Ray Fowler .org

FactCheck.org picks up on the following errors by both candidates at the 2008 Vice Presidential Debate last night.

Gov. Sarah Palin:

• Palin mistakenly claimed that troop levels in Iraq had returned to “pre-surge” levels. Levels are gradually coming down but current plans would have levels higher than pre-surge numbers through early next year, at least.
• Palin repeated a false claim that Obama once voted in favor of higher taxes on “families” making as little as $42,000 a year. He did not. The budget bill in question called for an increase only on singles making that amount, but a family of four would not have been affected unless they made at least $90,000 a year.
• Palin claimed McCain’s health care plan would be “budget neutral,” costing the government nothing. Independent budget experts estimate McCain’s plan would cost tens of billions each year, though details are too fuzzy to allow for exact estimates.
• Palin wrongly claimed that “millions of small businesses” would see tax increases under Obama’s tax proposals. At most, several hundred thousand business owners would see increases.

Sen. Joe Biden:

• Biden incorrectly said “John McCain voted the exact same way” as Obama on a controversial troop funding bill. The two were actually on opposite sides.
• Biden wrongly claimed that McCain “voted the exact same way” as Obama on the budget bill that contained an increase on singles making as little as $42,000 a year. McCain voted against it. Biden was referring to an amendment that didn’t address taxes at that income level.
• Biden wrongly claimed that McCain had said “he wouldn’t even sit down” with the government of Spain. Actually, McCain didn’t reject a meeting, but simply refused to commit himself one way or the other during an interview.

Now, who’s fact checking FactCheck? 🙂

Related post: How to Watch a Debate

In case you missed it, here is the video of the full 2008 Vice
Presidential Debate between Gov. Sarah Palin and Sen. Joe Biden.
(Video length: 1:32:30)

Here are some good tips on watching the debates from Alan Johnson, a reporter with The Columbus Dispatch (with extra comments by H.B. London).

• Listen actively. Switch from a passive mode to a learning mode. Pay attention.
• Focus on substance not style. It is not so much how they look and how they sound as it is the clarity of their plans and positions.
• Ignore subtle and disruptive behavior. You have seen candidates twist questions to the point that no answer is ever really given. You need to listen for a response that represents your questions. Discount gamesmanship.
• Keep an open mind. Sometimes I find myself wanting the debaters to say what I want them to say and discounting the other person, even if he or she makes sense. Do you? My political bias many times gets in the way.
• Turn off the TV when the debate is over. The spin zone and post-debate analysis are designed to influence you. Make up your own mind.
• Give your own grade. Be objective. Weigh the significance of the issues. The polls are for the masses — the debate is for you.

HT: The Pastor’s Weekly Briefing

Related post: Fact Checking the Palin/Biden Debate

This was put out by the Gospel Coalition in 2007. Tim Keller answers the question: “What do you tell pastors about their family life?” You have probably heard it all before, but these are wise words and well worth repeating.

(Video length: 1:43)

I don’t really know of any minister that gets to the tenth or the twentieth year that doesn’t wish they had spent more time with their family. I don’t know of anybody. In fact my wife likes to say: No minister on his death bed said, “I wish I had spent more time at the office.” Or … even, “I wish I had spent more time in ministry.” This is very hard to imagine, ministers on their death bed feeling like that. They almost always will say, “I wish I had spent more time with God, one on one, and I wish I had spent more time with my children and my wife.” … It’s so obvious as soon as you think about it … you know what you’re going to regret, so why don’t you try to diminish those regrets right now …

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that there is no way for that to happen easily, and people are going to get mad at you if you do it right. And Jesus says, “Beware when all men speak well of you.” So … balls are going to drop and people are going to be angry at you, but guess what, balls are going to drop and people are going to be angry at you anyway, and then you’ll be prayerless and you won’t have a strong family. So you might as well have a strong relationship with God and a strong family and have people mad at you, because they’re going to be mad at you anyway.

I prayed yesterday for seven evangelical believers in Sichuan Mongol. I don’t know much about them. I don’t know if they are men, women or children. I don’t know if they have contact with each other. God knows. I simply prayed.

