A Word for Today

May 26, 2009

Our Daily Bread

Calling Evil Good

ODB RADIO: Listen Now | DOWNLOAD: Download
READ: Isaiah 5:18-23

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil! —Isaiah 5:20

The Wizard of Oz has remained popular for years. People of all ages have learned moral lessons from Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion as they traveled down the yellow brick road. Of course, in the plot line the great enemy to be overcome is the Wicked Witch of the West. Evil is clearly depicted and overcome by good.

A new Broadway musical, however, turns the moral sense of the original story on its head. In this rewriting of the story, the wicked witch is presented as a sympathetic character. Born with green skin, she feels like an outsider. Major characters, plot lines, roles, and other details are altered so that the wicked witch is really just a misunderstood person. The audience might come away with the idea that evil is good and good is evil.

During the ministry of the prophet Isaiah, a reversal of moral values took place in Israel. Some actually lifted up the evils of murder, idolatry, and adultery as good. In response, Isa iah gave a stern warning: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil!” (Isa. 5:20). In our relativistic world, popular culture constantly challenges biblical values. But studying, memorizing, and meditating on God’s Word can ensure our discernment between good and evil. —Dennis Fisher

In our day-to-day existence,
Evil sometimes wears a mask;
Trust the Lord for true discernment—
He gives wisdom when we ask. —Hess

If we know the truth, we can discern what’s false.

# # The Dow will plunge to our target of 5,000; the S&P, to 500.

Memorial Day Disaster
by Martin D. Weiss, Ph.D.

Dear Woody,

This would normally be my time for a quiet Memorial Day at home.

But even as we seek calm, investors overseas are doing precisely the opposite.

They're dumping U.S. assets.

They're driving those assets down in price.

And they're threatening to sink our entire economy into a THIRD phase of this crisis.

Remember: The first phase was the debt disaster. The second phase was the collapse in the economy. Now, in the third phase, Treasury bonds and the U.S. dollar are getting hit hard, largely due to foreign selling.

The latest drama began this past Thursday ...

The supply of U.S. Treasury bonds dumped on the market was so overwhelming, even the Federal Reserve, with all its massive efforts to buy up bonds, could not stop the avalanche.

By the time most traders left for the weekend Friday afternoon, ALL of the gains in bond prices the Fed had been able to engineer in recent weeks were wiped out — vanquished by market forces beyond the Fed's control.

Why The U.S. Government Is the Next Victim of the Market's Revenge!

Look. In each successive phase of this debt crisis, investors have consistently attacked and destroyed the market value of institutions that owned large amounts of toxic assets — Countrywide Financial, Fannie Mae, Citigroup, Bank of America and many others.

The shares of these companies were pummeled; their ability to raise new capital, virtually extinguished.

Now it's the U.S. government that's the next victim of the market's revenge.

Why?

Because the government never was — and never will be — immune to market selling. Like private corporations, it borrows. Like any borrower, it has creditors. And like all creditors, it's ultimately up to THEM — not up to the borrower — to decide what to do with their money.

But unlike most borrowers, the U.S. government has arrogantly thumbed its nose at its creditors. Without remorse.

"We can do anything we damn please," was the message from Uncle Sam.

"We can spend our money wantonly. We can bail out our giant corporations to our heart's content. We can even debase our currency.

"But YOU, our creditors, are stuck with us. No matter what we do, you've got to keep loaning us more money, endlessly."

Our creditors swallowed hard and tolerated this message for a while. But not now.

Now they're fed up. They can't take it anymore.

Now, explicitly or implicitly, the U.S. government has assumed the liability for TRILLIONS of dollars of bad mortgages, sour commercial paper, and sick consumer credit.

Now, directly or indirectly, the U.S. government has placed its own credit and credibility in grave jeopardy.

And now, our creditors are raving mad, dumping U.S. bonds and the U.S. dollar.

The Immediate Consequences ...

• Treasury bond prices aren't the only U.S. assets plunging. The U.S. dollar is also plunging against major world currencies. It has just fallen below 6-month lows. It's almost certainly going to fall further.
  
  
• Gold has surged dramatically, coming within striking distance of the $1,000 level — and beyond.
  
  
• Meanwhile, new, unexpected supplies of bonds are being tossed on the market on TOP of the massive supplies the Treasury must issue to finance its mammoth $1.84 trillion budget deficit estimated by the Obama administration for fiscal 2009.
  
  
• Long-term interest rates are getting ready to soar far further. And as rates rise, consumers and businesses will have to pay through the nose to borrow. Or they won't be able to borrow at any price.
  
  
• You can expect a sweeping, devastating impact on the economy, especially in the real estate market. Even with LOWER mortgage rates, commercial real estate is already collapsing. With HIGHER mortgage rates, any hope for stabilization will be dashed.
  
