the zaitzeff report

praying today

My dad is in poor health and would like to be better or to feel better.

I need help finding good work.

I would like to be healed or to know if that is something God won't be doing for me in this lifetime.  Thanks!

re the new law in Georgia and sex offenders

From David :

It seems to me as if there is something very wrong with a system of justice that would label such people as in this complaint (against Georgia's new sex offender law re living near bus stops and churches) sex offenders for life or even, sex offenders at all.

See the complaint, here

http://www.schr.org/aboutthecenter/pressreleases/HB1059_litigation/HB1059_litigation.html

We have a few cases here of one underage minor having consensual sex with another underage minor, and now one of those parties is restricted for the rest of their lives in terms of where they can live? That seems a very heavy price to pay for imbibing some MTV rather than giving earnest heed to their local holiness church that would have told them not to have oral sex with their friend at school!

In fact, several of the cases were of oral sex, and the person was convicted of sodomy. Another case is of a fellow who inappropriately touched an adult female college student while he was inebriated at a party. He was convicted of 1st degree "sexual abuse." My, oh my! A mom was convicted because her daughter had sex and got pregnant and the mom didn't do enough to stop it.

Are these the kinds of things that should make someone marked as a sex offender for life or even for a day? This kind of justice, I believe, really highlights the need for fully informed juries. A jury should have and constitutionally does have the right to judge the law, and to refuse to convict, if and when the law is bad or being wrongly applied. Of course, states have generally hidden this right and required jurors to take an oath to apply the law as the judge explains it to them, with the result that many juries convict people for such flimsy and meaningless "crimes." And, fully informed juries ought to be informed also of the likely penalty or penalties to be imposed.

Those who are not familiar with fully informed juries, please learn about the trial of William Penn in 1670.

And as for the adult woman who was "inappropriately touched," wouldn't a slap in the face of the drunk guy be a better response than to insist on bringing criminal charges that have this effect on a man for the rest of his life? Are your breasts or butt so sacred that this temporary error on the fellow's part provokes this response?

I believe in the law and I believe in bringing charges for murder, theft, rape etc. You bring charges for "inappropriate touching" at a party where alcohol is served? Did you or the DA ever think of forgiveness?

a possible answer to a prayer

On and off in the last day or the last several days, at times when I have prayed, I have asked God if I was important to him.  Actually, I have prayed this way especially from time to time in the last year since Callie's lie, and at the time of the police-steakknife encounter, and then after the Robert Warwar VCOC message to me.  I have put the question in various slightly ways.  I asked

whether or not God pays attention to me when I pray,
whether I was important to him,
whether I matter to God,
whether I am among the least of the brethren of whom he pays attention in Mt 25,
whether I was important enough to him for him to act on my behalf,
and other similar questions which arise from the fact that he seems to ignore me and seems to have ignored me for years.

Until Oct 22nd when I get paid again, I have about a dollar a day for food and a little to wash my clothes on the weekend.  This morning I was thinking of whether I would find another church (perhaps in this area) with a food pantry, but didn't take any action on that and wasn't fully committed to that idea.

At work, shortly after the telemarketers arrived, one of the salespeople arrived with a bag of a bunch of semi-frozen pizza slices.  He said that someone he knew had just had a party and they had had left over a bunch of pizza that he would be putting into the office fridge and was available for any of us to use.  I usually don't thank God for food before I eat, but in this case, I made an exception at the time the guy brought the pizza and later when I ate some.  Unless someone else eats the rest of it, it will be my food for the next 2 or 3 days.

Anyway, it was a funny, peculiar experience.  At the Chapel, we were cautious about attributing to God things that might be merely coincidence.  But I somewhat recognize the possibility that God was being nice to me, bringing some food and also offering a small possible answer to my question whether I mattered to him.

praying today

I would like to be healed or to know if that is something God isn't going to do for me or with which he won't help me in this lifetime.

thanks.

***

There is an aspect of my health which troubles me, although I assume that some of you will think it vain or selfish of me to think of it or mention it.  Some aspects of my sexual functioning are damaged and injured.  I have premature ejaculation and diminished erection quality.  Because I don't have much, if anything, that gives my life meaning, from my point of view, I feel bad about those flawed or damaged aspects of my health that I would otherwise enjoy. 

If you wish to pray that God would heal me and help me, that would be appreciated.  If you think I am an idiot or a fool to care about that aspect of my health, you could skip praying for me or pray in a different way.  Or, if God is not going to heal me in this lifetime in that aspect of my life, it would be nice to know it.  If you wish to pray that God let me know if he will heal me or not, that would be appreciated.  If you are mad at me or thinking I am a very bad idiot for mentioning my concern, forgive me for troubling you. 

