Necessary Roughness

HT: Club For Growth

photo credit: Soil-Science.info

The Environmental Working Group has released its Farm Subsidy Database updated with data from last year. Check out who benefits from over $5 billion in farm aid.

Nationally $2 billion went to corn, $1 billion went to wheat, and cotton got half a million dollars. In Ohio, corn is still king at $101 million, but soybeans is second with $38.5 million. In my county $1.7 million of federal subsidy was received for corn. The database lets one drill down to state, county, and finally recipient.

Our tax dollars, not at work.

Fox News has posted the entirety of Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s speech at the National Press Club. He is opening a two-day seminar on “the African-American religious experience and its historical, theological and political context.”

One might think because I do not have the most darkly complected skin that I have no right to comment in this domain. I will not comment on the historical and political context that I do not know. The theology, though, is fair game for anyone with Scripture in hand. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” St. Paul states.

Lest I take things out of context, I will try to quote appropriately and emphasize those parts that I am paying attention to, just to be as fair as possible.

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I didn’t realize until the count read 1498 that I was getting close to 1500. The archive number reads 1695, but that’s because faulty WordPress drafts and currently irrelevant LiveJournal notes were taking up numbers.

I’ve tried to do some things to make the blog easier to read and use. The latest thing is the individual category feeds on the left. Some people just want to see the government posts; others just want to see the religion posts. Still others, pictures and audio. The category-specific RSS feeds let you do this. If NR is already in your RSS reader, those feeds will continue to work.

Even if you’re a lurker most of the time, feel free to chime in on this one. What do you like about NR? What don’t you like? What do you think about the post frequency? Post Length? Writing Style? Types of Content? Tone?

I look forward to your feedback. If you don’t want to make your comments public, you can e-mail them to me so I can still use them. I thank you, the reader, for coming in, reading, and offering your feedback.

I was supposed to teach today, but I was informed nobody was going to class today. I caught the 8:00am service again at Lutheran Church and School of Messiah in Grand Junction.
A skip through the radio dial at 7:30 caught the Lutheran Hour with a men’s choir singing “Salvation Unto Has Come.” Not a bad start to the day.

There was interesting news during the prayers: Pastor Roger Sterle, whom I had seen preach in Vernal, UT, had accepted a call to a dual parish in Iowa. Maybe there’s a call for a recent M.Div. grad there.

Divine Service I without Holy Communion was offered, with Pastor Buss as the liturgist and Pastor Storck delivering the sermon. The hymns were:

• Opening: 779, “Come My Soul, With Every Care”
• Sermon: 556, “Dear Christians, One and All, Rejoice” (all ten verses )
• Closing: 578, “Thy Strong Word”

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Bloomberg reports that oil prices are climbing in the wake of a pipeline shutdown in the United Kingdom and rebels attacking another pipeline in Nigeria. OPEC is keeping production down, and Iran wants oil to climb still northward.

Meanwhile NBC can burn up energy promoting a Green Week, part of which is advertising energy-efficient products like CFL bulbs from NBC’s parent, General Electric.

We can’t tackle energy issues from the demand side alone. We have to address our supply issues. Punitive regulations must be lifted from the power industries, while removing their subsidies. Access to our own natural resources must be restored. Taxation of imported goods, like Brazilian ethanol, should be reduced.

We are making this problem by strapping ourselves to an ideology of planet supremacy. We are choosing the result of higher food and energy prices and more poverty in the pursuit of a stopped planetary evolution. We can ask those who are starving because food isn’t as cheap and energy isn’t as plentiful whether this pursuit is worth it.

My coat was stolen in Grand Junction, but the investigation netted two thieves who stole two coats.

Last Wednesday I wore my coat to the HAL facility, but the day had warmed up so much I didn’t think about wearing it back to the hotel. I left it in the training room, and it was gone the next morning.

After a day of checking everywhere I’d been to see if I’d left it anywhere, I asked the facility manager for permission to review the tape. The training room had a security camera.

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I was able to listen to the Candidate Call service from Concordia Theological Seminary — Fort Wayne. It was a beautiful Matins service even though it started at 6:40pm Eastern time.

There was an important statistic mentioned. Eighteen candidates from St. Louis and thirteen candidates from Fort Wayne, though they completed their M. Div. degrees, did not receive a call. The explanation given for these 31 candidates was that there was not a church for them just yet. Their calls will come later.

As I was completing my degree over eleven years ago, there was some doubt as to whether there would be a job for me when I graduated. It was a scary time, and it is an uncertain time for these men. Please pray for them.

Such a surplus can also be scary for men considering the ministry, as they wonder whether there will be a professional call at the end of their $40,000+ education.

I understand how there can be some situations where a candidate might not fit: someone who doesn’t know Spanish and a Hispanic mission, for example. But 31 candidates? I have no perspective here; I don’t know if that’s a lot.

The LCMS has been previously asked to approve of ministerial positions that do not have the training of a Masters of Divinity degree: lay ministers and specific ministry pastors, for example. It has been asked to approve of these positions because of a shortage of pastors in the ministry. As our seminaries produce these fully trained men, may we use them before we settle for those with less training.

Good news in the old neighborhood. The Missouri House is holding hearings to see if Missouri’s 10% ethanol requirement needs to be repealed, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The study compared Missouri’s average gasoline price in 2007 to the average price of E-10. In that year, the difference was about 8 cents per gallon. The study also projects 10 years ahead, using estimates from the Energy Information Administration.

Critics say ethanol’s lower fuel efficiency wipes out any price benefits.

photo credit: freddthompson

In the same article, the Post-Dispatch notes:

The Legislature also is considering requiring all diesel sold in the state to contain a 5 percent blend of biodiesel. That bill, which has passed the Senate, will be heard next week by the same House panel that considered the ethanol bill.

It’s almost as if they aren’t paying attention. If government force has to be employed in order to use biodiesel, that axiomatically means consumer costs are going to go up.