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”For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast.” (Ephesians 2:8, 9) A key idea in the contemporary evangelical movement is that revival can be engineered. The Purpose Driven Web site says, “Peter Drucker called him [Warren] ‘the inventor of perpetual revival’ and Forbes magazine has written, ‘If Warren’s church was a business it would be compared with Dell, Google or Starbucks.’”1 The Purpose Driven movement can cite this business management guru approvingly only because they have a...

This was a week of some surprises and some perfectly foreseeable consequences of forces which have been in play for some time. The fiscal cliff talks have gone nowhere, to the surprise of only the most daft who do not realize that the President does not want a pragmatic solution. He's fixated on soaking "the rich", stirring up class hatred and trying to drive a wedge between his opposition forces. Among the surprises is this: Michigan, long seen as the showplace home of America's industrialized unions, has voted to become a right to work state. Its Governor Rick Snyder said...

How close did Israel just come to its own Cuban missile crisis? By Paul Alster Published December 07, 2012 | FoxNews.com HAIFA, Israel – Hundreds of Iranian-made, long-range missiles already smuggled into Gaza provided a secret sense of urgency behind Israel's recent campaign against Hamas, and the the Jewish state acted with the Obama administration's full knowledge, intelligence experts told FoxNews.com. Jonathan Schanzer, a former counter-terrorism analyst at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, said the real agenda behind Israel’s assault last month on Hamas’ munitions stockpiles and smuggling tunnels was not simply to end the daily barrage of relatively...

HELENE COOPER, NEW YORK TIMES: "I really do think at the end of the day, Larry, what you describe sounds like sort of the White House negotiating right now -- easily saying, 'Yeah, we can go over the fiscal cliff.' But at the end of the day, this is a president, he would have to own it. He may not think he has to own the recession; but if we go over that, he is going to have to own that. And that's something he definitely knows."

Firearm prohibitionists love to use tragedy to leverage their agenda. So, it’s important for gun rights advocates to stand their ground and fire back (proverbially) whenever this happens. Last week I posted a graphic on Facebook claiming the average number of people killed in mass shootings when stopped by police is 18.25, and the average number of people killed in a mass shooting when stopped by civilians is 2.2. I based it on 10 shootings I found listed on some timeline somewhere. I honestly don’t even remember where. I presented the case studies in a blog post on the Silver...

...as we close the book on the election, it bears noting that another less obvious bloc of key swing state voters helped the president win a second term. They're the "nones" — that's the Pew Research Center's shorthand for the growing number of American voters who don't have a specific religious affiliation. Some are agnostic, some atheist, but more than half define themselves as either "religious" or "spiritual but not religious," Pew found in a recent survey. They are typically younger, more socially liberal than their forebears, vote Democratic, and now make up nearly 20 percent of the country's population....

2012 Doomsday Psychology, Millions of Chinese, Russians and Americans Believe the End of the World Is Nigh Politics / Social IssuesDec 08, 2012 - 07:47 AM By: DK Matai Panic buying of candles and essentials has accelerated not only in China and Russia, but there has been a simultaneous explosion in the sale of survival equipment, food, fuel and emergency shelters in America in preparation for the Mayan calendar's long count deadline: December 21st, 2012. The precise mechanism for the Armageddon to manifest remains vague, ranging from: 1. Catastrophic celestial collision between Earth and the mythical planet Nibiru, also known...

War On Terror: As the regime of Bashar Assad disintegrates, the security of his chemical arsenal is in jeopardy. The No. 2 general in Saddam Hussein's air force says they were the WMDs we didn't find in Iraq. King Abdullah of neighboring Jordan warned that a disintegrating Syria on the verge of civil war puts Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons at risk of falling into the hands of al-Qaida. "One of the worst-case scenarios as we are obviously trying to look for a political solution would be if some of those chemical stockpiles were to fall into unfriendly hands," he...

<p>HBO host Bill Maher’s political views– and his crass way of expressing them– are well known to most. Every once in a while, though, he takes things a step further than normal.</p> <p>The mega Obama donor claimed back in March, for instance, that he should be held to a different standard after calling Sarah Palin a “cu**” than when Rush Limbaugh called 30-year-old Georgetown student Sandra Fluke a “slut.” On Sunday, Maher made another noteworthy claim.</p>

The Washington Post had interesting article about solving the debt ceiling “crisis.” The author recommended that Treasury produce two-one trillion dollar platinum coins and deposit them at The Fed. “I like it,” says Joseph Gagnon of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “There’s nothing that’s obviously economically problematic about it.” Actually, Mr. Gagnon, there are a few problems with it. 1. Moral hazard. The President orders trillion dollar coins to be produced, then gives one each to campaign donors and other party favorites (note that I did not mention our current President by name since this would be a temptation...

