From a New York Times interview with President Obama:

THE PRESIDENT: Now, I actually think that the tougher issue around medical care — it’s a related one — is what you do around things like end-of-life care — [New York Times] Yes, where it’s $20,000 for an extra week of life.

THE PRESIDENT: Exactly. And I just recently went through this. I mean, I’ve told this story, maybe not publicly, but when my grandmother got very ill during the campaign, she got cancer; it was determined to be terminal. And about two or three weeks after her diagnosis she fell, broke her hip. It was determined that she might have had a mild stroke, which is what had precipitated the fall.

So now she’s in the hospital, and the doctor says, Look, you’ve got about — maybe you have three months, maybe you have six months, maybe you have nine months to live. Because of the weakness of your heart, if you have an operation on your hip there are certain risks that — you know, your heart can’t take it. On the other hand, if you just sit there with your hip like this, you’re just going to waste away and your quality of life will be terrible.
And she elected to get the hip replacement and was fine for about two weeks after the hip replacement, and then suddenly just — you know, things fell apart.

I don’t know how much that hip replacement cost. I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she’s my grandmother. Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question. If somebody told me that my grandmother couldn’t have a hip replacement and she had to lie there in misery in the waning days of her life — that would be pretty upsetting.

And it’s going to be hard for people who don’t have the option of paying for it.

THE PRESIDENT: So that’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that’s also a huge driver of cost, right?

I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.

So how do you — how do we deal with it?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists.

Ethicists. For some reason that sounds like Orwellian doublespeak or the central of Fahrenheit 451, where firemen are paid to start fires instead of putting them out. I think that Obama’s idea of an ethicist is find someone who takes something completely unethical and couch it in nice terms that we can all understand. We will have real or imagined hard cases put before us and the obvious, nice answer is to kill grandma.

From Peter Hitchens in the Mail Online

Are we going to do the same thing to the unwanted old that we do to unwanted babies? That is to say, are we going to kill lots of them off, and pretend that this is just fine?

I think so. The only question is how we will do it, and what we will call it.

Aborted babies are slaughtered by the tens of thousands, solely because they are inconvenient to young, busy people.

Old, ill parents are also going to become a major nuisance to the same generation, very soon indeed. Baby boomers are all secretly terrified that mum or dad will end up wasting away slowly in a care home, rapidly consuming the inheritance.

Attitudes towards the assisted suicides of conductor Sir Edward Downes and his wife Joan have highlighted society’s questionable views of the value of life

Could this be why the argument for legalising ‘assisted suicide’ is becoming so strident? We are offered lots of weepy hard cases, where terribly ill people are desperate to die and their relatives insist they should be able to help them without any risk of prosecution.

If the people involved are genuinely moved by compassion, what do they have to fear from an investigation and a fair trial? They will be acquitted, even if they are charged. Only those whose motives are suspect are at any risk.

This is why we are asked to admire the rather creepy suicide pact of Sir Edward and Lady Downes, as if it is some sort of act of heroism rather than a sad and squalid snuffing out of life in a Swiss back street.

These hard cases and emotional scenes are the equivalent of the old argument for abortion, that if you didn’t fully legalise it people would go to dangerous amateurs and die horribly. In fact, abortion in dire cases was legalised in 1938 after the famous trial of Dr Aleck Bourne, but that law didn’t offer a free pass to anyone who claimed vaguely that their mental health would be at risk if they carried the baby to term. It required serious evidence.

Yes, Great Britain’s healthcare program really does have a NICE, which stands for National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. And it’s goal is every bit of that which C.S. Lewis described.

I often think that C.S. Lewis was a prophet who never new he possessed the gift.

In real life, the purpose of NICE is to determine what kind of medical treatment people receive. It purpose is to ration healthcare. Anybody who doesn’t think that Obama’s plans would never ration health care is a fool.

From WSJ.com

Speaking to the American Medical Association last month, President Obama waxed enthusiastic about countries that “spend less” than the U.S. on health care. He’s right that many countries do, but what he doesn’t want to explain is how they ration care to do it.

