You must be the change you wish to see in the world. Mahatma Gandhi For here we are not afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead… Thomas Jefferson Remember, we learn nothing by speaking. St. Francis of Asissi I thought I would pull up three inspirational quotes from some of my heroes for this inspiration Sunday. Gandhi was a man of simplicity. He lived his life with very few luxuries. But his words were full of riches. We can’t just complain about something in life. Doing only that is a worthless task. Instead of complaining work to find … Continue reading We Learn Nothing By Speaking…..

I have been thinking about all the partisanship and our legislative process lately.  We seem to be in a gridlocked pattern that is almost impossible to break. Washington is completely out of step with the rest of the country.  Poll after pole tells us that we the people want them to get off their butts and do something. Doing nothing in the U.S. Senate feeds the cynicism in the country which enhances the Republican view that government can’t do anything right. The filibuster is the latest major tool used  to accomplish that task. All it takes now it for the … Continue reading Feeding the Cynicism….

Source: Republicans Win Congress as Democrats Get Most Votes – Bloomberg. The 2010 elections, in which Republicans won the House majority and gained more than 700 state legislative seats across the nation, gave the party the upper-hand in the process of redistricting, the once-a-decade redrawing of congressional seats. The advantage helped them design safer partisan districts and maintain their House majority in 2012 — even as they lost the presidential race by about 5 million votes. Also nationwide, Democratic House candidates combined to win about 1.4 million more votes than Republicans, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News. Gerrymandering which is … Continue reading About Gerrymandering….

  Source:  Thinking outside the box – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Thinking outside the box (also thinking out of the box or thinking beyond the box) is a metaphor that means to think differently, unconventionally, or from a new perspective. This phrase often refers to novel or creative thinking. The term is thought to derive from management consultants in the 1970s and 1980s challenging their clients to solve the “nine dots” puzzle, whose solution requires some lateral thinking. Ironically, telling people to “think outside the box” does not help them think outside the box, at least not with the 9-dot … Continue reading Thinking outside the box….

Source: China’s real estate bubble – CBS News. China has been nothing short of a financial miracle. In just 30 years, this state-controlled economy became the world’s second largest, deftly managed by government policies and decrees. One sector the authorities concentrated on was real estate and construction. But that may have created the largest housing bubble in human history. If you go to China, it’s easy to see why there’s all the talk of a bubble. We discovered that the most populated nation on earth is building houses, districts and cities with no one in them. This article got my attention … Continue reading China’s real estate bubble

Victor said she was “shocked” when she heard what Scalia said about the Voting Rights Act during the Supreme Court’s oral arguments on a key provision of the law last month. “I thought you must not know what’s happening in this country,” Victor wrote. “After learning more this year from the civil rights group, Advancement Project, I know that just as there were for me, there are barriers to voting for many people – especially people who are black or brown.” Obama pointed to Victor, who waited in line for hours to vote at a polling place in Miami, as … Continue reading Equal Voice At The Ballot Box….

  There is only one battle worth fighting: spend every second of your life searching for the spark that makes you feel alive. There’s no other fight quite like it. You fail, and it doesn’t matter. The entire world thinks you’re pathologically unstable, and it doesn’t matter. You receive 200 rejection letters from agents, you keep on writing. Reach for the stars and don’t whine when you fall on your ass. Source: Success. Fear. And stuff. « Cristian Mihai. I certainly enjoy reading posts of my fellow bloggers. As I have said before most of what I read comes from other … Continue reading Success. Fear. And stuff…..

  Fear less, hope more; eat less, chew more; whine less, breathe more; talk less, say more; hate less, love more; and all good things are yours. -Swedish proverb I don’t know many Swedes I guess so I don’t know if any of them actually live by this proverb. I briefly had a Norwegian roommate in college and he definitely liked to party with his friends.  I can’t imagine another proverb that has so many lessons of life in it.  I wonder where it came from. Of course all of us Christians know about the Book of Proverbs in the … Continue reading Whine Less, Breathe More…….

April 2011 – Since I just got done with a series of posts about Jefferson I thought I would put a picture of his life size bronze from Monticello here. Continue reading Tom Jefferson…

It was nice to see that Rand Paul’s standing filibuster bringing additional attention to the military drone issue in this country. Our country is based on check and balances and the current drone program has neither of those characteristics. The possibility of serious abuse scares me and should scare all of us. But, that is not what this post is going to be about. Instead it is about our pledge of allegiance and our national anthem. I think it is time to replace both of these “sacred documents” to align us with twenty-first century thinking.  We need to get away … Continue reading The Pledge….

I want to do a followup of this morning post with a little more whimsical frame of mind.  As I see it we are looking at two different world views when it come to our energy needs. One of our political parties theme seems to be “Drill Baby, Drill”. They want to extract absolutely every drop of oil out of our planet. They adamantly insist on building the Keystone pipeline so that we can take the dirtiest oil around and send it off to countries with little or no environmental regulations. They want to send our kids over to foreign … Continue reading Two Scenarios….