The 10 Cannots

Check out this blog article about voting and the 10 cannots

Bayou Renaissance Man: Thoughts before the election #1

Thoughts before the election #1

A number of readers have
e-mailed me, asking why I'm not providing more thoughts on the election
and who I support for President.

The answer's simple. I don't
believe I have the right to try to persuade anyone to vote according to
my view of the world. I have my own convictions (centrist, with a
conservative angle in terms of morality and an emphasis on the
individual versus the collective), but I don't want to impose them on
anyone else.

I've therefore decided to share, over a few posts,
some of the thinkers whom I find valuable in evaluating the candidates
for office (whether the Presidency, Senate, Congress, or temporary
acting honorary assistant deputy dog-catcher). What I do is to take the
ideas of such thinkers and use them as a yardstick to evaluate the
candidates. How do they measure up? How well will they implement these
ideas or principles? If they don't and/or won't, I can't in good
conscience vote for them, irrespective of their political party or
philosophy, or their track record.

Today I'd like to introduce you to William J. H. Boetcker
(1873-1962). He was a Presbyterian minister, renowned for his
motivational public speaking, and had the knack of putting important
truths into concise, easily-grasped points.

Among his most
famous ideas are the 'Ten Cannots', dating from 1916. They're often
attributed - mistakenly - to Abraham Lincoln.

• You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
• You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
• You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
• You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
• You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
• You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
• You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
• You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
• You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence.
• You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

I
think the 'Ten Cannots' say a great deal about our present society,
particularly its emphasis on 'big government' and 'handouts' and
'welfare' and suchlike. I don't believe in any of them. If a given
candidate (or political party) has a position that contradicts most of
the 'Ten Cannots', the odds are that I can't support them. If the
positions of all candidates (or parties) contradict the 'Ten Cannots',
I'll have to vote for the person or party who contradicts the fewest of
them, on the principle of choosing the lesser of the evils confronting
me.

Boetcker also coined the 'Seven National Crimes':

• I don’t think.
• I don’t know.
• I don’t care.
• I am too busy.
• I leave well enough alone.
• I have no time to read and find out.
• I am not interested.

These
may or may not apply to our politicians, but they sure apply to us as
voters! We should be asking ourselves whether we're guilty of any of
these attitudes: and, if so, we should try to change that.

In
the days ahead I'll write about a few more thinkers who've influenced
me, and helped to shape my outlook. I hope you find them as interesting
as I do - and helpful, in this election season.

Peter

22 Reasons people don't receive healing

I have some notes that I have been carrying in my Bible for years. I typed them up for my use, but thought others might be interested in them, so I will post them here. I am not a note taker generally. These are lists of items that I thought were vital.

22 Reasons People don't receive their healing.

Originally taught by Creflo Dollar

1. Insufficient Instruction

2. Lack of united prayer

3. Community Unbelief

4. Traditions of men

5. Breaking natural laws-eating, lack of exercise, etc

6. Unbelief of elder/minister who prays

7. Evil spirit must be cast our

8. Unconfessed sin

9. Lukewarmness in the church

10. Unwillingness to surrender to GOD

11. Unforgiving spirit

12. Need to seek forgiveness

13. Lack of diligence

14. Seeking miracles instead of healing

15. Watching Symptoms

16. Failure to act on faith

17. Lack of confidence

18. Failure to receive the HOLY SPIRIT

19. Lack of Faith

20. Failure to receive promises

21. Waiting for healing in order to believe in healing-I'll believe it after I see it.

Big government fingerprints on murder weapon

Big-government fingerprints on murder weapon

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Big-government fingerprints on murder weapon
Posted: October 16, 2008
1:00 am Eastern

© 2008

Whose fingerprints are on the weapon that murdered the U.S. economy?

Multiple culprits deserve blame, but the Clinton administration stands out as a ringleader for diverting billions of dollars into junk sub-prime mortgages. Those loans have fouled the economy and siphoned away the capital needed by businesses and families today.

Government created a quota system that required lending to people who lacked the ability to repay.

Clinton's HUD (Department of Housing and Urban Development) decreed that big chunks of mortgages must be issued to borrowers with poor finances. It started at 12 percent of all Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages in 1996. By 2008, that proportion had more than doubled, to 28 percent.

Because Fannie and Freddie dominated the mortgage market, holding about $5 trillion in mortgages, they effectively dictated mortgage standards. The result: Their misguided practices rippled through lenders across the country. If banks made a sub-prime loan, they could re-sell it to Fannie and Freddie. And unless banks made those loans, there was a limit to other loans that would be bought.

