Family

We had the whole family together for a few days. Bede Jr. came home for a couple of days to spend time with us before he deploys to Iraq next Monday. We packed lots of good family time into 3 1/2 days. We celebrated Andrew's 22nd birthday on Monday with dinner at Vincenzo's and delicious cheescake baked by Joanna. It has been wonderful having all the kids home. Bede and I are truly blessed.

It's here....

I love my new bike.

It has arrived. We picked it up this morning, assembled it after the Husker game and went for a wonderful long ride. It's totally tricked out. It has a basket that easliy comes off if I go shopping and can take it into the market with me. It has lights, front and back,they flash, strobe, or shine solid and best of all, a bell. It's very Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Pee Wee loves his bike too.




I know I had previously stated that the bike has one speed, actually it has 3....fast, going downhill, nice and easy on the flat lands, and sloooowwww uphill. All these speeds are operator dependent. The only time I notice that Nebraska is not really flat are:
1. when it snows and the streets are slippery, and
2: when I'm on a bike. Then, incredibly, it seems as if Nebraska is nothing but small hills.
Bede and I rode together, both admitting we are out of shape and need to ride often. We rode for an hour or so and made plans to ride again tomorrow. It's great biking weather, sunny, 60's, crisp clean air, trees every shade of
autumn.
I'll take some pics tomorrow.

Capitalism vs socialism & marxism

Reprinted from the Preistly Pugilist website:
http://home.ix.netcom.com/~pugilist/index.htm




 Every time we run into financial difficulties we hear the old allegation that capitalism is unjust, immoral and certainly not compatible with Christianity, which is all about loving our neighbour - not about trying to put him out of business. Capitalism is represented as red in tooth and claw, a harsh and unfair system in which many are forced to the wall by the excessive greed of high financiers.
          Before passing on to examine the justification for this view, we need to look at the main historical alternative to capitalism, which is socialism. It is probably no exaggeration to say that socialism has never worked anywhere it has been tried and in its extreme form has generally led to dictatorships, tyrannies, gulags, purges and mass murder of whole populations. Stalin is reckoned to have slaughtered forty million of his people. Notoriously he replied to his critics by saying: "One man's death is a tragedy: the death of a million men is a statistic." Mao is estimated to have killed up to twice as many as Stalin.
          Socialism, even when it does not lead to mass murder, has proved again and again to be inefficient. Have you heard the one about the Soviet citizen who bought a new car? He was told to expect delivery on a Tuesday 10 years hence. He asked the salesman: "Will that be in the morning or the afternoon?" The salesman was incredulous: "It's 10 years before delivery - why do you need to know morning or afternoon?" The resigned customer answered: "Because I've got a new washing machine coming that Tuesday morning."
          Marx talked about "the contradictions of capitalism". But these are as nothing compared with the contradictions of socialism. As Chesterton put it: "How is it that it is a crime for a man to own a field, but all right for the state to own an oil field?"
          But apart from its renowned inefficiencies, there is another and more fundamental reason why socialism doesn't work. It is an ideal. And ideals can be operated only by people who are themselves ideal. Whereas the Christian faith teaches that we are all mired and marred by Original Sin.
          This is not some weird, superstitious phenomenon; it is simply how we are. St Paul expressed it perfectly in words which even a member of the General Synod could understand: "The thing I would, I do not; and what I would not, that I do." The former Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins, put it colourfully: "Original Sin is just the buggeration factor." We all fall short of our best intentions. Who can put up his hand and say that he is all loving, kind, generous and entirely unselfish? Only a humbug would make such claims. We cannot pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. That is the heresy of Pelagianism. If we were naturally good, why would we need the Saviour? Actually it is those moral and political fanatics who do believe in their own righteousness and the perfection of their particular party who end up perpetrating the worst genocides.
          Capitalism is far from perfect, but at least it has a chance of delivering moderate success. And this is because it works with the grain of human nature rather than against it. In order to enrich himself a man works very hard and invents a good mousetrap. He becomes a millionaire. But in achieving his self-interested aim he enables millions of homes to be delivered from disease-bearing vermin.
          The market economy - freedom to own property and to trade under the rule of law - is an imperfect system. But it is probably the best mortal, fallen people are capable of this side of heaven. As we have seen on far too many occasions, the alternative is too ghastly to contemplate.