Take the United Kingdom, which is often praised for spending as little as half as much per capita on health care as the U.S. Credit for this cost containment goes in large part to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, or NICE. Americans should understand how NICE works because under ObamaCare it will eventually be coming to a hospital near you.

The British officials who established NICE in the late 1990s pitched it as a body that would ensure that the government-run National Health System used “best practices” in medicine. As the Guardian reported in 1998: “Health ministers are setting up [NICE], designed to ensure that every treatment, operation, or medicine used is the proven best. It will root out under-performing doctors and useless treatments, spreading best practices everywhere.”

What NICE has become in practice is a rationing board. As health costs have exploded in Britain as in most developed countries, NICE has become the heavy that reduces spending by limiting the treatments that 61 million citizens are allowed to receive through the NHS. For example:

In March, NICE ruled against the use of two drugs, Lapatinib and Sutent, that prolong the life of those with certain forms of breast and stomach cancer. This followed on a 2008 ruling against drugs — including Sutent, which costs about $50,000 — that would help terminally ill kidney-cancer patients. After last year’s ruling, Peter Littlejohns, NICE’s clinical and public health director, noted that “there is a limited pot of money,” that the drugs were of “marginal benefit at quite often an extreme cost,” and the money might be better spent elsewhere.

In 2007, the board restricted access to two drugs for macular degeneration, a cause of blindness. The drug Macugen was blocked outright. The other, Lucentis, was limited to a particular category of individuals with the disease, restricting it to about one in five sufferers. Even then, the drug was only approved for use in one eye, meaning those lucky enough to get it would still go blind in the other. As Andrew Dillon, the chief executive of NICE, explained at the time: “When treatments are very expensive, we have to use them where they give the most benefit to patients.”

NICE has limited the use of Alzheimer’s drugs, including Aricept, for patients in the early stages of the disease. Doctors in the U.K. argued vociferously that the most effective way to slow the progress of the disease is to give drugs at the first sign of dementia. NICE ruled the drugs were not “cost effective” in early stages.

Other NICE rulings include the rejection of Kineret, a drug for rheumatoid arthritis; Avonex, which reduces the relapse rate in patients with multiple sclerosis; and lenalidomide, which fights multiple myeloma. Private U.S. insurers often cover all, or at least portions, of the cost of many of these NICE-denied drugs.

NICE has also produced guidance that restrains certain surgical operations and treatments. NICE has restrictions on fertility treatments, as well as on procedures for back pain, including surgeries and steroid injections. The U.K. has recently been absorbed by the cases of several young women who developed cervical cancer after being denied pap smears by a related health authority, the Cervical Screening Programme, which in order to reduce government health-care spending has refused the screens to women under age 25.

I’ve spent a lot time watching “Operation Petticoat” and “Hunt for Red October,” so I consider myself a pretty good military strategist, if you know what I mean. Don’t laugh – that actually gives me a lot more military experience than the numnutzes in the mainstream media have.

My bet is that there will be simultaneous missile strikes from the north along the Turkish border, from the middle across Saudi Arabia, and from submarines and ships in the south. Those operations will take out much of Iran’s counterstrike capabilities and damage some nuclear facilities. Look for Israel to concentrate on taking out Iran’s Air Force, too. Within minutes, Israeli jets will fly along the Turkish border and over Saudi Arabia to completely wipe out the nuke sites.

Is retaliation from Iran likely? Yes, but they will be severely hampered and the Israeli skies will be heavily patrolled. The odds are good that Syria and Gaza will declare war. That may well be Israel’s biggest problem.

From Global Politician

Late last year, Israel embarked on a coordinated campaign of leaks to the press regarding its determination to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities if Obama’s then-new administration fails to sway the Iranians diplomatically. Israel is unwilling to accept a nuclear Iran: “It is not an option”, say its senior intelligence and military leadership.