 

I imagine that some of you will react by praying that God give me something else that would be more meaningful to me than erections, or that God would cause me to see some other things, more important to pray for or care about.  I am sorry to tell you this but to me my life is very boring and that partly accounts for why this seemingly insignificant concern matters to me.

praying today, p2

If you wish, pray that God heal me or let me know if he isn't going to be healing me in this lifetime.

***

In the past two nights in prayer, I thought some about praying that I would be someone whom God would guide.

This morning I searched the web for whatever websites might be useful on the subject of guidance and God.  The Nehemiah ministries website comes up and I found your article about the guidance to Paul to go to Macedonia interesting and perhaps useful.

I am not a Christian although I was a professing Christian in years past and I currently don't know what to believe about God. I figure you might want to know that aspect of my spiritual situation.  However, that isn't my concern at this time, and I assume that it is beyond your power to help me know what to believe about God.  (I could be wrong, but I am letting you know.)  At least, it appears to me that God is not in any hurry to reveal himself to me.

At times when I have laid in bed and meditated I have said nothing, or, I have wondered or asked something like, "If I am supposed to pray always and not give up, for what should I pray, if anything?"  I am not sure if I have asked God that question in those specific words.  I may have asked "Why does the Bible say to pray always and not give up?" or something like that, also. 

I could pray for a lot of different things, but in my experience, God rarely or never does what I ask.  So I am cautious about asking for things and sometimes praying for things would be discouraging and painful.  My preference in life would be to be healed and helped, but when I have prayed in the last few years about that, my prayer, when I pray, usually has been, "Is it possible for me to be healed?"  When others have been open or desirous of praying for me, I have suggested that they pray that I be healed, but I don't know if that is something God would tend to do for me.

If I recall correctly, sometimes I pray to be healed.  Sometimes I wonder if it does any good to keep asking and I ask, "Is it possible for me to be healed?" or "Does God pay attention to me when I pray?"

In addition to asking those questions verbally, at times I have practiced divination by consulting the I ching on questions of whether it is possible to be healed and whether it does any good for me to be pray from time to time to be healed.  The answers of the I ching have seemed encouraging, and so I have continued, but I am still unhealed. So, at times I wonder if I should adopt a different approach.

I could lie in bed and wait till I die or God reveals himself to me in some way.  Actually, in times past, I have laid in bed and said, "Is it OK if I just wait till I die or I am supposed to do something?"

By the way, when I speak of lying in bed, it is not because I am bedridden by injury or disease.  But I pray at times when I am lying down, before sleep, after sleep or between sleeping.

praying today

I would like to be healed and to have a meaningful life.  I would also like to be someone whom God guides, assuming that there is a God.  In the absence of being healed and having a meaningful life, I would like to die soon peacefully.

thanks!

fears for the US economy

One nice thing that resulted from my being a futures broker at PFG was that I got into the habit every day of reading every morning all the news from every source.  Most mornings now I read in order abcnews, msnbc, cbsnews, cnn, seattletimes, seattlepi, huffingtonpost and talkleft.

About a week ago, one of these news sources made mention of a website that sounded interesting and I visited it.  It was ml-implode.com, which stands for mortgage lender implode.  The website looks like it was built by an amateur, but I think that some of the people who run it are former mortgage brokers.  The website watches mortgage lenders who are failing and related news.  There is a similar website bankimplode.com.  One of the main commenters on these sites is Mr. Mortgage.

If you read the news and commentary on this website, there is reason to believe that the US economy is in worse shape that we may have been thinking.  One major problem seems to be that the housing crisis situation is probably not close to being resolved. 

1) In addition to the subprime mortgage problem, which has apparently plateaued and may be improving, there is the Alt-A "pay-option" mortgage problem which will create another wave of defaults.  Alt-A refers to borrowers who were in between prime and subprime.  In 2004-2006, a lot of these Alt-A borrowers were given "pay-option" mortgages.  These mortgages let them choose how much they pay each month.  Included in these possibilities was a minimum payment at an amount less than the interest owed on the mortgage.  So, a lot of these borrowers in Alt-A are paying the minimum amount and they have "negative amortization."  Their amount due is growing rather than falling, and this is combined often with local falling home prices. 

It appears that when these mortgages either "reset" or reach a certain limit, that the mortgage payments for the Alt-A borrowers will sharply increase, and many of them will also walk away from their homes.  Late 06 and 07 was the subprime wave.  Apparently 09 and 2010 will be the wave of resets for the Alt-A borrowers.  If so, we would expect home prices to be falling further from here.

