Detroit's problem explained with one (1) image (chart)

The population, which peaked at 1.85 million in 1950, has declined to about 700,000, according to U.S. Census data.

Manufacturing jobs have fallen from about 296,000 in 1950 to fewer than 27,000 in 2011.

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Jefferson's prayer for our Nation...from 212+ years ago

Thomas Jefferson 

A Prayer for the Nation

Almighty God, Who has given us this good land for our heritage; We humbly beseech Thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of Thy favor and glad to do Thy will. Bless our land with honorable ministry, sound learning, and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion, from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people, the multitude brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endow with Thy spirit of wisdom those whom in Thy name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that through obedience to Thy law, we may show forth Thy praise among the nations of the earth. In time of prosperity fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in Thee to fail; all of which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

--Washington D.C., March 4, 1801

Who are you?

Who are you (am I)? is not just the title of two (2) contemporary songs but also one of the most existential questions each of us may think about upon reflection. The Bible has a very clear and concise answer to who you are and in his blog James McDonald does a nice job summarizing (below)

Who God Says You Are James MacDonald - Senior Pastor - Harvest Bible Chapel But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” —Isaiah 43:1 Isaiah 43:1 tells us God is personal. I love that word formed (v.1) because it’s so intimate. God may have spoken the universe into existence, but He formed you and me. Formed is the same word used in Jeremiah 18 to describe God as the potter with His hands on the clay, personally shaping you. He did not just make your life and bring you into existence, He is forming the kind of person you are becoming day by day. God is making you into who He wants you to be. So when it comes to your identity, the critical issue is not what you think about yourself—because you can’t be trusted! As Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” Ultimately, the only thing that matters is what God thinks about you. Tune in to the biblical message of who God says you are, and allow His thoughts about you to shape your identity. You will discover a remarkably different thought pattern developing: “I’m not who my parents or my spouse say I am. I’m not who my boss says I am. I'm not what my performance says I am. I'm not what my appearance says I am. None of these! I am who God says I am!” If you begin to let your mind be renewed with His Word, God’s truth—He formed you!—will download into your identity and your attitude. You won’t even have to worry about your actions. They will begin to naturally flow out of who you know yourself to be in the Lord. The process involves accepting truths about God which affect your identity—and result in an attitude that naturally leads to God-honoring actions. The truth that He is personal, is just one of them. Isaiah 43:1 also tells us God not only formed us personally, He has“redeemed you and calls you His own.” God paid the redemption price of His Son’s life, so He could have a relationship with those who turn from their sin and trust in Christ alone for forgiveness. Does that describe you? Have you done that? If you have, God not only knows you by name, He says, “you are mine.” That is who God says you are—and what He says is the only thing that will ultimately matter! Let His truth form your identity, for His glory, today

Scandals in pictures (how would you sort this list?)

THE SCANDALS

Sandra Gligorijevic/Shutterstock

Watergate: The mother of all White House scandals. It had everything but sex: A burglary, spying on political opponents, secret tapes, an enemies list, obstruction of justice, campaign finance shenanigans, ominous-sounding acronyms (CREEP), memorable denials ("I am not a crook"), congressional investigations, crusading journalists, articles of impeachment, and the first resignation of a sitting president. Beat that, Benghazi.

Spiro Agnew: Before Richard Nixon stepped down, he was preceded by his alliteration-prone vice president, who had been charged with taking bribes and evading taxes. Agnew insisted until the very end that the"hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history" had gotten it all wrong. 

Iran-Contra: High-ranking officials in the Reagan Administration made an end-run around federal law by secretly selling missiles to Iran in order to help free American hostages in Lebanon and fund the Nicaraguancontra rebels. What could go wrong?

Missing Iraqi WMD: President George W. Bush and top members of his cabinet insist that Saddam Hussein is definitely almost nearly developing and or amassing weapons of mass destruction which he might probably absolutely use against us. The United States launches a preemptive invasion of Iraq. Ten years, tens of thousands of deaths, and billions of dollars later, the search for the elusive WMD continues.

KtD/Shutterstock

Plamegate: After former ambassador Joe Wilson blew the whistle on the Bush White House's claims of Saddam's pursuit of nuclear materials, his wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA agent. The subsequent investigation leads to the conviction (and pardon) of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, "Scooter" Libby.

Abu Ghraib, torture memos: Prisoner abuse at American military prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan and the CIA's extradition and torture program were authorized by Bush and top administration officials. But that's allbehind us now.

NSA spying on US citizens: After 9/11, Bush authorized the National Security Agency to covertly surveil Americans' email and phone calls—inviolation of federal law.

Pentagon Papers: A secret Pentagon history of the Vietnam War leaked by whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg revealed that the Johnson administration had been lying about the true scope and of the war. The Nixon White House tried to prevent their publication.

mjaud/Shutterstock

Teapot Dome: Before Watergate, there was Teapot Dome, the early 1920s scandal that led to President Warren G. Harding's secretary of the interior being convicted for accepting bribes from oil companies to lease Navy petroleum reserves in Teapot Dome, Wyoming.

DNC campaign finance scandals:  In 1996, Vice President Al Gore attended an event at a California Buddhist temple that illegally funneled $65,000 to the Democratic National Committee. Eventually, the party had to return nearly $3 million in forbidden gifts, some from foreign donors such as James Riady, an Indonesian businessman who was fined $8.6 million.

Johnson impeachment: Disputes between President Andrew Johnson and Radical Republicans in Congress spun into a constitutional crisiswhen the House voted to impeach him in 1868. He survived in the Senate—by one vote.

