Some Hope in the (Financial) Crisis

I've been quite negative about the state of the world, but the following TED-Talk video by John Gerzema gives me a little hope. Don't get me wrong, I do not for a moment think that the financial crisis is over. In fact, I'm very much convinced that financially the worst is yet to come. Nevertheless, it would seem that the world may be a little bit better prepared for it.



Now while the financial crisis is something to be concerned about, it is not my main worry. What I'm really worried about is governments continued effort to confine, restrict, muzzle, and basically cattle their citizens increasingly more and more. Good luck with that.

Gangster Government

Facebook for Parents

"Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids"

America -- Land of the Free; or is it?!

In what was possibly the most surreal, horrific, and unimaginable thing I have ever witnessed in my life, 1200 Riot Police and Military Personal rabidly attacked a group of well under 300 American citizens, many of them just students that were unaware there was even a protest going on. They then expanded their perimeter and shut large areas of Oakland down. This is how my last experience at the G20 in Pittsburgh went down, out of control authorities mercilessly attacking an unarmed crowd with batons, tear gas, pepper spray, sound weapons, and rubber bullets. Around 10pm on Friday night, long after the vast majority of dignitaries and protesters had left, it became evident that the outrageous show of force by the Military and Police was not enough to stave off their thirst for blood. Read more here...

The War Against Us All

Flu Vaccine Ingredients for the Whole Family

Want to know who is behind the Swine Flu?

Or visit FluScam.Com.

The Land of the Bloody

So these days in America you can be stopped at a roadblock and have a blood sample forcibly taken from you. The "Land of the Free" looks more and more like Nazi Germany... but hey, the major news being covered is Kanye West's antics at the MTV-awards. Not to mention that such bodily violation is against the Fourth Amendment, the Tenth Amendment, and who knows which other law is being broken.

On "Liberal" Christianity

The Political Power of Iconography

In the video below the powerful influence of icons and branding is discussed within the context of politics, specifically American politics. As someone who was once a graphic designer (and who have designed my share of logos) and also an avid believer in the need visual literacy in the times we live, I found this an excellent analysis well worth watching.

Eckhart Tolle and New Age

The pastors from Woodland Hills Church has a sound Q&A regarding Eckhart Tolle's worldview and similar New Age trends. You can view it here. They also made comments that resonated with my "Why I'll Never Be a Pantheist Again".

Eckhart Tolle is the author of the book The New Earth, which is endorsed by Oprah Winfrey -- this of course made it a secure best seller.

Eight Years Later: Speak Out Against the War in Afghanistan

A video by Code Pink: Women for Peace.

Obama Banking Too Much On Banks

A very informative article by Nomi Prins, a former investment banker that became a journalist.

Obama Banking Too Much On Banks

On Monday—one year after the once-mighty Lehman Brothers collapsed in the nation’s biggest bankruptcy—President Obama addressed the state of the economy and again outlined his proposals for what he calls reform. The location—Federal Hall at 26 Wall Street, near the New York Stock Exchange and New York Federal Reserve Bank—was fitting. George Washington took his presidential oath there, a precursor for how intertwined Washington and Wall Street would become. And Obama’s speech indicates that he’s still making the grave error of mistaking the health of Wall Street for the health of the American economy.



Obama chose not to deliver his speech on, say, the streets of Bend, Oregon, or Fresno, California, which provide different indicators of our economic predicament. That’s because Washington’s approach to the crisis has been to focus on the banking system, throw a few crumbs to citizens, and hope everything else will magically work itself out.

The problem with concentrating on the banking system is that it allows the administration to present an overly optimistic assessment of its actions. "The storms of the past two years are beginning to break," Obama pronounced, attributing this to a government that "moved quickly on all fronts, initializing a financial stability plan to rescue the system from the crisis and restart lending for all those affected by the crisis." He continued: "By taking aggressive and innovative steps in credit markets, we spurred lending not just to banks, but to folks looking to buy homes or cars, take out student loans, or finance small businesses. Our home ownership plan has helped responsible homeowners refinance to stem the tide of lost homes and lost home values."

