her Freep blog that yet another Wing is on his way back.
Tomas Holmstrom, sidelined since March 4 by an upper-body injury, said Friday he hopes to be able to play Sunday, when the Wings host the Bruins. "I feel really good," Holmstrom said after a good long morning skate, his second straight day on the ice. Holmstrom got hit Feb. 24 during the game against Nashville. "I thought maybe it was a bruise, but it wasn't," he said. "Because I played two-and-a-half games, it didn't heal up during that time."No word from anyone, anywhere, on a return date for Hank Zetterberg; probably because he's, you know, just a fringe player and not exactly instrumental to any type of regular season/playoff success.
Filed in: | Abel to Yzerman | Permalink
Your Weekly Dose Of Cheli
by IwoCPO on 03/08/07 at 07:47 PM ET
Comments (0)
Chris Chelios just finished up his weekly segment with Stony and Wojo on WDFN in Detroit. As you know, they've been gracious enough to provide first-use priveleges to us here at The Empire.
This week Chelios discusses the Saskin fiasco, the possibility of playing next year (in Detroit or elsewhere) and his thoughts on the return of Hasek and Samuelsson…including a reference to whether the media was given the real story on Hasek's injury.
Listen to the whole segment here.
Filed in: | Abel to Yzerman | Permalink
Moore Mic'd Night Of Incident
by IwoCPO on 03/08/07 at 06:52 PM ET
Comments (0)
James Mirtle made a good point on our post below that Steve Moore is most likely staying silent due to the pending lawsuit. Well, here's something I hadn't heard until today. Apparently his lawyer has audio evidence...kinda.
It's now emerged that the NHL had a microphone on Moore on the night he was jumped by Bertuzzi and there's an audio file in New York of the trash-talk Moore had to contend with. It's not a stretch to say Moore's safety was threatened. Moore has filed a $19 million suit against Bertuzzi and it baffles the mind why he hasn't gone after the Colorado Avalanche. Consider the audio tape as Exhibit A.
More from Adams, including a suggestion to the BJ's that would rankle some Wing fans.
Filed in: | Abel to Yzerman | Permalink
Please Send Me The Address
by IwoCPO on 03/08/07 at 12:36 PM ET
Comments (0)
...to NHL Headquarters. Because I might just have a reason to send Gary Bettman some fan mail soon. It would appear that the little bugger's finally seeing the light regarding potential re-alignment and moving the Wings eastward.
Filed in: | Abel to Yzerman | Permalink
Moore's Tact
by IwoCPO on 03/08/07 at 11:55 AM ET
Comments (0)
I've read a few articles regarding Steve Moore's comments of yesterday. He wants to play, but can't. He's frustrated and we understand it, and he's biting his tongue.
"I think it's best we avoid that," Moore said when asked if he would be able to forgive Bertuzzi.
Moore said he feels frustrated that he has been unable to overcome head injuries he suffered in the on-ice attack while Bertuzzi continues to pursue an NHL career with the Detroit Red Wings.
Filed in: | Abel to Yzerman | Permalink
Closing The Loop
by IwoCPO on 03/08/07 at 08:43 AM ET
Comments (0)
Updated 1015 EST: Khan(!) has posted the entire THN GM ranking list at his blog.
Seems like a good day to tie up a few loose ends, address a few issues that would typically be in my lane. Oh, you know the ones. Renegade columnists, Wing GM's, alleged "disharmony" in the Wings room. But before we get to the Wings, I wanted to make small mention of the consistent pride all Sailors have in the Navy's participation in our nation's space program. You can't beat statements like this when it comes to improving service morale.
"Crazy, diaper-wearing would-be murderer Lisa Nowak has been fired from NASA and returned to duty as a US Navy captain."
That, my friends, is what I call fun for the whole family.
Filed in: | Abel to Yzerman | Permalink
« Previous ‹ First < 339 340 341 342 343 > Last › Next »
About Abel to Yzerman
Welcome to Abel to Yzerman, a Red Wing blog since 1977. No other site on the internet has better-researched, fact-laden and better prepared discussions than A2Y. Re-phrase: we do little research, find facts and stats highly overrated and claim little to no preparation. There are 19 readers of A2Y. No more, no less. All of them, except maybe one, are juvenile in nature. Reminding them of that in the comment section will only encourage them to prove that. Your suggestions and critiques are welcome: email@example.com


text:
Welcome back to Stockhouse Member Sign In
Sign in with one of the following accounts.
Send my password
« back
Become a member today, It's free!
We will not release or resell your information to third parties without your permission.
Use one of the following accounts.
I somewhat agree with you GWGtoZero. All we need is a Larry, then we will have the Larry, Daryll and Daryll show.
Go Back...
Receive investor kits and email updates from Stockhouse and directly from these companies.