The Washington Post had interesting article about solving the debt ceiling “crisis.” The author recommended that Treasury produce two-one trillion dollar platinum coins and deposit them at The Fed. “I like it,” says Joseph Gagnon of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “There’s nothing that’s obviously economically problematic about it.” Actually, Mr. Gagnon, there are a few problems with it. 1. Moral hazard. The President orders trillion dollar coins to be produced, then gives one each to campaign donors and other party favorites (note that I did not mention our current President by name since this would be a temptation...

Late-hour speeches by Republican Sens. Tom Coburn (Okla.) and John McCain (Ariz.) on runaway military health costs led the Senate Tuesday to shelve a defense bill amendment that would have spared family members and retirees more burdensome co-pays on drug prescriptions filled off base. The timing of their opposition, in the last hours of consideration of the 2013 defense authorization bill when amendments were only being approved by unanimous consent, allowed Coburn and McCain to block the Senate from supporting the softer House-passed plan for raising prescription fees. There will be a second chance next week when House-Senate conferees iron...

A new initiative by the federal government called Seven50, a cousin of Agenda 21, seeks to relieve local governments nationwide of direct representation by and for local citizens in matters of education, infrastructure and population. Indian River County Commissioner Bob Solari (772- 226-1442) is putting out an urgent call to attend a special Indian River County Commission meeting concerning this topic on Tuesday, December 18, 9 a.m. in the Vero Beach County Chambers, 1801 27th Street, Vero Beach, FL. Though Alabama already has passed legislature to curb the Seven50 agenda, seven southeastern counties along Florida’s coastline from Miami to Vero...

For the last century all fully-qualified submarine officers have been men. But that all changed when two women were honored with their Navy dolphin pins. The ceremony on Wednesday at Naval Base Kitsap was a graduation day of sorts with crowds, caps, and uniforms. From a cluster of colleagues, two female crew members of the USS Maine ballistic missile submarine were called front and center for a designation that made them qualified submariners. The two junior lieutenants were among the first three women in the submarine force's 112-year history to get their dolphins. "This is the mark where your command...

Recently I had a problem with Comcast's cloud backup. Then, I went to MyPC Backup Premium, and I started a year of their Premium program. Everything appeared to go well until this past week. I couldn't back up my files, and the system wanted me to go into a new package. Finally, after several days, I got a response re what to do, and it didn't work. I went on line and checked out their ratings. Once you got past the bs, there appeared to be a lot of people having similiar problems as I had. I really don't want...

On Saturday Night Live, guest host Jamie Foxx told the amped-up crowd now in his new movie, Django Unchained, he gets to "kill all the white people ... How GREAT is that?" The live audience erupted in cheers and laughter.

CARVILLE: Since 1944, if we would have been sitting here, Republicans have always craved order. And they've always looked for the lion tail to get behind. We've always been people that we want to fall in love. We're looking for the next argument. This is entirely different. Every Democrat I know says, "God, I hope she runs. We don't need a primary. Let's just go to post with this thing. We don't want to fight with anybody over anything." ### CARVILLE: Yeah, you've got to beat somebody. And the Republicans know that they need a primary. We don't want --...

KRUGMAN: That kills charitable deductions. It hits the middle class hard. If you do it -- if you do it right -- we've done this, right... MATALIN: Are you an economist or a polemicist? (CROSSTALK) KRUGMAN: There's only -- there's only $450 billion that you can get by doing that. MATALIN: Do you want to talk about economy or do you want to talk about polemics? KRUGMAN: No, this is not true. MATALIN: We have two different ways of going forward. We will not have Medicare, we will not have Social Security. You have senior Democrat Dick Durbin saying Social...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Milwaukee-based Johnson Controls plans to close a central Kentucky plastics manufacturing plant early next year, potentially putting nearly 400 employees out of work. The Courier-Journal (http://cjky.it/U3qICs) reports that a mass layoff notice filed with the Kentucky Office of Employment & Training on Friday says up to 392 workers could be cut in February when the facility in Louisville closes. The plant produces injection-molded interior components for vehicles...

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