On January 20, 2009, I appeared as a guest in the most popular political affairs program in Macedonia (“Glasot na Narodot”, or The Voice of the People). I warned that Israel is willing to wait 6 to 8 months for Obama’s “diplomacy” with regards to Iran’s nuclear capability to show some progress. If Iran remains recalcitrant, Israel plans to bomb two facilities in Iran as it did in Iraq in 1981, I said. Refueling won’t be a problem, I assured the program’s host, Slobodan Tomic: both Egypt and Saudi-Arabia offered to help.
Israel has decided to go ahead. Taking into account political, geopolitical, military preparedness, and climatic conditions, there are two windows: between July 21 and 24 and between August 6 and 8. Advance teams comprised of Mossad agents and military personnel are already on the ground in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iraq (including in the Kurdish lands, adjacent to Turkey).

A mock has been erected not far from Eilat (near the Red Sea, opposite Aqaba). A defunct airbase in Biq’at Ha’Yareach (Moon Vale) has been resurrected to accommodate Air Wing 10. In a country as small and intimate as Israel, it is amazing that this has been kept a secret: hundreds of recruits and reservists - from mechanics and pilots to cooks and administrators - have been re-stationed there in the last few months.

A mysterious facility also sprouted up not far from Dimona’s nuclear reactor, next to a university town called Sde Boker. It is not known what is its role, though speculation is that it is intended to shield the sensitive facility from an Iranian counter-attack. Several batteries of aged Patriot missiles have been recently replaced with brand new anti-missile rockets developed by Israel.
Citizens are reporting dry runs in the skies of the Negev, Israel’s traditional air force training grounds and a desert with some resemblance to Iranian conditions. Piecing these scant testimonies together, it seems that the Israelis are concentrating their effort on midair refueling and surgical strikes on multiple targets.

Finally, HAGA (Hagana Ezrakhit), the Civilian Defense Force, a part of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), has been instructed to begin preparations for a possible Iranian counter-strike with long-range conventional missiles. At this stage, Israel is not contemplating chemical or biological warfare (though the distribution of gas masks does seem to be part of the drill).

From the New York Post

Congressional plans to fund a massive health-care overhaul could have a job-killing effect on New York, creating a tax rate of nearly 60 percent for the state’s top earners and possibly pressuring small-business owners to shed workers.

New York’s top income bracket could reach as high as 57 percent – rates not seen in three decades – to pay for the massive health coverage proposed by House Democrats this week.

Click on the graph to the right to see an enlarged version of the graph produced by the New York Post. Check out the “Single Wall Streeter” in the top left corner. Do the math and you probably won’t feel too sorry for the dude who makes $159,000 plus change. Many of you in flyover country think that’s pretty good.

Even in the prime locations In Texas, you can own an impressive home and live pretty danged well on an after-tax salary of $159,000. But in New York City, that puts you squarely in the middle-class. The average studio apartment in New York City is about $2,400 a month. A similar apartment in North Dallas Suburbs will only set you back about $500 a month.

From The Telegraph

Israeli and Egyptian officials said two ships had sailed through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea.

Media reports in Israel said the two Saar-class missile ships had been sent as a “message” to the Tehran government, which has repeatedly issued threats against Israel and is developing nuclear technology believed by the West to be intended for atomic weapons programme.

While Iran denies this, saying its enrichment of uranium is for civilian purposes only, so that it can generate electricity.

Israel has also deployed a submarine using the Suez Canal, but it has since returned to the Mediterranean.

Defence experts in Israel said this week that the naval activity had been publicised with the intent of sending a message to Iran.

-“Egalitarianism and Inflation,” Philosophy: Who Needs It, 133.

While I agree with the author that world governments will do everything they can to prevent deflation, there are some things that are just out of their control.

What if Israel wipes out Iran, and Iran retaliates by lashing out at both Israel and the Sunni Muslim nations surrounding it? The price of oil would necessarily skyrocket and the world economy will go through a severe contraction. It would take years for the flow of oil to resume to current levels.