text:
Nose: Poached prunes and spring violets. Smooth sweet honey that has a coolness to it that reminds of fresh pine needles.
Palate: Smooth, the prunes are joined by figs, with luscious waves of butterscotch and hints of nutty, rancio.
Finish: Full of the sweet lingering embraces of rich toffee, honey and oak.
Overall: A superb Armagnac filled with an array of delightfully sweet flavours that stay with you long after drinking.
Please enter your details to make it easier for us to help you further.


text:
The wide open beach of J.P. Luby Surf Park has it's days alongside the old broken pier, but is better known as party central during the crowded college spring break.
All content remains copyright of Magicseaweed Ltd unless stated otherwise, we'd kindly ask that you don't reproduce it in any form without our permission.
All this from only US$2.89/month.
Start 14 Day Free Trial


text:
Sorry, there is no content today within this section. Check back soon for new articles.
Most Popular
March 2, 2015
Westview Dance Club 2014 Registration and Dance
Come Dance With Us Dance Season Begins Soon! Don't Miss Out! Do you want to learn to social ballroom dance? Are you a fan of Dancing With the Stars and So You Think ......
Click here to view all Community News
Roll over the region tabs at the top to see which neighbourhoods are included. Click on the map to view news specific to that region and its neighbourhoods.
Ads by Google
More MultimediaVideo
- Latest Videos
- Local News
- Canada
- Sports
- Bombers
- Jets
- Arts & Life
- Features


text:
I Have a Friend Who Believes Science Disproves Faith, Part 1
Is Christianity anti-science? Can Christians be good scientists? Is science the only source of true knowledge? Pastor Dave Gustavsen of Jacksonville Chapel addresses these issues.
The Resource Finder has powerful filtering features — check out the tutorial to learn more.
Is Christianity anti-science? Can Christians be good scientists? Is science the only source of true knowledge? Pastor Dave Gustavsen of Jacksonville Chapel addresses these issues.
A short guide to where BioLogos fits in the origins debate.
Interview with Bill Nye and follow-up thoughts from president Haarsma.
By getting rid of the miracle stories in the Bible, Bultmann and his followers hoped to make the Christian story more palatable to modern man. Although I recognize the emotional weight of this sentiment, I am not convinced that it is an intellectually coherent approach, mainly for reasons of self-consistency.
I've always thought of the sense of smell as a more intimate sense than most other senses. For in smelling, the thing that we smell becomes almost a part of us.
Studying the basis of life's design cannot meaningfully be separated from the character of the One responsible for it. By living in relationship with him through whom all things were created and in whom all things have their being, we experience the purpose and meaning with which this universe is infused.
While reading about and studying the processes that gave rise to this astonishing world, please don't forget that it is beautiful. It is not merely mechanics, but poetry.
John Calvin really believed that the sun revolved around the earth, but we shouldn't dismiss the rest of his theology because of this error.
Theology needs science, but science needs theology; there can be no two-state solution.
In this video originally featured in March of 2012, Dr. David Finch, a biologist at New York University, discusses his thoughts on both Creationism and the effects of "new atheists" like Richard Dawkins.
Here are some of the best responses from around the web to David's Barash's controversial editorial about God and Evolution in the New York Times.
New BioLogos content editor Brad Kramer reviews Chapter 1 of "Surprised by Scripture" by NT Wright, and sees Wright's work as a signpost for the future of the science/faith debate.
Do we see God because of design, or do we see design because of God?
God invites us to understand his power and nature through studying what has been made.
Musician Michael Gungor talks about the recent controversy over the evolution of his views on evolution, science, and biblical authority.
The purpose of Jesus's art was to give verbal, visual, and dramatic forms to those complicated and confounding relationships, symmetries, and harmonies between himself, the father and spirit, and between the triune God and the world… Such creative expressions did not and do not make everything clear, but rather resist simple clarity, forcing their hearers to come at the whole complicated truth from a position of intellectual and spiritual humility.
Everyone is so worried about success and getting this or that honorable diploma—the people here are smart and understand many complex things perfectly—but it's a long distance from the head to the heart.
Children's books are more than stories. They can become familiar narratives children listen to over and over. So it's worth asking - Are the books we're reading doing a good job of portraying God and His Creation?