Those steps were certainly aggressive. Under both the Bush and Obama administrations, the government, from the Federal Reserve to the Treasury Department, has flushed the banking systems and other components of the financial markets with $17.5 trillion worth of loans, guarantees, and other forms of support. About another $1 trillion has been provided to citizens through the recovery package, first-time homeowner tax benefits, auto purchase credits, and approximately $800 billion to help guarantee the loans of certain lenders—which somewhat helps borrowers, but helps lenders more.

But these measures have hardly brought the economy back from the brink. They brought Wall Street back from capital starvation and prevented the possibility of more big banks going bankrupt—instead of the slew of smaller and mid-size ones that have since met the same fate as Lehman Brothers. Taking credit for stabilizing the financial system after feeding it with massive amounts of federal money is like a teacher bragging about turning around the academic performance of a failing student after handing them all the answers to the big tests.

Here’s how the economy is really faring (and how Washington is failing to take adequate steps to fix it):

* National unemployment is at 9.7 percent, higher than last year’s 5.8 percent, with double digit jobless rates in 139 metropolitan areas this July, compared to 14 last July.
* The number of foreclosures is greater than last year: nearly 2 million new foreclosure filings occurred in the first half of 2009, up 15 percent from the same period in 2008.
* While homes in some areas have begun to slowly sell again, they are doing so at deeply depressed prices, in many instances below their mortgage value.
* Wall Street bonuses are back to pre-crisis levels. For some firms, such as Goldman Sachs, they are even higher.
* Bank leverage, or excessive borrowing on the back of risky assets—a major cause of the meltdown—is rising again.
* Geithner recently reported that his program to enable private financial firms to buy up toxic assets with government help will wind up costing less than the $1 trillion he had first envisioned. However, he did not mention that there are less toxic assets available to buy partly because the Fed has allowed banks to use some toxic assets as collateral in return for cheap loans.
* Big banks are bigger than they were last year. Since the Fed blessed more mergers last fall, the nation’s three largest banks—Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo—hold the maximum percentage of legally permissable US deposits or more.
* Mid-size and smaller banks keep closing. This year, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has closed 92 banks and depleted its deposit insurance money in the process.
* We still don’t have detailed information on the trillions of dollars of loans the Fed handed out to the banking sector or about the quality of the collateral banks provided in return.



Obama did acknowledge that the picture isn’t entirely rosy. He also outlined his ideas for avoiding another catastrophe: reshuffle the decks of regulatory agencies, slap a few trading constraints on some derivatives, and create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). But while Obama's rhetoric was stern—"normalcy cannot lead to complacency," he vowed—the proposals themselves are hardly sweeping.

Obama’s plan calls for eliminating the Office of Thrift Supervision and providing greater oversight by the Fed of “systemically important” institutions. The Senate is trying to water that down, in part because some members of both parties in Congress remain skeptical about the power of the Fed itself. The Senate also wants to consolidate regulatory authority into fewer entities, but leave oversight to a council of regulators. Of course, consolidating regulatory oversight only works if regulators are doing their jobs and the banking system is transparent enough to allow them to do so.

The last leg of Obama’s proposal would be establishing the CFPA, which would monitor financial products in an effort to protect consumers from risky instruments such as subprime mortgages. Legislation to create such an agency is expected to be taken up this year by the House Financial Services Committee, chaired by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass).

A strong CFPA is a sensible plan. Right now there is no other body imbued with the power not just to protect consumers but also to foster the general economic stability that would be achieved by closely monitoring the integrity of financial products. This proposal has drawn the most ire from the banking community, so you know it’s good. The Chamber of Commerce launched a $2 million ad campaign to convince people that a CFPA would mean that local butcher couldn’t extend credit to his customers without government interference.

But Obama's reforms do not strike deeply enough. The banking crisis has been subdued, not fixed, because of enormous amounts of government assistance. Ignoring that fact, and failing to overhaul the sector, leaves us open to another crisis. And the next round will be worse, because there is now so much more federal money invested in the banks.

