Related post: The Thief

I checked my status yesterday, and the site told me that my refund would be direct deposited into my bank account today. I just checked my bank account, and sure enough, the full amount is there. Now I can pay my state taxes and my estimated quarterly taxes for January through March. Yay.

HT: Get Rich Slowly

Here are the descriptions from the site:

The Cost of Discipleship:

This book is quite simply, one of the most profound and important books of the 20th century. Dietrich Bonhoeffer lived a testimony of his thoughtful and engaging writers. Focusing on the most treasured part of Christ’s teaching – the Sermon on the Mount with its call to discipleship, and on the grace of God and the sacrifice which that demands.

Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die:

The most important questions anyone can ask are: Why was Jesus Christ crucified? Why did he suffer so much? What has this to do with me? Finally, who sent him to his death? The answer to the last question is that God did. Jesus was God’s Son. The suffering was unsurpassed, but the whole message of the Bible leads to this answer.

You can listen to a free audio sample from The Cost of Discipleship here and a free audio sample from Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die here.

Suspected Islamist militants stormed an office of a U.S.-based, Christian aid agency in Pakistan on Wednesday, killing six Pakistani aid workers after singling them out and then blowing up the building … Seven members of staff were wounded and one was missing, the agency said in a statement, adding that its relief and development work in Pakistan was conducted by Pakistanis. “Those who kill humanitarian workers must be reminded that they are not only killing their own country’s residents, but also people seeking to improve the lives of victims of poverty and injustice,” it said.

Here is a statement from World Vision:

World Vision today is mourning the brutal and senseless deaths of six members of our staff in the Mansehra district of Pakistan, following an unprovoked attack by gunmen. We are seeking to confirm reports that gunmen first set off bombs or grenades, then opened fire on the office, located 65 kilometers north of the capital, Islamabad. In addition to those killed, seven employees are hospitalized with injuries. No threatening letters were received prior to the attack.

World Vision’s relief and development work in Pakistan is conducted by local citizens. All of World Vision’s operations in the country have been temporarily suspended. World Vision remembers those staff who have died as dedicated people seeking to improve the lives of people affected by poverty and disasters.

Please pray for the wounded, for World Vision, and for those who lost loved ones in today’s attack.

Typical Schedule:

• Breakfast and a short walk
• Thucydides and Homer
• 15-minute break
• Tacitus
• Lunch at 1:00
• Free time until tea
• Tea at 4:30
• Plato and Horace
• Supper at 7:30
• German and French until 9:00 p.m.
• Free time until bed (usually about 10:20 p.m.)

As soon as my bed room door is shut I get into my dressing gown, draw up a chair to my table and produce, like Louis Moore, note book and pencil. Here I write up my diary for the day, and then turning to the other end of the book devote myself to poetry, either new stuff or polishing the old. If I am not in the mood for that I draw faces and hands and feet etc for practice. This is the best part of the day of course, and I am usually in a very happy frame of mind by the time I slip into bed.

(Source: They Stand Together: The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves, edited by Walter Hooper, p. 84)

So, any homeschoolers out there who follow the same schedule? Anyone who wants to?

HT: The Scriptorium

Related posts:
    • Click here for more Narnia related posts.
    • Click here for Countdown to Caspian roundup.
    • Click here for Narnia sermon series.

It’s now becoming clear that Barack Obama is willing to put everything on the table in order to be the president who passes health-care reform. Everything, that is, except a ban on federal funding for abortion.

