A BIT NERDY

Dunno where I got this. It's obviously dated.

CLEVER STUFF - WORDS REARRANGED
Someone out there either has too much spare time or is deadly at Scrabble. (Wait till you see the last one)!

DORMITORY:
When you rearrange the letters:
DIRTY ROOM

PRESBYTERIAN:
When you rearrange the letters:
BEST IN PRAYER

ASTRONOMER:
When you rearrange the letters:
MOON STARER

DESPERATION:
When you rearrange the letters:
A ROPE ENDS IT

THE EYES: !
When you rearrange the letters:
THEY SEE

GEORGE BUSH:
When you rearrange the letters:
HE BUGS GORE

THE MORSE CODE:
When you rearrange the letters:
HERE COME DOTS

SLOT MACHINES:
When you rearrange the letters:
CASH LOST IN ME

ANIMOSITY:
When you rearrange the letters:
IS NO AMITY

ELECTION RESULTS:
When you rearrange the letters:
LIES - LET'S RECOUNT

SNOOZE ALARMS:
When you rearrange the letters:
ALAS! NO MORE Z'S

A DECIMAL POINT:
When you rearrange the letters:
I'M A DOT IN PLACE

THE EARTHQUAKES:
When you rearrange the letters:
THAT QUEER SHAKE

ELEVEN PLUS TWO:
When you rearrange the letters:
TWELVE PLUS ONE

AND FOR THE GRAND FINALE:

MOTHER-IN-LAW:
When you rearrange the letters:
WOMAN HITLER

ML rocks (rocked).

Now, to quote the ubiquitous* (at this time of year) Martin Luther: It is better to be divided by truth than to be united by error.

Well, its all these quotes that render him 'all over the place', so to speak!

*just keeps showing up 'all over the place'

A Darned Dizzying Dilemma

Ultimately our economic security and stability are dependent upon the sovereignty of God. Gladly, He has provided some 'voices of wisdom', people who just seem to have a good understanding of the world's financial/economic forces.

IMO, such a person is Brian Carpenter, who pastors Foothills Community Church, in Sturgis, S. D.. Maybe he, and I as a result, is/am deluded - read his astute sketch of the factors relating to imminent money matters in this post at A FIRESIDE CHAT.

On being somewhat 'counter-intuitive'

Quote from Martin Downes: "Being a Reformed Christian in the wider evangelical and Christian world is a bit like being the Tasmanian Devil. You are considered to be a rarity, a danger to livestock, and you can be easily caricatured".

Doubling up - From Aspiring PolyMathis (which see)

Again this year, with the rapid approach of Reformation Day:

LESSONS FROM THE REFORMATION
Shawn Mathis

What do ghosts and goblins have in common with Luther and Calvin? Both are celebrated on October 31st. Yet only one group had historical significance.

The Reformation of Luther and Calvin changed the West, leading to the creation of America. That is something to celebrate. But many today cannot celebrate it because so little is known—our children know more about the origins of blood-sucking vampires than the cultural life-force known as the Reformation. Yet many historians acknowledge the predominate influence of the Reformation on the formation of America (just Google the quotes below).

George Bancroft, founder of Annapolis Academy and one of the first American historians, asserted, “He that will not honor the memory, and respect the influence of Calvin, knows but little of the origin of American liberty.”

Historically, conscience-anguished Martin Luther found peace through faith in the person and work of Christ. Having nailed the 95 Theses to the church door at Wittenberg on October 31st, he blazed a path which John Calvin followed and expanded. Calvin’s theological system encompassed all of life, and his world view was carried to the new world: the French Huguenots of the Southern colonies, the Dutch colonists of Manhattan and the English Puritans of New England. Three key foundation-stones of early American culture were laid by the ideas of Calvin and others: church liberty, universal education and the right to resistance. Let the historians speak for themselves.

Yale historian George Fisher wrote: “How is it, then, that Calvinism is acknowledged, even by foes, to have promoted powerfully the cause of civil liberty? The reason lies in the boundary line which it drew between church and State. Calvinism would not surrender the peculiar notions of the Church to the civil authority. Whether the church, or the Government, should regulate the administration of the Sacrament, and admit or reject the communicants, was the question which Calvin fought out with the authorities at Geneva…” This idea was institutionalized in the Puritans of the Presbyterian Church and Congregationalist settlers on the shores of America.

Dedication to education was the hallmark of the Reformers and the settlers in America. A mixture of local schooling initiatives and laisser-faire education formed the basis of American education. Historian Bancroft again asserts: “We boast of our common schools; Calvin was the father of popular education, the inventor of the system of free schools.”

The right to resist unlawful government was furthered by the Reformers. Dave Kopel (of the Independence Institute) wrote in Liberty magazine, October 2008, “The [REFORMED]Congregationalist and Presbyterian ministers played an indispensible role in inciting the American Revolution.” The great statesman John Adams bluntly acknowledged the widespread influences of both the 16th-century French-Calvinist’s work Vindicus Contra Tyrannus and the English Calvinist work of Ponet (A Shorte Treatise of Politike Power); both books defended the right of the people to rise against tyrants. Modern historians such as Daniel Elazar (of Temple University) have made similar claims: “In all of the places where Reformed Protestantism was strong, there emerged a Protestant republicanism that opposed tyrants even as it demanded local religious conformity.”

In fact, most of the early American culture was Reformed or tied strongly to it (just read the New England Primer). Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, a Roman Catholic intellectual and National Review contributor, asserts: “If we call the American statesmen of the late eighteenth century the Founding Fathers of the United States, then the Pilgrims and Puritans were the grandfathers and Calvin the great-grandfather…”

“So what?” you ask. Well, if we are to avoid the errors of the past, are we not also to learn from the victories of history? The least we can do is understand what the Reformation was all about and what elements were so vital to the formation of America. And perhaps, just maybe, America can be renewed to her former glory.

And the link to: Aspiring PolyMathis

Gold, the Dollar, and the Markets

Somewhat dated now, with gold having since closed above $1060. an ounce, followed by a slight pull-back, you may find some food for thought at A FIRESIDE CHAT.

We'll see how it goes, but, in an earlier post, Brian Carpenter, The Happy TR, recommended the purchase of UNG, a natural gas ETF (Exchange Traded Fund). I bit - and swapped out of some Fidelity Magellan, one of my Rollover IRAs. With the proceeds, I bought a thousand shares of UNG, at $11.238 a share. It's obviously quite premature (utter understatement), but it was up $350.*, on the close, the next day after I bought. Like I said, we'll see. I expect it to be a medium term play.

*Total, not per share!