Hypothetical

If I should ever get married, and if I should have a child, and if it should be a boy... then I imagine I'd have a strong preference to name him Isaac. I know when I was a kid, I heard the story about Sarah laughing when Abraham was told that she'd have a son at their age, and as a kid I always imagined it as a jovial sort of laugh. But being 30 and just as single as always, I think I understand the laugh better as the sort of cynical laugh you use to try and mask your deep disappointment when dreams go unmet, and someone suggests that after countless years of living with that disappointment that everything will change. I know if someone told me that the scenario above were going to happen within a year, I'd laugh too - in just the way I expect Sarah laughed.

And so, should it ever actually happen, I like the name Isaac as a reminder that sometimes God can make the laughably impossible possible. For now, though, all I have is the laugh.

Warning!

Do you have a lead-lined tape-dispenser? Maybe you should.

Freedom and Purpose

It is for freedom that Christ set us free. You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.

-Paul

Comedic Gold

Flaming Squirrel Blamed for Northern California Wildfire

REDDING, Calif. — With southern California fighting wind-driven flames and spot fires breaking out across northern California, firefighters have fingered at least one arsonist: an unlucky squirrel.

Redding firefighters say the squirrel set off the blaze when it shorted out a power line, caught fire and dropped into dry vegetation.

Battalion Chief Gerry Gray says it took 18 firefighters and six fire engines to fight the fire that started behind a Redding restaurant.

The fire briefly threatened a home before it was contained Monday.

Redding Electric Utility spokesman Pat Keener says about 200 customers might have noticed their electricity flicker when the squirrel shorted out the high-voltage power line. But the incident did not cause a power outage.

Insanity

I've probably gotten at least 1 call every other day for at least 3 years proclaiming "This is the second notice that the factory warranty on your car is about to expire, or may have already expired..."

By my estimate, then, I have gotten around 500 such "second notices." I usually swing from being irritated by the interruption posed by such calls, to being amused at just how many second notices I've gotten, and back again.

Today, the response is amusement.

Novelty

It is still a novel thing for me to have my opinions regarded seriously, whether at church or at work. I suppose when you end up becoming a leader, that's what happens... but I'm rather cemented in the idea that "Hey, it's just me talking here."

How did it happen?

In short - neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have a good answer. In longer form, here's the most accessible, reasonable, data-based explanation I have seen yet. It takes the form of an imaginary testimony and a written statement before Congress.

From the imaginary testimony:

I reject the two main partisan narratives of this crisis. The Left wants to blame deregulation motivated by free-market ideology. It is true that poorly-conceived regulation was a major factor. However, the blindness of key regulators reflected not ideology but ordinary bureaucratic information loss. The knowledge that existed inside Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Treasury, and the Federal Reserve did not flow up to the leaders of those organizations.

The Right wants to blame overly-aggressive lending to minorities and low-quality borrowers, promoted by Congress and regulators. While it is true that many loans were made that should not have been made, the problem was not the color of the borrowers' skins or the content of their credit reports. The problem was low down payments and a large proportion of mortgages for what the industry calls non-owner-occupied homes or investor loans, and what ordinary people would think of as speculators.

Reflection

The last week is probably a good time to reinforce the message "Store up for yourself treasure in heaven..." with the modern caveat "where no plunge in the stock market, however deep, can in any way diminish it."

November

I wouldn't be surprised if Senator Obama gets 400 electoral votes in November. The shame is, I have yet to hear him put forward a convincing explanation for the economic crisis that will shove him into the Presidency, as his only line that I've heard is "it's because of deregulation," which the more I read looks both true and woefully false. The truth is that a lack of transperency (which regulation could have addressed) is a part of the problem, but another problem was misguided regulation - that is, the specific initiatives pushed by both parties to increase homeownership among people that couldn't afford homes the traditional way.

That push spawned (1) the subprime loans and (2) the rapid surge in home values that were key elements in the precipitation of this crisis.

Misguided regulation remains, for me, a huge part of the cause of the crisis. So please, forgive me if I feel a sense of dread about what could follow in the next 4 years as someone who is crying for more as-yet-undefined regulation gets enough political capital to do just about anything his heart desires.

Dean Heller's "Nay" Vote

Representative Dean Heller, whose Congressional District includes Reno, voted against the Bailout Bill in the House both times he had the chance. I heard him on the radio today saying it was because the bill won't address what went wrong, and it won't fix the problem.

That is a valid opinion, if he knows what went/is going wrong... and what it would take to fix it. I'd like to hear his opinion on those points - if you know that this won't address the root cause, then I'm assuming you also know what the root cause is. And if the answer is "the government telling banks to lend to more minorities," then I'll know he listens to too much talk radio.