Check out this entire read by Puru Saxena at FSO:

At present, the investment community is divided as to whether the world economy faces hyperinflation or deflation. Some observers are convinced that the central banks’ printing press will take the world towards hyperinflation whereas others believe that the ongoing contraction in American private-sector debt will result in outright deflation. So, what will the future bring?

It is my contention that we will get neither hyperinflation nor deflation.

What is more likely is that over the coming months, we will get another deflationary scare. Any sell-off in the markets later this year will be met by an even larger stimulus from the policymakers and this will ultimately result in high inflation.

So, I maintain my view that due to the unprecedented policy responses around the globe, the world’s economy will face high inflation over the medium to long-term. And the general price level will double over the coming decade.

In the near-term however, we will probably get another period when the market will (once again) become concerned about the prospects of a lengthy economic contraction. It is conceivable that the ‘green shoots’ hype currently doing the rounds will soon be replaced by more economic worries as a second wave of foreclosures hits America later this year. So, it is possible that before year-end, we will witness large corrections in stocks and commodities. Conversely, we are likely to see big rallies in US government bonds, US Dollar and Japanese Yen.

…

Coming back to the subject of this essay; the reason why I don’t foresee immediate hyperinflation is due to the fact that the velocity of money is currently weak. In other words, at least for the moment, the private-sector in America isn’t participating in Mr. Bernanke’s inflation agenda. Despite the fact that Mr. Bernanke has injected a massive amount of reserves in the banking sector, this money is currently sitting as excess reserves within the American banking system. The fact that this money isn’t being lent out rules out immediate hyperinflation. However, once the American economy stabilizes and the velocity of money picks up, these excess reserves will trigger a massive inflationary wave.

It’s possible that no concept in history has ever come so far, so fast, and with so little substance behind it, as “global warming.” Or, to be precise, anthropogenic global warming (AGW) – the kind caused by us puny humans rather than by that fireball that keeps the planet habitable.

…

Now, rather suddenly, carbon is the designated boogey man. Individually and collectively, we are told, we must work on reducing our “carbon footprint,” or else something awful is going to happen. The headlines are terrifying: we’ll have hellacious droughts, monster hurricanes, and entire cities disappearing beneath the waves.

Well, perhaps. In a climatic feedback system as complex as Earth’s, anything is possible. More likely, though, is that we’ll see none of the above. Or at least not because of anything humans do or fail to do.

The simple (yes, inconvenient) truth is that scientists don’t even know whether the planet is warming at all, let alone if AGW has any role in causing it. The data are inconclusive at best. Most of those dire predictions you’ve read are based upon computer modeling, and anyone who watches the nightly weather forecast knows how infallible that tends to be.

…

Sadly, that misallocation is about to get a whole lot bigger. If the Obama administration has its way – and it is expected to, since there’s no meaningful opposition – carbon caps will soon be coming to every American town.

If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of a carbon cap, it’s simple. It’s a tax. The president wants to reduce per-capita U.S. carbon emissions to 14% below 2005 levels by 2020, and 83% by 2050. And he’s promoting this as a good idea by suggesting that it will pour $646 billion into federal coffers between 2012 and 2019, through government auctions of the rights to emit greenhouse gases. Those rights would be sold to energy companies, manufacturers, utilities, or anyone else who “pollutes” the air with carbon dioxide. And they could be traded.

Leave aside the question of whether reducing human carbon emissions is truly a valid goal; and whether we need another huge tax; and whether the government will do anything constructive with an infusion of our money, to the tune of nearly two-thirds of a trillion dollars. Instead, just consider the consequences.

The cost of everything will go up, as the affected businesses compensate for their lost revenue. If carbon credits are auctioned at the lower end of the projected range (between $13 and $20 a ton), estimates are that the average price of gasoline will jump by 12 cents a gallon and the average electricity bill by 7%.