Simply funding the banking system without reforming it is an expensive and dangerous game. Obama is capable of truly fixing things—by dividing up the Wall Street mega-banks with a new Glass Steagall Act, thereby enabling the success of more extensive regulatory reforms. Or, he could introduce a set of cosmetic changes that allow banks to keep doing what they did before last year’s crisis and that put us on the path for the next one.

Charlie Sheen's Questions to the President

How Not To Use Facebook

From: FriendFeed

Jailed for What You're Gonna Do

A couple of months old, but still relevant.



The fact that Rachel Maddow should take such a strong position against President Obama should in itself be something of note. She is considered one of the most liberal radio personalities in America.

The Good News of Christianity's Demise

A while back I responded to a news report on the demise of American Christianity. The report stated five reasons why people give up on Christianity, to which I gave five responses. Below is a similar blog post by Greg Boyd -- of all things, a megachurch pastor and author of insightful theological books. I say "of all things", because those are the type of preachers I mistrust the most. However, Boyd's "brand" of Christianity is one I find very much in line with the version Jesus taught. He is thinking preacher, always studying and contemplating, and always focussing on Jesus. I've written about Greg Boyd before on this blog, in one of my very first posts (the 6th post to be exact, nearly two years ago), "The Scary Right". I mentioned the fabulous CNN three part documentary, God's Warriors, I admitted that of all the high profile Christians interviewed in the documentary, Boyd was the only person I could associate myself with. You can see the segment of Boyd in the documentary God's Warriors on his website here.

His post below discusses why "the demise of American Christianity" is good news for "Real Christianity".

Don’t Weep For the Demise of American Christianity

Hello bloggers,

I’ve come across two very interesting and insightful essays this week on the demise of American Christianity. The first is Michael Spencer’s “The coming evangelical collapse” published in the Christian Science Monitor, and the second is Jon Meacham’s “The End of Christian America” published in Newsweek. Meacham discusses the decline of Christianity in America in general while Spencer discusses what he believes is the soon and inevitable demise of Evangelicalism in particular. In this post I’d like to provide a brief overview of both articles (supplemented by some information from Christine Wicker’s The Fall of the Evangelical Nation: The Surprising Crisis Inside the Church (HarperCollins, 2008), and then offer my own assessment of this demise.

The Demise of Christianity

There are many indications that Christianity in America is in rather rapid decline. For example, the percentage of self-identifying Christians has fallen 10 points over the last decade (down to 76 percent). According to a recent Newsweek Poll, the percentage of people who think that America is “a Christian Nation” has dropped 7 percent in the last year (down to 62 percent). And the percent of those who say that religion “can answer all or most of today’s problems” is at a historic low – down to 48 percent (it never dropped below 58 percent until the last few years).

There are indications that conservative Christianity (Evangelicalism) is being hit particularly hard by this downward turn. (See Christine Wicker’s The Fall of the Evangelical Nation for superb research supporting this claim). While some megachurches continue to grow, the majority of smaller evangelical churches are shrinking (in part because many of their members are migrating to the “full service oriented” model of the megachurches). Yet, there is an over-all net loss of church attenders each year, though this is somewhat concealed by the fact that most conservative churches are reticent to take members off their membership rolls as well as by the tendency of evangelical churches and organizations [especially Southern Baptists, according to Wicker] to grossly exaggerate their numbers (see The Fall of the Evangelical Nation for a full exposé on this trend).

Also significant is the fact that the average age of attendees in conservative churches is rising and there are many indications that the largely personality driven mega-church phenomenon was a “baby-boomer” trend that will likely die with this generation. In light of these and other indications, Spencer goes so far as to predict that ”[w]ithin two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants.” “The end of evangelicalism as we know it,” he argues, “ is close.” More generally, Meacham argues that America is entering into a “post-Christian” epoch.

The Cause of the Decline

What has brought about this decline? The answer to this question is, of course, very complex, but from these essays two factors stand out.