Last September, the president promised that “no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.” Yet the legislation most likely to move forward in Congress would be the single greatest expansion of abortion since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

The White House knows how to turn Mr. Obama’s September commitment into legislative action … Only adding a so-called Hyde Amendment to the health-care reform bills would fulfill the president’s promise to protect Americans from subsidizing abortion … Similar amendments have been added to health-care bills ever since [1976]. Without specific language prohibiting the practice, history has shown that the courts or administrative agencies end up directing government dollars to pay for abortions …

Over the past year, language similar to the Hyde Amendment was crafted by Reps. Bart Stupak (D., Mich.) and Joe Pitts (R., Pa.) and inserted into the health-care bill that passed the House. When asked about the Stupak-Pitts Amendment in November, Mr. Obama talked around the issue. He said that “there is a balance to be achieved that is consistent with the Hyde Amendment.” When asked if Stupak-Pitts struck this “balance,” the president replied “not yet.” That’s an odd reply. The question of abortion funding doesn’t have any Zen to it: The funding is either prohibited or it’s not …

The president’s latest proposal mirrors legislation that has passed the Senate, which doesn’t include a Hyde Amendment, and would inevitably establish abortion as a fundamental health-care service … The president’s plan goes further than the Senate bill on abortion by calling for spending $11 billion over five years on “community health centers,” which include Planned Parenthood clinics that provide abortions.

With one simple step the White House can keep its promise to keep federal funding of abortions out of the health bill. So why won’t the White House take that step? (HT: Denny Burk and Vitamin Z)

Related posts:
    • The Sanctity of Human Life in the Womb (Sermon from Psalm 139)
    • Barack Obama on Health Care Then and Now

Click here for more posts on the subject of abortion.

“I have a theory why so many pastors burn out: They start out walking with Jesus but they end up working for Jesus.”

(Pete Briscoe of Bent Tree Bible Fellowship in Carrolton, Texas, recalled hearing from someone at a time when he was depressed)

Homemade Flying Hovercraft (Video length: 1:15)

New Zealander Rudy Heeman has been showing off his latest garage invention — a hovercraft which takes off at 70 km/h. Heeman hopes to sell his invention at $13,000 USD per unit.

HT: Neatorama

Related posts:
    • Get Ready for Flying Cars?
    • Jet Pack in Flight

Barack Obama on health care in 2004:

My understanding of the Senate is is that you need 60 votes to get something significant to happen, which means that Democrats have to ask the question: Do we have the will to move an American agenda forward [emphasis mine], not a Democratic or Republican agenda forward?

Barack Obama on health care in 2005:

A change in the Senate rules that really, I think, would change the character of the Senate forever … And what I worry about would be that you essentially still have two chambers, the House and the Senate, but you have simply majoritarian, absolute power on either side, and that’s just not what the Founders intended.

Under the rules, the reconciliation process does not permit that debate. Reconciliation is therefore the wrong place for policy changes. In short, the reconciliation process appears to have lost its proper meaning: A vehicle designed for deficit reduction and fiscal responsibility has been hijacked.

Barack Obama on health care in 2006:

Those big-ticket items, fixing our health care system. You know, one of the arguments that sometimes I get with my fellow progressives, and some of these have flashed up in the blog communities on occasion, is this notion that we should function sort of like Karl Rove, where we identify our core base, we throw ‘em red meat, we get a 50-plus-one victory. See, Karl Rove doesn’t need a broad consensus because he doesn’t believe in government. If we want to transform the country, though, that requires a sizeable majority.

Barack Obama on health care in 2007:

[Health care reform] is an area where we’re going to have to have a 60% majority in the Senate and the House in order to actually get a bill to my desk. We’re going to have to have a majority to get a bill to my desk that is not just a 50-plus-one majority….

You gotta break out of what I call the sort of 50-plus-one pattern of presidential politics. Maybe you eke out a victory with 50-plus-one but you can’t govern. You know, you get Air Force One and a lot of nice perks as president but you can’t deliver on health, we’re not going to pass universal health care with a 50-plus-one strategy.

So, how does one reconcile (no pun intended) these past statements with the administration’s current plan to push health care through the Senate with a simple fifty-plus-one majority vote?

Related posts:
    • Abortion and The Health Bill
    • Congratulations Senator Barack Obama!
    • The Obama Burger