(Column continues below)



As HUD wrote in a 2004 report, explaining its post-1996 quotas:

HUD's ... Regulation imposes no requirement for the total number of home purchase mortgages that a GSE [Government-Sponsored Enterprise] must buy. Rather, the rule provides that, however many home purchase loans in metropolitan areas the GSEs buy, a certain percentage must be in each goal category. For example, if a GSE buys 1 million home purchase mortgages in metropolitan areas in 2005, then 450,000 of these mortgages would need to be for low- and moderate-income families.

Under that scenario, for each million loans made in 2005 (when the "very low-income" goal was 22 percent), then 220,000 of those mortgages were required by federal regulation to be among the "special affordable" sub-prime group. Since Fannie and Freddie bought hundreds of billions in mortgages each year, this 22 percent quickly became a huge mandate to make poor-quality loans.

Lenders complied by creating the infamous zero-down loans and other loans that proved to be junk. This wasn't a failure to regulate. It was a failure by regulating too much!

Many motives were commendable, of course. The American dream of home ownership is common to all races, classes and income levels. But so, too, is the ability to get in over your head.

So how low was low-income to our government? "Very low-income," also called "special affordable loans," was defined as having less than 60 percent of an area's median income. Just being below the median alone put a household in the bottom half of income. Being in the bottom third of the bottom half was scraping along compared to most folks.

Local medians vary. Census numbers show a median range from $44,000 for a family of three in Arkansas to $81,000 for a family of three in Maryland. (These are 2008 dollars). Living on 60 percent of that would be $26,400 to $48,600, with all sorts of levels in-between, depending on locality.

Fannie and Freddie complied with HUD's requirements, increasing their sub-prime loans year after year. They didn't mind. Indeed, they and their congressional supporters bragged about it.

Protected by their political friends, especially in Congress, Fannie and Freddie not only met their quotas for backing home loans to people who couldn't afford houses, they surpassed them. In 2004, 24.2 percent of their mortgages went to very low-income families, beating the goal of 20 percent. The following year they bested the 22 percent goal, hitting 24.5 percent. In 2006 they smashed the 23 percent goal with 26.46 percent. A year later they slipped, but still exceeded the 25 percent goal with 25.65 percent.

Helping out was the controversial group ACORN, which joined other community organizations in channeling potential borrowers to banks that would make these special loans. Of course, ACORN and the other enablers received handsome fees for this effort.

But it wasn't a kindness to help poor people get into a house, only to be evicted because they couldn't pay. It was a setback to them.

So, what if Fannie and Freddie had balked, rather than happily complied? Ultimately, the law created penalties that could reach $25,000 each day if they were not aggressive enough in marketing mortgages to those who had limited ability to pay.

This quota system for mortgage loans began when Congress in 1992 created the requirement that Fannie and Freddie must back loans to very low-income persons. However, the legislation specified only that this goal must be "not less than 1 percent." Starting at 12 percent and scaling up to 28 percent, the Clinton administration went above and beyond this. And the Bush administration did not reverse that course.

The left is aggressively working to convince America that a "failure to regulate" made lenders go crazy and wreck our economy through greed. The truth is that our economy was legislated and regulated into this mess. Even if our economy isn't already regulated to death, it's still attempted murder.

No Nonsense Self Defense

No Nonsense Self Defense - Reliable information for dangerous situations

I came across this site recently.  There is a ton of good information on safety in lot's of situations and how to avoid violence.  I don't necessarily agree with everything they say, but there is a lot of good information.

Our loathsome members of Congress

Dr Williams tells it well. Now there is a black man I would vote for if he ran for anything.

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Our loathsome members of Congress

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Posted: October 08, 2008
1:00 am Eastern

© 2008

In my more cynical moments, I think that we Americans deserve what we get from our politicians, many of whom can be generally described as nothing less than loathsome. You say, "Williams, that's a pretty heavy putdown." My question to you is how else would you describe these congressmen who are now blaming the financial mess on the failure of the free market? Starting with the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, that was given more teeth during the Clinton administration, Congress started intimidating banks and other financial institutions into making loans, so-called sub-prime loans, to high-risk homebuyers and businesses. The carrot offered was that these high-risk loans would be purchased by the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Anyone with an ounce of brains would have known that this was a prescription for disaster, but there was a congressional chorus of denial.

