Secession….. 3

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Map Red BlueTake an essay in The Daily Beast last week, in which Bronx-born culture critic Lee Siegel used the gun rights fight as one reason for the South to “Go ahead, secede already!”

With secession, a “red-state nation, giddy with new mobility, could make the 1958 Chevy its official car … [and] it could arm all of its citizens, and thus relieve itself of the financial burden of maintaining law enforcement for its citizens,” he wrote. The North, he added, could be unshackled from its Bible-crazed, knuckle-dragger anchors, to venture forth to establish the America envisioned by the enlightened: “Universal health care. No guns. Strong unions … high revenues from a fair tax structure.… In short, a society on a par with most of the rest of the industralized world.”

Source: As NRA meets, Great Gun Debate intensifies America’s culture war (+video) – CSMonitor.com.

Sometimes I think that maybe secession is about the only way to get over our constant squabbling between the red States and the blue. We seem to just fundamentally disagree on so many topics I’m not sure that we don’t have irreconcilable differences.  The major problem with this idea is that there are very significant numbers of blues in the red States and visa versa. How do we handle that?

So many in the red States don’t seem to want any form of government. They prefer a survival of the fittest world where individual fire power is the dominant factor. Everyone for themselves is their motto. It boggles my mind to realize that less than 10% of our citizens are able to basically shut down all our democratic processes with constant filibustering.

Maybe the only way we can finally join the rest of the world in several practices is to split.  Universal healthcare, despite the meager advances from Obamacare,  is pretty much doomed. Any common sense gun regulations seem unaccomplishable.  There is very little sense of “the common good” amongst many of us. Paying for a healthy infrastructure is doomed due to the no-tax pledge chanted by many. Maybe it is time to go our separate ways?

Maybe it is time to start thinking about three countries in North America or maybe even fifty-one?  I know that Lincoln is perhaps President Obama’s favorite past president. I wonder how he would handle a red State secession?

By the way, the map above is what it would look like if the red/blue States were sized by population instead of geographical space.

Fertilizer plant that exploded in Texas carried $1M policy 2

Corporations, Government, In The News • Tags: , ,

Fert plant“The bottom line is, this lack of insurance coverage is just consistent with the overall lack of responsibility we’ve seen from the fertilizer plant, starting from the fact that from day one they have yet to acknowledge responsibility,” Roberts said.

Roberts said he expects the plant’s owner to ask a judge to divide the $1 million in insurance money among the plaintiffs, several of whom he represents, and then file for bankruptcy.

He said he wasn’t surprised that the plant was carrying such a small policy.

“It’s rare for Texas to require insurance for any kind of hazardous activity,” he said. “We have very little oversight of hazardous activities and even less regulation.”

Source: Fertilizer plant that exploded in Texas carried $1M policy – CBS News.

I have long known that Texas is the execution capital of the world but didn’t know about its dismal lack of oversight until I read the above.  For six years I was a sole-proprieter cabinet maker. I sold a few thousand dollars worth of furniture and cabinets each year; not enough to make a living on but it did supplement my pension. In that small non-hazardous (except maybe to me) business I carried a $1 million insurance policy. That is just standard in this part of the country.

When I learned that a large fertilizer plant near such a dense population carried no more than I did I was just astounded! How could oversight body have allowed this? They say there were no inspections of the plant in several years due to the lack of taxes to fund them.  I’m sure that the hundreds of people who were killed or maimed or their families now regret allowing such disgraceful oversight by their government officials.

Why God Is a ‘Mother,’ Too…. 1

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MotherLong before I became familiar with the academic debates concerning calling God “Mother,” debates that I am now currently a part of as a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, I was being raised in a household where I instinctively understood that the divine presence was manifest in the loving hands and arms of mothers, and most especially in the life of my grandmother who raised me. My grandmother’s kitchen was a theological laboratory where she taught me how to love people just as naturally as she taught me to make peach cobbler and buttermilk biscuits. I watched and listened as she ministered to the sick and the lost, with a Bible in one hand and a freshly baked pound cake in the other, despite having no official ministry role.

I knew that if God was real, if God truly loved me as a parent loves a child, then God was also “Mother” and not only “Father.” Only years of dogma and doctrine force you to unlearn what you know to be true in your own heart, demanding “Father” as the only acceptable appellation and concept for God.