Teddy Roosevelt's corporate cash: After winning election as a trust-buster in 1904, Roosevelt and the Republican Party are revealed to havequietly courted big corporate donors. 

The Grant administration: President Ulysses S. Grant's terms were marred by a succession of high-level scandals, including the Whiskey Ring, Belknap affair, the Delano Affair, the salary grab, and the Cattelism scandal. The administration's endemic corruption became known as "Grantism."

Wikimedia Commons

LBJ's mystery money: In 1963, Life magazine was preparing a bombshell exposé on how Vice President Lyndon Johnson had amassed a fortune through his connections to Texas oil barons. The article, whichbiographer Robert Caro says would have linked LBJ to the Bobby Baker Scandal, was set to drop in late November. Kennedy's assassination killed the story and a planned Senate investigation.

XYZ Affair: A diplomatic kerfuffle led to an undeclared "Quasi War" between the United States and France in the late 1790s. Back home, it led to passage of the draconian Alien and Sedition Acts and fueled the growing split between President John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

Hamilton's affair and insider trading: In 1797, former treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton revealed that he had carried on an affair with a married woman—while bribing her husband to let it to continue. He also defended himself against accusations of having used his position to engage in insider trading.

US attorney firings: In 2007, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned amid an investigation into whether the firing of nine US attorneys in 2006 was politically motivated.   

Pardongate: As he left the White House in January, 2001, President Bill Clinton hastily pardoned Susan McDougal (for contempt of court during the Whitewater case), his brother Roger (for old drug charges), and Marc Rich, a fugitive tax cheat whose wife had been a major Clinton donor.

Library of Congress

Lincoln Bedroom: The Clinton White House provided perks to big donors including stays in the Lincoln Bedroom as well as coffees, golf outings, or morning jogs with the president.

Whitewater: Failed Arkansas land deals involving Bill and Hilary Clinton spawns a wide-ranging investigation into several -gates: Filegate, Travelgate, and Troopergate (and eventually Ken Starr's probe of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair).

"Ma, ma, where's my pa?": "Gone to the White House, ha ha ha!" This catchy slogan followed Grover Cleveland after he won election in spite of reports that he had fathered an illegitimate child.

Clinton-Lewinksy affair and impeachment: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman," the hug, the blue dress, Ken Starr, "it depends on what the meaning of 'is' is." Good times.

Fast and Furious: A botched ATF operation birthed a conspiracy theory that the Obama administration was coming for Americans' guns.

Jefferson-Hemings affair: Thomas Jefferson was dogged by rumors that he had fathered children with a slave who served as his "concubine." Jefferson never addressed the allegations, but it is now known that Sally Hemings had six of Jefferson's children.

SNAP/Entertainment Pictures/ZUMAPRESS.com

Petticoat Affair, a.k.a. the Eaton Affair: Ridiculous by modern standards, this scandal rocked Washington when Andrew Jackson's secretary of war married a widow too soon after the death of her husband. It led to the resignation of most of the cabinet and was immortalized in the 1936 film, The Gorgeous Hussy, starring Joan Crawford.

Skeetgate: After President Obama says that "at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time," skeptics demand proof. A photo of the president shooting is produced; the skeptics insist it's faked.

Andrew Jackson adultery scandal: Forty years after he wed his wife Rachel, presidential candidate Jackson was attacked for marrying her before her divorce from her first husband was finalized, making Old Hickory an adulterer and the first lady a bigamist. He blamed the smear campaign for causing her death shortly after he took office.

Solyndra: The federal government gave more than $500 million to a solar firm that went belly up. Even congressional inquisitor Rep. Darryl Issa (R-Calif.) eventually had to concede there was no there there.

Keystone Pictures USA/ZUMAPRESS.com

Billygate: President Jimmy Carter took major heat when it was revealed that his ne'er-do-well brother Billy had received payments from the Libyan government.

Mary Todd Lincoln's price "flub-dubs": When Abraham Lincoln assumed the presidency, the first lady set about remodeling the White House, but went over budget by $7,000. As complaints of her profligacy spread,the president wrote, "It would stink in the nostrils of the American people to have it said that the President of the United States had approved a bill overrunning an appropriation of $20,000 for flub-dubs for this damned old house when the soldiers cannot have blankets."

Original link (here) to article in MotherJones.

Keeping it simple; what really matters.

It's the only "thing" that will matter to you 100 years from now; thank goodness it's easy to understand. From one of my fav reads each day (here).


________________________

James Madison, fourth president of the United States, was instrumental in the drafting of the US constitution. He warned against creating laws “so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.” Based on some of the complicated government forms I’ve read, that’s advice that still needs to be heeded a little more often!  Sometimes when sharing the gospel, we make it more complicated than it needs to be.

We can be glad that the Bible presents the good news of salvation in clear, easily understood language. Jesus said to Nicodemus, an educated Pharisee, that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). He later said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (14:6). The apostle Paul said it in straightforward language to the jailor in Philippi who asked how to be saved: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31).  God’s precious love story is simple. He sent His Son to rescue us from sin and death. Wonderful news that even children can understand.  Tell me the story of Jesus, Write on my heart every word; Tell me the story most precious, Sweetest that ever was heard. —Crosby Through faith in Christ, we receive God’s pardon and escape sin’s penalty. Bible in a year: 1 Samuel 15-16; Luke 10:25-42

© 2013 by RBC Ministries. All rights reserved.

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