Five years ago, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., vouched for the "soundness" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and said, "I do not see any possibility of serious financial losses to the treasury." In 2004 congressional hearings, where the Bush administration sought greater oversight over Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said, "We do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac and particularly at Fannie Mae," adding that "the GSEs have exceeded their housing goals." Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., said, "There's nothing wrong with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac." In these hearings, Barney Frank said that he doesn't see "anything in the reports that raises safety and soundness problems." Earlier this year, Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., praised Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for "riding to the rescue" to help people get home mortgage loans, adding that they "need to do more" to help high-risk borrowers get better loans.

The financial collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is not a failure of the free market, because lending institutions in a free market would not have taken on the high-risk loans. They were forced to by the heavy hand of government. The solution is not a taxpayer-financed bailout. The solution is to let them fail and allow the people who invested in them, as well as the people who purchased homes they couldn't afford, suffer the losses. Of course, that takes a level of political courage that is in short supply. There are other measures that should be taken as part of a second-best solution.

(Column continues below)

In 2002, when the Enron and WorldCom scandal broke, the Congress held hearings, and some chief executives were jailed. Who did what was the big story in the major news media almost every night. Congress rushed to enact the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, also known as the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002. The act placed unnecessary, onerous and costly accounting standards on American businesses. The Enron and WorldCom debacle is a drop in the bucket compared to the financial mess Congress has created through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in the name of "affordable" housing. Have you heard Congress calling for hearings? They haven't called for hearings because many of them, both Democrats and Republicans, receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars, were in cahoots with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. If Americans are going to be on the hook to bail out these government-sponsored enterprises, at the minimum congressional hearings ought to be held to find out who did what and when.

Corporations employ accounting practices promulgated by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) that established Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and government agencies have accounting practices that don't come close to, and never did, the honesty of private accounting practices. Accounting fraud and deception are the dominant features of government agencies. If a private business kept and cooked the books, like government agencies do, the top executives would go to jail. Shouldn't the accounting standards businesses have to meet be applied to Washington? My answer is yes, and if a congressman says no, I'd like for him to tell us why.

Is a third party vote wasted?

Vox Day has an interesting blog about how if you are a conservative and vote republican that your vote is the vote that is wasted, not those of us who vote third party and get what we expect.

The beginning of the end

The bailout bill I think represents the beginning of the end of the great experiment in freedom known as the United States of America. There have been attacks on freedom from it's inception with great crisis giving dictocratic leaders the reasons to take away freedom; Abe Lincoln, FDR, LBJ, and GWB being among the worst.But this bill results in the socialization of 10% of the american economy to solve problems created by Congress and their wealthy contributors.

I compare this to someone who get's a diagnosis of terminal cancer. You may not know the time frame, but short of a miracle the time will be too short. Prepare yourself, it could be ugly before the end.

On the positive side, I saved some money on my car insurance by switching to Geico. (not really)

On the truly positive side this may hasten Jesus return to earth. Most biblical scholars don't believe the US is pictured in the Revelation of John. So, somewhere along the way the power and influence of the US has to wane. The economic free fall that this set up could sure do that. Prepare yourself Spiritually first, then prepare naturally for times that will be like no other in our history. What is that old Chinese blessing/curse? "May you live in interesting times?

Letter

Here is a copy of the letter I send to my congressman and senators about their votes to give away $700 Billion of my money to wealthy businessmen to solve a problem created by the US government.

I have never been so disgusted in the actions of my elected officials as I am now. Your recent vote to spend $700 Billion dollars of someone else's(my) money to socialize 10% of the American economy is unthinkable. It has been clear for a while that most Republicans are alomost as much big government socialists as the Democrats. I have already gotten to the point that I can't imagine voting for a Republican for President and now I must include Senators and Congressmen in that. I know the Libertarian party attracts some idiots, but it also attracts men of true principle.

The Federal Government created the mess by socializing parts of the monetary system, banking, securities, etc. Now you want to solve the problem by more of the same problem. This was not a market failure, it was a socialism failure and $700 Billion more socialism will only make it worse. You may have delayed the crash for a little while but it will come and it will probably be worse. This is the beginning of the end of the United States of America. I had spoken with JoAnn in the San Angelo office and she assured me you would not vote for the bailout, but after voting no on the first one you caved to special interests and left your constituents with the bill.

Rest assured that I will never vote for you for any office again and will actively work to get you voted out of office.

Third Party Candidates

Check out this site for ideas on how to help third party freedom candidates get electoral traction. Don't vote for lesser evil, vote for good people.