The Sichuan Mongolians of China were yesterday’s unreached people group of the day from the Joshua Project. They have a population of 33,000 of which 0.1% is Christian and 0.02% is evangelical. That works out to about thirty-three Christians, seven of whom are evangelical.

Of course I prayed for all the Christians, as well as for the people of Sichuan Mongol in general. But I especially prayed for seven evangelical believers living among an unreached people group of 33,000 — that God would encourage them, strengthen them in their faith, and help them as they seek to share the good news of Jesus with others.

Okay, this one has started to make the rounds, but I couldn’t resist posting it here. From the good folks at Despair.com:

Blogging: Never before have so many people with so
little to say said so much to so few.

Aaah, Despair.com. You’ve just got to love a company with slogans like “The Relentless Pursuit of Dejection” and “Increasing Success by Lowering Expectations.”

Update: There was some thoughtful concern expressed that I might be questioning the value of blogging with this post. If you share that concern, please read the comments below!

Here is an interesting graph from the New York Times showing the history of home values from 1890 to the present adjusted for inflation.

    (Click on the image for a larger picture. Click a second time to zoom in.)

The Yale economist Robert J. Shiller created an index of American housing prices going back to 1890. It is based on sale prices of standard existing houses, not new construction, to track the value of housing as an investment over time. It presents housing values in consistent terms over 116 years, factoring out the effects of inflation.

Or, if you prefer, you can view the same chart plotted on a roller coaster graph below. (HT: Between Two Worlds)

(Video length: 3:41)

• Spliced. Splicd allows you to share just the portion you want from any YouTube video. Just enter the start and end points and voilá!
• Bible to be Handwritten by 31,000. Zondervan’s next edition of the Bible will be handwritten by more than 31,000 Americans. (Hmmm, maybe they’ve been reading Ray Pritchard’s blog.)
• Star Trek continuity errors galore! Peter Chattaway posts a number of YouTube mashups of Star Trek continuity errors. They are fun to browse, but I would never have time to watch them all.
• Funerals for the Living. Al Mohler reports on “funerals for the living” in Thailand. People pay money for a two-minute funeral experience in a Buddhist temple where they are offered “an opportunity to die, rise up again newborn and make a fresh start in life.”

I have mixed feelings over the recently defeated bailout bill. I would like to see the American economy succeed without it, but there are strong indications that some sort of bailout is necessary to keep the economy afloat. Still, no one seems to know whether the bailout will succeed in fixing our problems or only delay the inevitable, perhaps even making things worse.

I can see why Congress is so divided on the bill. $700 billion ($700,000,000,000) is a lot of money to throw around when you are not sure if it will even work. As Bob Krumm writes:

How big is $700 billion? This source reports that to date America has spent $583 billion to fight the war in Iraq. That’s right, we taxpayers are being asked to add an immediate expense to the federal budget that is more than $100 billion greater than has already been spent on more than five years of war. (Bob Krumm: Call me a skeptic)

Of course the $1.1 trillion ($1,100,000,000,000) lost on Wall Street yesterday cannot be ignored either, although thankfully we are seeing some of that made back today. Thomas Sowell at Townhall recognizes the difficulties but still ends up arguing against the bailout:

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac do not deserve to be bailed out, but neither do workers, families and businesses deserve to be put through the economic wringer by a collapse of credit markets, such as occurred during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Neither do the voters deserve to be deceived on the eve of an election by the notion that this is a failure of free markets that should be replaced by political micro-managing.

If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were free market institutions they could not have gotten away with their risky financial practices because no one would have bought their securities without the implicit assumption that the politicians would bail them out.

It would be better if no such government-supported enterprises had been created in the first place and mortgages were in fact left to the free market. This bailout creates the expectation of future bailouts.

Phasing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would make much more sense than letting politicians play politics with them again, with the risk and expense being again loaded onto the taxpayers. (Thomas Sowell: Bailout Politics)

Meanwhile Terence Corcoran at the Financial Post argues that we should let the market correct itself.