  
• Thousands of insurance companies and banks will suffer a new round of losses that could make the subprime mess seem small by comparison.
  
  
• The Dow will plunge to our target of 5,000; the S&P, to 500.

A Unique Convergence of Events

If all of these events can tell you anything, it's that you now have the kind of opportunity that generations of investors could only dream about.

You have the ability to read the handwriting on the wall; to know in advance what is most likely to happen next.

Treasuries bond prices are already sinking. Interest rates are rising. The dollar is falling. Unemployment is surging. Commercial real estate is collapsing. General Motors is going bankrupt.

This is the recipe for disaster I've been warning you about.

But it's also a prescription for some of the greatest profits of all time, using contrarian investments designed to profit from the decline.

Good luck and God bless!

Martin

Ben Stein's final column --

Ben Stein is one of my modern day heroes. Read his Final Column and you will know why.

Ben Stein's final column --


For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column called 'Monday Night At Morton's.' (Morton's is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe.) Now, Ben is terminating the column to move on to other things in his life. Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time.

Ben Stein's Last Column...

How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I 'slug' it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is 'eonline FINAL,' and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it.. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened..? I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a 'star' we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails..

They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him..

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But, I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human

Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.


By Ben Stein

Earthly Wisdom vs. Godly Wisdom

RT Dr. David Jeremiah / Turning Point

Wisdom from Above

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.
James 3:17

Recommended Reading Proverbs 2:1-6

We have become a society obsessed with all-natural, organic products. There are now entire supermarkets devoted to offering organic products, all-natural supplements, and other healthy alternatives. In 2008, people spent over seven billion dollars on organic, all-natural foods. More than 47% of adults admit to having bought organic food in the last year.

Eating healthy and being conscientious about organic foods is good. But natural also has a darker side: the natural man. According to Scripture, "The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Corinthians 2:14). When it comes to spiritual wisdom and discernment, the natural man is dependent only on carnal impulses. And such wisdom is "earthly, sensual, [and] demonic" resulting in "envy . . . self-seeking . . . confusion . . . and every evil thing" (James 3:15-16).

"Natural" solutions fit in with the standards of this world, but they are not adequate for the kingdom of God. When you need wisdom, "Ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach" (James 1:5).

There is no wisdom but that which is founded on the fear of God.
John Calvin

Confused About “Cap And Trade”?

I want to thank our friend Gary Bauer at American Values for clarifying this issue for us.

Confused About “Cap And Trade”?

If you’re confused about the term “cap and trade,” don’t worry – you’re not alone. In recent weeks I’ve gotten several emails from good folks who don’t know what the term refers to, why people are so upset or excited by it or why they should care. As it turns out, only 24% of likely voters understand the term correctly, according to a new Rasmussen poll. Rasmussen found that 30% have no idea what “cap and trade” is, while 29% thought it has something to do with regulating Wall Street and 17% said health care reform.

In general, the term “cap and trade” refers to a plan to regulate energy production and the use of fossil fuels across the entire economy. It is a huge new government mandate. The “cap” refers to government plans to cap or limit the amount of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse” gases that companies can emit. It would hit energy companies especially hard, since half of our nation’s electricity is produced with coal and another 30% comes from other sources like oil and natural gas. All fossil fuels emit carbon dioxide when burned for energy. The “trade” half of the plan refers to the government mandates that force a company to trade or buy permits to emit more carbon dioxide if it exceeds its “cap.” The permits would be issued by the government, so it’s a tax on energy production and energy use, which would be passed on to consumers – you and me.

Representative John Dingell (D-MI), put it best when he said, “Nobody in this country realizes that cap and trade is a tax, and it’s a great big one!” He’s right. As we have noted in previous reports, one estimate suggests that “cap and trade” could result in more than $3,000 in additional expenses to the American family every year, which is why many people refer to the plan as “cap and tax.” But don’t take my word for it. In January of last year, candidate Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle: “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted. …you know, under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

President Obama’s budget, which virtually every liberal in Congress voted for, calls for a “cap and trade” scheme that raises hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes. White House aides have told Senate staffers that the plan could raise as much as $2 trillion in new taxes. Just think about that for a moment. Here we are in the middle of a recession and this White House and liberal politicians on Capitol Hill are scheming to impose one of the biggest tax increases in history. And it will affect every American who turns on a light switch, drives to work or consumes products, since just about every economic activity involves the use of fossil fuels!

American Values
2800 Shirlington Road
Suite 950
Arlington, VA 22206

Phone: 703-671-9700
Fax: 703-671-1680

Conservative for Change: Knock Knock!....It's the IRS Cops

Conservative for Change: Knock Knock!....It's the IRS Cops