by Rev. Peter Mullen

Here are 2 links to sites with info and photos about the plane Bede Jr. will fly and the mission of the unit. He will be home in a couple of weeks to spend some time with the fam before he deploys. Keep him and all those serving our country in your prayers.



http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123117304


http://www.af.mil/news/story_media.asp?id=123117304

New Bike

I bought a new bike. Actually I ordered it. It has yet to arrive. I'm very excited about it. It has 1 speed...me, and however fast I can pedal. It has no hand brakes, just pedal backwards and stop. Did I say New bike? Sounds to me just like the bikes we grew up with. They call them "Cruisers" now. We just called them bikes. Who knew? I've had bikes, I have one now. Lots of speeds, lots of gears...I never am in the right one. The hand brakes squeek and one works better than the other. I always feel as I am hunched over the handlebars. Soon I will be "cruising" down the street in my old, new bike.





For some reason, the vision of the wicked witch from the wizard of Oz keeps flashing in my mind, along with the tune as she rides her bike along the road...different bike, different witch...this one likes dogs...

The Background....

If we are pointing fingers, and it seems as though everyone is, about the mess we call our economy, then read this and point away....

Shortly before the House rejected the $700-billion “bailout” of the U.S. financial system, Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused Republicans of causing the problem. She said, “They claim to be free-market advocates, when it’s really an ‘anything goes’ mentality: no regulation, no supervision, no discipline.” The timing of Pelosi’s remarks was curious: One would think the moments before a tense vote in which Republican support is essential would be a time to avoid partisan attacks. Not our Nancy.

Pelosi’s timing was off, but we agree in part with her assessment. An “anything goes” mentality toward two firms in particular contributed substantially to the financial meltdown. “No regulation, no supervision, no discipline” is definitely the right way to describe the attitude that allowed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to grow into unstable behemoths that helped inflate the housing bubble and left taxpayers holding a mountain of bad debt.

Of course, the “free-market advocates” pilloried by Pelosi long ago recognized the risks Fannie and Freddie posed to the financial system. Fannie and Freddie are government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs). As long as they’ve been around, investors have assumed that the U.S. government would never let them fail. Their implied taxpayer backing allowed them to borrow at low rates and maintain debt-to-equity ratios that would have caused concern at other firms.

Direct and indirect government subsidies allowed the GSEs to grow huge. Starting in 1970, they doubled the amount of mortgage debt on their books every five years — from $15 billion in 1970 to over $5 trillion when they finally collapsed. Free-market advocates warned that Fannie and Freddie’s heedless growth was, to quote Alan Greenspan, “placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.” But the GSEs built an impressive lobbying machine to keep would-be regulators at bay.

Over the past ten years, Fannie and Freddie spent over $200 million on lobbying and campaign contributions. Democrats Chris Dodd, John Kerry, and Barack Obama — the top recipients of Fannie and Freddie largesse — have all broken the $100,000 mark. It should come as no surprise that Senate Democrats were the key obstacle to reforming Fannie and Freddie when Congress had a chance in 2005, before the mortgage crisis spiraled out of control.

Fannie and Freddie’s defenders in the House were no better. Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank maintained that Fannie and Freddie did not pose a risk to the financial system, even as they helped inflate the housing bubble by subsidizing mortgage debt. Then, when the bubble finally burst, Frank tried to loosen Fannie and Freddie’s constraints so they could reinflate it. They might have succeeded if they hadn’t collapsed, requiring a bailout from taxpayers that could cost as much as $200 billion.

Fannie and Freddie were not the only irresponsible players whose behavior led to the mortgage meltdown. The Federal Reserve held interest rates too low for too long, making mortgage debt look like a better investment than it was. The Community Reinvestment Act, championed by Democrats, coerced banks into lowering their credit standards to meet diversity targets. And certainly, Wall Street deluded itself into thinking that relentless securitization could make risk disappear. But Fannie and Freddie were definitely the biggest players, and the Democrats’ “anything goes” mentality allowed their worst excesses to go unregulated, unsupervised, and undisciplined.

Reprinted from the National Review Online