Monday Coffee Thoughts and Links

More of Patton Dodd at BeliefNet

The Power of Negative Thinking

For many years, I believed it was foolish and faithless to acknowledge all that is wrong with my life. I believed I was a new creation, and admitting anything less was not acceptable. I missed seeing a lot that was wrong with my community, my family, and myself because I thought the Christian thing to do was to emphasize the positive, glory be to God.

But Jesus came for the sick, not the healthy--by which he surely meant that he came for those who know they are sick, and not those who, being sick, nonetheless claim they are healthy.

StoryCorps is declaring November 28, 2008 the first annual National Day of Listening.

This holiday season, ask the people around you about their lives — it could be your grandmother, a teacher, or someone from the neighborhood. By listening to their stories, you will be telling them that they matter and they won’t ever be forgotten. It may be the most meaningful time you spend this year.

A Worthy Debate. Did the New Deal Work?

David Brooks, George Will, Ariann Huffington and Bob Kuttner on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, debate steps that the new administration should take to guide the economy back to health.

Listen and consider carefully David Brooks' observations on the different choices that should be made because of the particular needs of a service economy. He makes good points, I think.

Watch Bob Kuttner takes George Will to school on the New Deal on This Week.

For more on whether the New Deal was effective in healing the economy of the 1930's, see Lessons from the Great Depression Blogging at Grasping Reality with Both Hands.

I have never been able to make any sense at all of the right-wing claim that the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression by creating a "crisis of confidence" that crippled private investment as American businessmen feared and hated "that Communist Roosevelt." The crisis of confidence was created by the stock market crash, the deflation, and the bank failures of 1929-1933. Private investment recovered in a very healthy fashion as Roosevelt's New Deal policies took effect.

The interruption of the Roosevelt Recovery in 1937-1938 is, I think, well understood: Roosevelt's decision to adopt more "orthodox" economic policies and try to move the budget toward balance and the Federal Reserve's decision to contract the money supply by raising bank reserve requirements provide ample explanation of that downturn.