It would be unwise to read too much into the Dow plunge, or to link it exclusively to the political circus in Washington. Stocks appeared to be heading lower no matter how Congress voted. Indeed, from the moment congressional leaders announced Sunday they had a deal, filled with anti-market schemes and regulation, stock prices began falling in Asia and Europe. Early yesterday, when it was expected the bailout would be approved, the Dow was down 500 points.

Bailout or no bailout, the stock markets were heading lower as financial markets continue to undergo massive asset revaluations. No matter what elaborate new rescue packages Congress, the Bush administration and the U.S. Federal Reserve bring to the party, the market is going to continue marking stock prices and other assets down until values reach realistic levels.

This is not, nor can it be, the beginning of the end of the U.S. or world financial system. It’s simply how the financial market works, how it should work. And it is working, whatever the games being played out in Washington and whatever their belief that governments can resolve the crisis. (Financial Post: Financial markets go up and down as they should)

So, what do you think? Should we be bailing out the bailout? Or let the economy run its course?

Related posts:

• How Big Is a Trillion?
• Scary Financial Movie Trailer

Last week I posted an article called Palin, Prayer and Precedent. The article looked at Sarah Palin’s prayer for U.S. troops in relation to historical examples of U.S. presidents who also invoked prayer during times of war. (Gov. Palin’s remarks were made during an address to students at Wasilla Assembly of God Church in Wasilla, Alaska.)

The post was linked by Ann Althouse which prompted one reader to respond by raising an additional question concerning Palin and prayer — this time in relation to Palin’s request for prayer about the Alaskan pipeline (made during the same address to students at Wasilla).

We had a back-and-forth discussion in the comments section at Ann Althouse which I thought would be fun to reproduce here. A big thanks to Amy Jacobs for granting me permission to post her comments. Enjoy the discussion!

______________________________________________________________

Amy: The Ray Fowler post makes the same arguments seen elsewhere for Palin’s prayer. The problem with Fowler’s spin is that it doesn’t explain a similarly bizarre comment from Palin: “I think God’s will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that.” In this instance it’s clear that Palin claims to know God’s will.

Fowler’s attempt to spin Palin’s prayer offers up this distinction: “There is a big difference between claiming that something is God’s plan and praying that something we do lines up with God’s plan.” Palin says that building the gas line is God’s will. I have no idea how Palin claims to know God’s will regarding US economic and energy policy. In any case an invocation of Lincoln doesn’t help Palin out on this one.

                            – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Ray: I don’t think Gov. Palin is necessarily saying she knows God’s will for the pipeline. I am sure if you asked her she would explain more clearly what she meant. It is similar to Senator Obama and the lipstick on a pig comment. His words could have been interpreted negatively towards Palin, but when given a chance to explain himself, he told us what he meant by the words. In the same way I think we should let Gov. Palin interpret her own words instead of jumping to conclusions.

                            – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Amy: I can only go by what Palin says. In this case it’s perfectly clear: Palin claims to know God has a plan for building a gas line. Words have meaning, which is why you spent so much time analyzing precisely what Palin said about our troops in Iraq. We should hold our politicians responsible for their actions and their words.

Except the new Republican game is to defend ridiculous comments by Republican politicians by arguing that it’s just “verbiage.” Palin did this when she defended McCain’s assertion that the fundamentals of the economy are strong: “Well, it was an unfair attack on the verbiage that Senator McCain chose to use.” I think you use the same sort of defense of Palin: “I am sure if you asked her she would explain more clearly what she meant.”

It’s perfectly clear what she meant. She’s used phrases like “God’s will” and “God’s plan” on more than one occasion in support of political positions. If Palin had used the phrase “God’s will” in urging humanitarian work, it wouldn’t be a concern since the Bible offers instruction about charity and giving. But the Bible offers no guidance about gas lines. Therefore when Palin talks about “God’s will” regarding gas lines, she’s using religion to carry a political agenda.

                            – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Ray: Well, it’s more than possible that I am reading my own worldview into this whole scenario, but I don’t think it is perfectly clear that she meant what you say. Palin said: “I think God’s will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that.” Couldn’t she simply be saying that if its God’s will for this pipeline to be built, then it is going to take a lot of people coming together, so let’s pray for that?