Worse, though, is that the pain will be unevenly distributed. As the Detroit News editorialized, the cap-and-trade plan “is a giant dagger aimed at the nation’s heartland — particularly Michigan. It is a multi-billion-dollar tax hike on everything that Michigan does.”

That is, it penalizes states and regions with large manufacturing bases and coal dependence for electricity, and rewards places with larger populations but light industry and cleaner power plants. As Michael Morris, CEO of coal-heavy American Electric Power, put it: “It is a clear transfer of the middle part of the country’s wealth to the two coasts.” Small wonder that politicians from California and New England are such enthusiastic supporters.

For what to expect here, we can look to Europe, where cap-and-trade is firmly established. While it has worked, in the sense of lowering carbon emissions (though not by as much as anticipated), its effects have been stifling. For example, the Washington Post cited “the Dutch silicon carbide maker that calls itself the greenest such plant in the world, but now can’t afford to run full-time; the French cement workers who fear they’re going to lose jobs to Morocco, which doesn’t have to meet the European guidelines; and the German homeowners who pay 25 percent more for electricity than they did before – even as their utility companies earn record profits.”

Gary Shilling believes that we are about to enter a deflationary period and that President Obama will be forced to implement a new stimulus package. Since the first package failed, the second will fail as well, and we’ll be even deeper in the debt hole.

The obvious solution for the government is to inflate its way out of debt. But what if they cannot do this?

The bond and stock markets switch back and forth between a deflationary position and an inflationary position about once a month since mid-2008. The bond markets are now in inflationary mode but, if the past six months is any indicator, they will switch back to a deflationary mode in a few weeks.

Why deflation is bad

The short answer is that deflation prevents you from paying your debts. Say you have a $200,000 mortgage on your house and it is valued at $240,000. Your annual household income is $140,000.

When deflation kicks in, prices and salaries drop. If we have 50% deflation (not an unreasonable number), your house now has a value of $120,000 and your income has dropped to $70,000. How are you going to pay off a $200,000 mortgage with that income? You’re not. And if you owe a lot more on your house than it’s worth, you might find that it’s better to let the bank have it back than continuing to make payments.

What is the likelihood of deflation?

The signals are mixed now, as witnessed by recent stock and bond market swings. The government is borrowing money at unprecedented rates and they would rather see inflation than deflation. However, higher taxes and a downward turn in the stock markets will dampen the economy, which could lead to deflation.

Watch for signs that the economy is faltering. Watch also the prices for basic commodities, such as oil and precious metals. If the economy fails and commodities fall, then deflation is likely. If this happens and bond yields increase, shift more of your assets into bonds. Corporate bonds have higher yields than treasuries, but have a higher likelihood of default. However, if you’re judicial in your choice of bond purchases, you can breeze through the recession in style.

Go to Tech Ticker to watch the short interview:

There was a great clamor last week for a second Federal stimulus - because the first one wasn’t working. President Obama threw cold water on that idea over the weekend, when he rejected calls for a second stimulus and suggested that we need to be patient and give the first stimulus time to work.

Well, President Obama will soon be changing his tune, says our guest Gary Shilling.

By the third or fourth quarter, Gary says, the government will launch a second stimulus. Next year is an election year, and despite ballooning deficits, politicians won’t sit idly by and watch themselves not get re-elected because the economy has failed to recover.

The second stimulus will finally trigger an economic recovery…but it won’t happen until next year.

In the meantime, Gary thinks, the stock market will crash again, with the S&P dropping 35% to 600.

When you’re broke, paying higher interest rates is not a good option.

Note that Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for Treasurer Bill Lockyear, claims that  “We’ve never defaulted. We’ve never failed to pay bond investors on time and in full. We’ll maintain that spotless record.” However, the fact is that California has been issuing IOUs for several weeks. Issuing IOUs is not quite the same as paying bond investors, is it?

The old saying is “As goes California, so goes the country.” We are looking at what the entire United will be within three years.