text:
Original Kit:
Ligier JS-11 Ford
Made By:
Blue Tank (kit #TK8827)
Other Transformers Models
G1 Cliffjumper
G1 Hound
Armada Sideswipe
G1 Ratchet
Robots In Disguise Side Burn
G1 Ironhide
G1 Sideswipe
Dark of the Moon Leadfoot
LEGO Optimus Prime
G2 Optimus Prime
Revenge of the Fallen Skids
Transformers Barricade
Energon Hot Shot
G1 Bluestreak
Other Racing Vehicle Models
'64 Corvette GS
Blonde Comet Open Wheel Racer
'04 Justice LeagueParade Car (Review)
The Love Bug Herbie
NASCAR Justice League Tauruses
Speed Racer F1 Mach 5
Campbell's Soup #35 Monte Carlo
'57 Chevy Pro Street (Review)
'05 Indy Pace Car (Review)
The Fast & the Furious '70 Charger
Transformers Jazz
Red Line 7000 Ford Galaxie
Born 2 Race Subaru Impreza WRX STi
Ford GT (Review)
Although it is a slightly smaller scale than the rest of my TF models, it doesn't stand out too bad because it is not a street car - besides, 1/28 was close enough to 1/25 for me considering the rarity of models of this car.
The original model kit was motorized, so details were pretty crude. Also, Blue Tank did not do a stellar job with their molding techniques - the tires were poorly formed, the windscreen was incomplete, and there were quite a few places that just generally needed to be cleaned up. On the plus side, it was a very straightforward kit, since it had less than 20 parts (not counting the electric motor pieces). I started by removing the molded-in driver and scratchbuilding a cockpit from sheet styrene and parts box interior components, using Tamyia's 1/20 JS-11 as a guide.
Mirage, like Wheeljack or Jazz, was one of the not-quite-sponsored-by cars. In this case, the original "Gitanes" sponsor was modified to become "Citanes". The rest of the decals on the figure remained relatively accurate, although they were placed a bit differently than they were on the prototype JS11. I tried at first to modify the existing kit decals, but I found out that the decals Blue Tank provided were not exactly the quality I was used to. Despite using a brand-new X-Acto, the knife actually pulled away the clear film from the paper backing. I tried applying what was left, but between the poor quality and inaccurate sizing, they just would not cut it. Instead, I made my own side panels, stripes, and sponsor logos in Illustrator and had them printed onto decal stock. The white "elf" decals on the wing were taken from Tamiya's kit, and the "Ligier" decal under the windscreen is a custom decal applied to bare metal and cut to the proper shape. The mirrors are cut-down parts taken from a Lamborghini Countach kit.
The finished model has a combination of Testor's #43 Petty Blue and PlastiKote Gloss White paints. I was very disappointed with Blue Tank's quality, but to be fair, Tamiya's larger-scale offering of the same car was not much better (among other things, the body was badly formed and the exhaust headers needed extensive work before they could be assembled; very unusual for a Tamiya kit) - maybe the Ligier JS-11 is just a difficult car to capture in scale, or maybe I just happened to get the kits that missed QC at the factory. Although it's not my favorite model, but the end product didn't come out half bad.
Send me an e-mail with your thoughts!


text:
Baldoor EarBell E100
"I've been using a pair of A-Jays Four for about a year but recently I bought a Galaxy S5 and the Jays I've got is made for iPhone so I had to buy something new. I found these and decided to give them a try, so here's my review; The package was as expected for $20, a plastic bag with two different foam pads to choose from. The sound is very goood and balanced for the price. After trying..." --Ixeling
Technical Pro HPT990 Professional Headphone
"Expanding on the pros, other likes- - These cans are pretty comfortable imo, with the velour pads and soft headband. I havent had any problems with pressure points on the headband, and have been able to wear them for several hours on end without much fatigue. Clamping force is just right. Tighter than, for example, a Creative Aurvana Live, but looser than my FA-011s. Fairly light weight. -..." --kidcharlemagne
On Earz Pure
Pure Powerfull 40mm Dynamic driver with huge bass. Adjustable headband to ensure perfect fit. 1.2 meter cord with 3.5mm jack and 6.3mm adapter provided.
Technical Pro HP-720 Headphones (Silver)
Technical Pro's groundbreaking new approach to industrial design incorporates advanced technology and striking good looks with rugged construction and a long list of features, providing years of audio enjoyment.