First, as Spencer notes, American evangelical churches have been, to a large degree, gutted by good old fashion American pragmatism. We’ve become preoccupied with being “relevant” and “efficient” at the expense of holding fast to the theological depth of our biblically based traditions. Megachurches in particular are guilty of this – which in part explains why they become megachurches, for relevance and efficiency sell well to baby boomers. (To younger folks, not so much.) Spencer refers to this, quite appropriately, as the “megachurch vacuity.”

Spencer wonders whether “the coming collapse” of Evangelicalism will “get Evangelicals past the pragmatism and shallowness that has brought about the loss of substance and power?” He’s not very optimistic, however. While he’s quite sure Evangelicalism will continue to decline, he also somewhat caustically anticipates that “[t]he purveyors of the evangelical circus will be in fine form, selling their wares as the promised solution to every church’s problems. I expect the landscape of megachurch vacuity to be around for a very long time.”

A second important factor, which both Spencer and Meacham stress, is that Evangelicals “have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism.” Spencer notes that “[w]e fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith.” Even some of the staunchest guards of conservative Evangelicalism are beginning to see this.

For example, Alert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, concedes that “[t]he worst fault of evangelicals in terms of politics over the last 30 years has been an incredible naiveté about politics and politicians and parties.” Manifesting typical Constantinian triumphalism, many conservative American Christians naively thought we could transform American society in a “Christian” direction by acquiring political power to enforce our (self-proclaimed) superior views on selected topics (especially abortion, gay marriage, creationism in schools and stem cell research) on the broader culture. It has not gone well, to say the least.

After 40 years of intense political involvement, Evangelicals have little positive to show for their efforts. To the contrary, we’ve arguably only succeeded in getting multitudes of non-Christians [or simply non-Evangelicals] to distain us and the “Good News” message we’re supposed to be bringing. (A great book on the [mostly negative] non-Christian perceptions of Evangelicals in America is UnChristian by David Kinnamen and Gabe Lyons). Now that the political parties and positions Evangelicals largely identified with have fallen on hard times, Evangelicals have, to a significant extent, fallen with them.

Is The Demise of the Christian Religion a Bad Thing?

For those who are heavily invested in the Christian religion, at least as it’s usually been understood in America, the news that America is entering into a “post-Christian” epoch is understandably alarming. As Meacham makes apparent in his article, people like Albert Mohler find the indisputable evidence of Christianity’s demise in America deeply disturbing. Mohler vows to fight this demise tooth and nail, predicting that a “new generation of young pastors” is about to rise up “to push back against hell in bold and visionary ministry.” “Expect to see the sparks fly,” he adds.

Personally, I strongly suspect that all such “spark flying” efforts on the part the righteous to protect us sinners from ourselves will only speed Christianity’s demise.

Others of us interpret the demise of Christianity and America’s descent into a “post-Christian” epoch quite differently. Indeed, I and many others see this as good news! Yes, the loss of a Judeo-Christian civic religion may bring about a greater degree of moral and religious relativism and intensify American’s moral decadence. This is admittedly unnerving. But here are six reasons why I do not think Kingdom people should weep over the demise of American Christianity.

1. America has never been, and will never be, a “Christian” nation in any significant sense. Among other things, America, like every other fallen, demonically-oppressed nation (see Lk. 4:5-7; 2 Cor. 4:4; I Jn. 5:19; Rev. 13), is incapable of loving its enemies, doing good to those who mistreat it or blessing those who persecute it (Lk. 6:27-35). By applying the term “Christian” to America, we’ve massively watered down its meaning — which undoubedly helps explain why the vast majority of American Christians assume being “Christian” is perfectly compatible with hating and killing your national enemies if and when your earthly Commander and Chief asks you to. The sooner the label “Christian” gets divorced form this country, the better. It provides hope that someday the word “Christian” might actually mean “Christ-like” once again.