From Yahoo! News:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Moody’s cut its rating on Tuesday on about $72 billion of California’s debt to near junk status, citing the state’s budget crisis, but a top lawmaker said a deal to close a $26.3 billion gap was near.

Moody’s Investors Service in a statement said it cut the state’s general obligation debt by two notches to Baa1, or three notches above speculative “junk” status and the rating may suffer further downgrades because of a growing risk to the state’s ability to make priority payments.

They include payments to investors holding the state’s debt.

Spokesmen for the state treasurer and state controller quickly countered Moody’s, noting priority payments would be honored while Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and leaders of the state’s Democrat-led legislature press on with talks to balance the state’s books.

“We’ve never defaulted. We’ve never failed to pay bond investors on time and in full. We’ll maintain that spotless record,” said Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for State Treasurer Bill Lockyer.

California less than two weeks ago began to issue IOUs to pay some bills in a bid to conserve cash as it struggles to balance its budget.

Moody’s said its downgrade “reflects the increased risk to the legally or constitutionally required payments (“priority payments”) as the state deadlock continues and the controller has begun to make certain payments that are not legally or constitutionally required to be paid on time (“non-priority payments”) with IOUs.”

Without a solution to the state’s budget gap, the risk to priority payments — and eventually debt service payments to bond holders — is increasing, Moody’s said.

“Who Will Protect Us from Our Protectors?”
The Objectivist Newsletter, May 1962, 18.

From CITY OF NORTH LITTLE ROCK HYDRO OPERATOR AR 72114

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From Bloomberg.com

July 7 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. should consider drafting a second stimulus package focusing on infrastructure projects because the $787 billion approved in February was “a bit too small,” said Laura Tyson, an outside adviser to President Barack Obama.

The current plan “will have a positive effect, but the real economy is a sicker patient,” Tyson said in a speech in Singapore today. The package will have a more pronounced impact in the third and fourth quarters, she added, stressing that she was speaking for herself and not the administration.

…

“The economy is worse than we forecast on which the stimulus program was based,” Tyson, who is a member of Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory board, told the Nomura Equity Forum. “We probably have already 2.5 million more job losses than anticipated.”

The economy is worse than forecast? For the past 8 years, even when the stock market was setting new records and unemployment was bouncing around all-time lows, the Democrats and the media kept telling us we were on the brink of a full-blown Depression. If they based their estimates on a Depression-era economy, then how did they underestimate how bad things were?

This is a good opportunity to see just how wrong Obama was on the stimulus package by showing the famous graph from Innocent Bystanders:

A classic sermon, Richie’s performance shortly after Mariah Carey’s made it clear that this would not be a tribute concert. Backed by a slowly rising choir, Richie’s strong vocals provided a sturdy, uplifting take on the song, one powerful enough for a Sunday morning, as well as a downtown Los Angeles basketball arena.

As The Times’ Ann Powers writes from inside the venue, ” ‘Jesus, he won’t let you down,’ sings Richie, gesticulating aggressively heavenward. The smooth star convincingly testifies, more like a Detroit preacher than the Jheri-curled gentleman behind ‘All Night Long.’ This is the mood here, church not club.”

“Church, not club.” I like that.

Pastor Lucious W. Smith from Friendship Baptist Church provided the invocation. The church is firmly entrenched in orthodox (small ‘o’) Christianity. I love one of the pastor’s quotes:

“God created the family before He created the Church” is something Pastor Smith constantly affirms. “Caring for your family should not supersede your love of the Lord. It does, however, demonstrate it.”

That’s good sense. I have known people who essentially abandoned their families to “do church.” Doing church is not the same thing as following Christ.

Why are you writing about this, Michael?
Good question. There are a lot of important things going on today.

The answer is that most of the people at the memorial service have never really heard the gospel. What little they know about being a follower of Christ comes from the mainstream media and mainstream culture, which is warped and biased.

