The latest in deer hunting technique.The Cardinals re-signed Kurt Warner today. That took far longer than it should have, and not because of Kurt. He is very highly regarded here, both for taking a team nobody thought had a shot to the Super Bowl, but also because of his work in the community which is done without fanfare or press releases. The Bidwells, who own the Cards, have a reputation for being foolishly cheap, and they just about blew this one. Had Warner not come back with an offer to accept less money than the 49-ers were offering, this deal wouldn't have happened.
Yesterday morning Mike & Mike described Kurt as "The best - everything you want an NFL quarterback to be, on and off the field." They wondered out loud why the owners would balk at re-signing him over a $2 million difference. In the world of QB contracts that's a pretty insignificant amount. But they did balk. And now, because Warner has accepted a smaller contract in order to stay in Phoenix, he pretty much owns this town.
When Renee and her daughter visited a couple of weekends ago she told us about finch socks and we now have one hanging from the patio cover. We can see it from our chairs.
In case you're like we were and have never heard of a finch sock, it's made from a fine nylon mesh and filled with, at least in this case, thistle seed. (say those two words three times fast!) As I type this a male and female finch are clinging to the side picking those seeds out through the mesh. When it's empty we just wash it and refill it with fresh seed.
It takes quite a bit of work for them to get the seed out so they spend quite a bit of time there. So far we're just getting a variety of finch with a red head but I'm hoping for some more vividly colored birds eventually.
One in five mortgages is under water - the mortgage amount is for more than the value of the house. We've owned our house for about two and a half years, and although we got a pretty good deal and put 20% down, we're probably in that group. So, should we get bailout help?
As it turns out we don't qualify because our mortgage is through Wells Fargo, and only those mortgages guaranteed by the govt. - Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae - qualify. Also, we're not at risk of foreclosure because we've been making our payments.
If ours was a govt. backed mortgage a case could be made that our best move would be to go into delinquency and then apply for a lower interest rate subsidized by bailout funds. Rates can drop as low as 2% under the program. But because ours is a privately held mortgage, at a rate of 6.25%, we can't refinance even to current interest rates. With the drop in our home's value we no longer have 20% equity, and paying PMI would wipe out any advantage realized as a result of a lower interest rate.
Am I the only one who sees something wrong here?
What goes: "clop, clop, clop, clop...bang, bang...clop, clop, clop?"
A: An Amish drive-by shooting.
The Republican Party is in some disarray. Rush Limbaugh gave a speech to a party gathering last weekend in which he said he hoped President Obama would fail. The Dems and the press were all over that. It does, after all, sound almost unAmerican. Which is why the Chair of the party, Michael Steele, ripped on Limbaugh, calling his comments "ugly."
Limbaugh fired back on his radio show the next day. Rush said that he wants Obama to fail because the President's policies will hurt America. That's why the Republican Party has, and should continue to oppose them. Why would he not want Obama to fail at liberalizing abortion laws, giving money away to failing companies and negotiating with terrorist states?
Score one for the Rush. Which is why by late yesterday Steele had apologized to Limbaugh, and the Democrats were all aglee.
At the risk of offending readers of this blog I think Rush Limbaugh has more in common with professional wrestlers than journalists. The scariest thing is that some people take them both - Rush & Pro Wrestlers - seriously. Rush is a journalist in the same way that the wrestlers are athletes; both evidence some skill. But it's mostly theater.
So, what to make of Limbaugh's comments?
Years ago the president of the Southern Baptist Convention said, in his speech at their annual convention, that God does not hear the prayers of a Jew. The Southern Baptists are the largest denomination in the country, which means the national press was there to hear that comment. You can guess what the next day's headlines read.
He later explained that, according to Romans 5:1-2 and other NT passages (especially Hebrews), only those who have a relationship with the Father through faith in the Son have access to the throne of grace. Everyone else is still in their sin and thus excluded from fellowship with the Father, including through prayer.
So technically he was accurate. But he'd have done a lot better to say "God does not hear the prayer of unbelievers" instead of singling out Jews.
And Rush Limbaugh would have been wiser to say that he wanted Obama's policies to fail...assuming his objective was to communicate with maximum effectiveness and accuracy. If, of course, his goal was to grab headlines....
Naw.
Words are powerful things, for good and for evil. Whether inflammatory words are spoken slyly or carelessly, the effect can be destructive.
That's why preachers preach scared. Realistically, it's not if, but when.
What do you call a man by the side of the road with his hand up a horse's rear end?
A: An Amish mechanic.
No comments:
Post a Comment