Once again, I could be pushing my own world view onto this, but I come from a Christian background where we talk about God’s will a lot. And we never assume that “my will is God’s will.” We hope that what we are doing lines up with God’s will, and we pray for God’s will to be done, but I sincerely doubt that Sarah Palin was claiming divinely revealed knowledge about the Alaskan pipeline.

                            – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Amy: That might be what she meant to say, but it’s clearly not what she did say. What she did say is that it’s God’s will for Alaskans to build a gas line and the project will require people and companies to come together.

I come from a Christian background too. I’ve heard people talk about “God’s will” and “God’s plan” in regard to Biblical lessons, but not in referencing specific political projects like building gas lines. Based on your Christian background, can you provide a textual reference to support the idea that God has a plan for gas lines in Alaska?

                            – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Ray: How about Zechariah 4:12? (“Again I asked him, ‘What are these two olive branches beside the two gold pipes that pour out golden oil?'”) Just kidding. I am sure both you and I would agree that this is an irresponsible use of the Biblical text by taking it out of context. But that is exactly my point. From what I know of Gov. Palin’s background, she also would be firmly against using a text like this to justify building a pipeline in Alaska.

I don’t believe Gov. Palin was saying or has ever said that she has Scriptural warrant or a direct decree from God to build a pipeline in Alaska. But she was asking for prayer about it. And she was praying for God’s will to be done.

Just as we let Senator Obama explain what he meant by “lipstick on a pig,” (and I accepted his explanation), I think we should let Gov. Palin explain her words instead of interpret them for her. Now, if she suddenly starts spouting Zechariah 4:12 in favor of two Alaskan pipelines, I will grant you your point and come over to your side. 🙂

______________________________________________________________

Thanks, Amy, for a fun discussion. I enjoyed the back and forth even if we ultimately end up disagreeing with each other on this one. And the comments are open if you would like the last word!

Related posts:

• Palin, Prayer and Precedent
• Journalists Code of Ethics
• Sunday at Sarah Palin’s Church
• Sarah Palin Roundup

• Pastors’ Pulpit Politics Draw Complaints. Americans United for Separation of Church and State has already filed complaints against six of the 33 pastors who deliberately defied federal tax law by endorsing candidates from their pulpits on Sunday.
• The Perelandra Project. The Oxford C.S. Lewis Society and the Donald Swann Estate are planning a production of PERELANDRA the Opera to debut in June 2009. (Perelandra is the second book in C.S. Lewis’ space trilogy.)
• Iron Man 2 Conflicts with Dawn Treader. Not again? As much as I enjoyed the first Iron Man, I still think it’s release schedule had a negative impact on Prince Caspian at the box office.
• Incognito Browsing. Tim Challies warns parents about new features on web browsers which could allow children to browse the web without leaving a history of the sites visited. (See Taming the Internet in the Home for further tips on protecting your children online.)

This past weekend was the 2008 Desiring God National Conference. The theme of the conference was on the power of words. Speakers included John Piper, Sinclair Ferguson, Bob Kauflin, Mark Driscoll, Dan Taylor and Paul Tripp. You can find links to the messages in written, audio or video form here: 2008 Desiring God National Conference

Related post: 2008 Desiring God Pastors Conference

This past weekend was the 2008 Ligonier Ministries West Coast Conference. The theme was Tough Questions Christians Face. Speakers included R.C. Sproul, John MacArthur and Ligon Duncan. Here are summaries of each of the sessions as live-blogged by Alex Chediak and posted on the Ligonier Blog.

• Has Science Disproved the Existence of God? (Ligon Duncan)
• Why Does God Allow So Much Suffering and Evil? (John MacArthur)
• Q & A Session (R.C. Sproul, John MacArthur, Ligon Duncan)
• If God is Sovereign, How Can Man be Free? (R.C. Sproul)
• Is Jesus the Only Way? (John MacArthur)
• Q & A Session II (R.C. Sproul, John MacArthur, Ligon Duncan)
• Should the Church Embrace Postmodernism? (Ligon Duncan)
• What is the Gospel? (R.C. Sproul)