Good morning!  It’s another beautiful Saturday, and I have just a handful of links to share with you this morning before I get going here for the day.

First, in the Presidential race, all the talk was about how Carson had surged ahead of Trump in a few Iowa polls. This prompted an intern in Trumpland to send a nastygram out re: Carson, which caught the attention of the 24 hour news cycle, when he said Iowans must have “issues int he brain”!  The Trump candidacy is one in which all of the positive things coming from it are a result of the upending of the campaign, and not the campaign itself. It remains to be seen if a credible candidate will be able to challenge his dominance.

On the Democratic side, Joe Biden announced that he wouldn’t run for President. I began to wonder if someone on the web had chronicled all of Biden’s gaffs – and sure enough, Fox News (shocker) has a whole page devoted to it!

Separately, Politico had a story about how Carly F’s support seems to have “collapsed” – reminded me of 2011/12 and how for a few months we heard about the “9, 9, 9 plan”. Not to unfairly compare Cain with Carly, the latter is about 100x more articulate, even though they both came from the business world…that’s probably where the similarities end!

The other political stuff going on all centers on the Speaker’s gavel. Paul Ryan is working up support from a few different quarters for a run at Speaker. The main issue has been that the Freedom Caucus (the most conservative 40 or so members of the House) have certain demands that they want met ideologically, and structurally. One can hardly blame them given the way conservatives have been treated in the recent past. Ryan’s meeting with them went very well – most are in support of his candidacy, so we’ll see what happens from here…

In other more interesting news, this week the new Star Wars trailer was released.

Thanks to my buddy Parris, tickets are secured for the December 18th opening day! And if you’re really a nerd (without job, time constraints, or functioning life outside the expanded universe) you can try sit through all 7 movies in one day...in a row! (h/t Jen K.)

With the rise of Bernie Sanders on the Dem Presidential side of things, there was a really good question put to John Piper this week: how should Christians think about socialism? 

Piper also publicly posted the contents of a letter to an 11 year old boy (changed his name though) who wondered ‘if God promises to meet our needs, then why am I hungry?‘ This was a challenging post to read through.

I know that there are some strange traditions among sports fans, but this seems to cross the line into revolting. haha!

Have a great weekend! I’ll leave you with the best quote of the week, posted by Tim Challies:

The essence of God’s action in wrath is to give people what they choose, in all its implications. —J.I. Packer