2) A few days ago, msnbc.com had an article about where the bottom might be in home prices.  Based on historical comparisons, we could easily see home prices continue to fall by 20 or 30% from here.  Historically, the cost of a monthly mortgage and maintenance for a home was about the same as cost of renting.  However, the cost today of the mortgage is about 20 or 30% higher than renting comparable property.  Apparently we have been in a bubble in home prices, and the bubble is being corrected.  Either home prices would (and will) fall, or rental pricing would (and will) rise.  The "home prices would fall" would be a deflationary situation and the "rental pricing would rise" is an inflationary possibility.

I could be wrong, but if we see a 25% fall further in home prices, I don't think that any bank or the FNM and FRE will be left standing, except by gov bailouts.  The banks and FNM and FRE are very highly leveraged.  If I recall correctly, FNM and FRE are leveraged at about 60 to 1, which means that a very small change in the value of the loans they guarantee can push them into insolvency.  Actually, from what I have read, FRE already is insolvent. 

Along the way of reading all these things, I also came across some of the economic commentary of Peter Schiff.  You can read his weekly newsletter and he has been a frequent guest on CNBC and Foxnews.  Clips of him are on youtube.com  Apparently, as far back as 2005, he was predicting just what we are seeing now. 

Anyway, it appears to me that:

1) housing prices will continue to fall for a bit and some more mortgages will go into default;

2) some more major banks will fail, perhaps Downey Savings and Washington Mutual (WaMu); (Downey Savings has a lot of "pay-option, alt-A" exposure; for their last quarterly earnings report, they reported a loss of $8/share).  (WaMu lost more than $3/share in their last quarter.  I think that WaMu surviving depends on housing prices not falling further and creditors not pulling money out.  Neither condition is likely to be met.)

3) it will become apparent that FNM and FRE will need to be supported by the Treasury or they will fail;

4) the Treasury will either buy stock in or buy the debt of FNM and FRE;

5) when we get to the point of the Treasury actually supporting FNM and FRE, I assume that the Treasury will begin with using bonds rather a straight purchase with dollars.  I expect that bond prices will fall and long-term interest rates will rise.  (Actually, on a very small scalle, this is what has been happening in the last week since discussion and passage of the bill authorizing Treasury intervention to support FNM.)

6) However, as t-bond interest rates rise, mortgage rates will also rise, and this will continue to pull housing prices lower; the deflation in housing prices will simply continue, increasing losses at FNM and FRE;

7) At some point, Congress and the American people will have to decide what they are going to do about supporting FNM and FRE, after the initial attempts to support them leave then still in a losing, insolvent position.  I don't know if the US would choose to hyperinflate, to let them fail or to create write-down of their debt.  Schiff thinks we as a government should not be supporting them beyond the 2.5 billion guarantee that was there before.  They would fail and their shareholders and bondholders would be hurt, but we wouldn't have hyperinflation. 

8) Along the way, it appears we will have a serious and deep recession.  The thought is scary enough that it makes me want to eliminate my credit card debt.  Before some very serious inflation comes, it looks like we will have debt contraction, bank failures and a painful recession.

Schiff thinks that will the current bailout being passed and signed, that hyperinflation is nearly guaranteed. I wonder if perhaps it might be stopped.

Anyway, if something like this is what will happen--and I am not infallible--then, some of you may wish to get out of some or all of your debt. 

Here is Peter schiff in 2005 on cnbc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a18pnPYOB84&feature=related

praying

I would like to be healed and to have a meaningful life or to die soon peacefully.  I also need help making wise decisions.  Thanks!

re Judas and Zeus

As you may know, the Bible/Jesus says of Judas that it would have better for him not to have been born.

 

And the Bible also seems to say that God creates each person individually, and that no person's birth or creation is an accident.  According to most Calvinists I know, nothing is an accident, much less the creation of a human soul.

 

Therefore, we would conclude that God created Judas individually and God was personally responsible for the birth of Judas.  Correct?

 

And, since it would have been better for Judas not to have been born, God in his creation of Judas and arranging for his birth, acted contrary to the best eternal interests of Judas.

 

And, likewise, we may make the educated guess that God likewise acts contrary to the best eternal interests of most of humankind.  Wouldn't a God like Zeus be preferable to this?  For Zeus enforces justice, punishes murder, honors contracts and expects people to tell the truth.  Occasionally he pursues the maidens and other women, but for most of mankind, he is at least indifferent, rather than actively acting contrary to their best interests!

praying

I would like to know if it is possible for me to be healed in this lifetime, or if I should assume that that is something God isn't going to do for me
or it isn't going to happen for any of a variety of reasons.