Are unbelievers likely to become believers at the Staples Center memorial service? Probably not. But don’t discount the possibility of a lot of seeds being planted. Becoming a Christian is often like riding up an elevator. Someone on the first floor plants the seed. A Christian on the second floor waters the seed. A Christian on the third floor befriends those who see themselves as unloved. A Christian on the fourth floor shares the gospel, and so on.

Our job is to always be waiting at the elevator door to play our role in bringing others to Christ. Sometimes the seed is planted decades before the first sprout of believing on Christ - not believing in Christ - pushes its way out of the soil. Our job is also not to bend a broken reed or quench out the first spiritual sparks.

The process of sanctification begins after one becomes a Christian. All of our hearts are damaged - some more than others. I am certainly not advocating the toleration of sin, but I am saying that we need to be supportive of those who slip and fall. It’s easy to rationalize our own sins - I was born with a bad temper, I come from generations of alcoholics, my mother didn’t love as she should have. However, it is difficult for Christians to forgive besetting sins in others and lift them up when they fall.

I can write a whole book on the subject of Christians struggling against the world, the flesh, and the devil.

It is entirely possible that Michael Jackson did a far greater thing in his death than he did in his life. If you’re sitting around the water cooler tomorrow and someone brings up Michael’s memorial service, don’t pooh-pooh their feelings or insult what may or may not true about Jackson’s life, but use it as an opportunity to witness or begin a process of witnessing.

That person may be grieving and confused about what they heard at the service. You don’t have to get in their face.make them memorize the Four Spiritual Laws, and pass out horrid Jack Chick tracts. Talk to them about their grief, become their friend, and talk about God’s goodness as the Holy Spirit leads you.

We will be held accountable for every idle word, and that scares me, but we should all develop a habit of witnessing to others through both our lives and our words.

From The Associated Press:

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Michael Jackson’s public memorial started out more spiritual than spectacular Tuesday, opening with a church choir singing as his golden casket was laid in front of the stage and a shaft of light evoking a cross as Lionel Richie gave a gospel-infused performance.

Pastor Lucious W. Smith of the Friendship Baptist Church in Pasadena gave the invocation, followed by Mariah Carey singing the opening performance with a sweet rendition of the Jackson 5 ballad “I’ll Be There,” a duet with Trey Lorenz.

“We come together and we remember the time,” said Smith, riffing off one of Jackson’s lyrics. “As long as we remember him, he will always be there to comfort us.”

The service began with Smokey Robinson reading comments from Nelson Mandela, Diana Ross and other friends of the King of Pop. Following a long silent period inside the venue, piano music and a gospel choir kicked things off with a stained-glass motif in the background.

Here is a performance at Friendship Baptist Church by a visiting choir back in 2008. Absolutely beautiful.

My wife and I spent a long holiday weekend in a rural Texas town in the hill country. It was nice to be away from the stress of Dallas. Though Dallas is extremely warm and polite compared with most large cities in the US, we were pleasantly surprised to be waved at (yes, a palm wave with all five fingers) by every driver and to be greeted by everyone on the streets. I haven’t spent much time in rural Texas in quite a few years and it was nice to see that good old Texas friendliness had not not changed one bit.

Until the Islamic world attains civilized friendliness and tolerance, all of the peace talks and land concessions in the world aren’t going to make the world more peaceful. While we do see that in some places - Iraqi and Lebanese hospitality are legendary - we mostly see intolerance, subjugations, and denial of basic human freedoms. As in this story, what is perceived as a minor insult quickly escalates into a life-and-death matter.

Chill out, dudes.

From Christian Persecution Blog:

LAHORE, Pakistan, July 3 (Compass Direct News) - After a Muslim beat a Christian field worker for asking him to let him pass on Tuesday (June 30), a cleric in a village near here used a mosque loudspeaker to announce a call to attack Christians that resulted in more than 500 Muslims ransacking and looting at least 110 houses. With the mosque falsely broadcasting the accusation that the Christian had blasphemed Islam, the Muslim recruits rampaged through Kasur district’s Bahmaniwala village, breaking down gates, wrecking and plundering homes and in some cases beating Christian women.