2. Related to this, there’s a good bit of research demonstrating that the majority of American’s identify themselves as “Christian” when asked by a pollster, but when asked what this label actually means in terms of core values and lifestyle choices, it becomes apparent that for the majority of them the meaning of “Christian” is basically “American.” I submit that the main problem Kingdom people confront in spreading the Kingdom in America is that a majority of people assume they are already in the Kingdom — they are “Christian” — simply by virtue of being American or because they prayed a certain prayer or go to Church once a year, or whatever. If fewer people are identifying themselves as “Christian,” this is good, for it means there’s one less major illusion that Kingdom people have to confront and work through as they invite these folks into the Kingdom.

3. If Evangelicals lose all their political clout, we may be less tempted to lust after political power, which means we may have one less distraction from actually doing what God called us to do — namely, manifesting God’s reign by how we humbly live, love and serve.

4. As my friend Alan Hirsch demonstrates in his great book, The Forgotten Ways, the Kingdom has always thrived — and really, has only thrived — when it was on the margins of society. The Kingdom is, by its very nature, a “contrast society.” If Christians lose all their power and position in society and become marginalized, this can’t help but be good for the Kingdom. If Christians become persecuted, it likely will be even better. We’d be turning back the clock from the disaster of Constantinian triumphalist Christianity in the direction of Apostolic, servant Christianity.

5. The “Christian” element of American culture was never deeper than the thin veneer of a shared civic religion. A major problem Kingdom people have faced on the mission field of America is that the majority of people mistook the civic religion for the real thing. So it is that so many think that being “Christian” is focused on preserving the civic religion (e.g. fighting for prayer before sports events, keeping the ten commandments on government buildings, holding onto a “Christian” definition of marriage within our government, etc.). Not only this, but this veneer of Christianity causes Jesus followers not to notice the many ways foundational assumptions that permeate American culture are diametrically opposed to the values of the Kingdom. If the civic religion of Christianity were to die, Kingdom people would be less tempted to associate Christianity with symbolic civic functions and would become more aware of how the Kingdom sharply contrasts with foundational aspects of American culture.

6. Finally, and closely related to this, if Jesus followers lose all their position and power and become a minority (or better, revealed to have always been a minority) in American culture, this will expose the idol of American individualism we have bought into for far too long and perhaps help us realize that we need to cling to each other and that the Kingdom is inherently communal. We are called to manifest God’s uniquely beautiful love and bear witness to the reality of Jesus Christ by how we share our lives and serve one another (e.g. Jn. 17:20-26; Acts 2: 42-47. 4: 42-45). But its very difficult for many of us to embrace radical Kingdom community when we can get along very well (by American standards of “well”) without it. The demise of Constantinian American Christianity would serve us well by stripping us of the privilege of individualistic living.

Other possible positive outcomes of the demise of American Christianity could be listed, but this must suffice for now. I hope it is enough to show that, from a Kingdom perspective, the demise of American Christianity is not something we should weep over. To the contrary, its actually good news. Yes, it will likely bring about cultural disarray. But, as has often been noted, the Kingdom thrives best when the broader cultural is falling apart. The God-given mandate to Kingdom people is not to keep the broader culture from falling apart, but to offer all who are hungry a radically different, far more beautiful, way of doing life. And often people will not take this offer seriously until everything else is crumbling around them.

Let the civic religion die. And if the culture crumbles, it crumbles. Our task is to live in a way that gives people hope.

Think about it,

Greg

The Battle of Good and Evil (A Sermon)

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Locational Privacy

Locational privacy (also known as "location privacy") is the ability of an individual to move in public space with the expectation that under normal circumstances their location will not be systematically and secretly recorded for later use.

How much locational privacy do you have? How many CCTV cameras record your comings-and-goings everyday? Are your photo taken at the ATM every time you make a withdrawal? Is there a log at your local library of the books that you read -- and is this log really private? How safe are your surfing habits from Internet spying? Did you suddenly get spam mail, email, cell phone text messaging, after you signed up for a new account with a store, bank, or other service? Are your movements "tracked" via your cellphone, without you knowing?

Benito Mussolini

"Speeches made to the people are essential to the arousing of enthusiasm for a war."

"Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived in their relation to the State. "