Source: Why God Is a ‘Mother,’ Too | TIME.com.

God is love. There is no doubt about it for me that is the primary definition. Although I myself lacked a loving earthly mother I see that love manifested all around me.

Happy Mother’s day….

Blooming Oaks

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Bloomin Oaks

 

This is a rather simple picture but a meaningful one to me.  It is of the grandfather oak tree on our property. I’m pretty sure it pre-dates our 1925 farm house. In our part of the country oaks are about the last trees to finally leaf out so this must finally be Spring.

F-35 Bookkeeping… 7

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F35As defense secretary, Robert Gates withheld $614 million from Lockheed Martin in 2010 for its lackluster work on the $400 billion F-35 fighter program, the most costly weapon system ever bought.

Source: F-35 Bookkeeping | TIME.com.

A few hundred million here a few hundred million there and before long you are talking about real money. It is totally unfathomable to me how we could spend $400 billion on one plane design!  But it seems that the $614 million that Gates took away was actually just delayed. He planed on giving it back at a later date. I can only hope that Secretary Hagel is a little more stingy with my tax dollars.

I like to figure, especially when my money is being spent, just what something is going to cost me and what benefit will I glean from it.  For the sake of this post let me assume that I am in the military aircraft buying mode. I can’t possibly see that actually happening even in a moral support thing but lets assume it anyway.

At an estimated $140 million each these planes will be by far the most expensive ever built. I’m sure a very big percentage of that cost is justified as being about pilot safety.  Being stingy with my own money I can’t see why we don’t shelve this whole thing and build a few more pilotless drones to replace them.

The F-35 is as above costed at $140 million each and is estimated to cost about $600/hour to operate. The MQ-1 drone, which is currently the primary drone of choice costs about $4 million each and cost about $3.50/hour to operate. So getting my calculator out I can buy thirty-five drones and still save money and of course risk no pilot’s lives. If I were the enemy which would I be more fearful of, one super expensive plane with a pilot on board, or thirty five drones circling over head.  I don’t know much about the terrorist business but I would expect the later.

I hope there are at least a few bean-counter left in Washington to figure this stuff out. I know the drone industry is much like the fighter aircraft business who see this cash-cow and are trying to figure out how to add more bells and whistles to drones to drive up the costs and therefore their profits so we might just have a short window of opportunity to make a decision here. If they don’t have enough calculators in the Pentagon I would be more than willing to send them a few of mine. I seem to have plenty of them around.

Just Another Obsession???

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ob⋅ses⋅sion /əbseʃən/  –  noun

an unhealthy and compulsive preoccupation with something or someone

syn: fixation

Kids with GunsStoryline:

The gun was small and light, the training wheels of firearms. The .22-caliber, single-shot Crickett rifle turned deadly on Tuesday, officials in Kentucky said, when a 5-year-old Cumberland County boy shot and killed his 2-year-old sister in what the coroner described to a local paper as “just one of those crazy accidents.”

Source: Guns made for kids: How young is too young to shoot? – U.S. News.

The above definition of obsession is a pretty simple yet accurate one. Are guns an unhealthy and compulsive preoccupation with some of us, particularly in the U.S.? I think the parents who gave a five-year old a loaded gun definitely fit that definition!  Like Newton, sadly there is a two-year old life that was extinguished as a result and an innocent five-year old who will have to live with that for the rest of his life.  I wonder if that tragic loss of life changed those parents views of guns?  I kind of doubt it because if they buy a gun for their five-year old  their guns are probably a very deep-rooted compulsion. I hope that they at least suffer some legal consequences for this death but since Kentucky is a pretty NRA leading red State I doubt that there will be any action taken against them.  As the coroner said “just a crazy accident”. The Crickett rifle did not turn deadly; it was deadly to start with!

I know I will get a healthy share of flamers with this post but again but I just can’t understand how something whose sole purpose is to kill became so endemic in our society. Guns, besides death and inflating egos has little or no purpose. But, shamefully it has become so engrained that even classrooms of kids dying and a five-year old killing a two-year old has no effect on the  ”protecting my guns at all cost” mentality.

A five-year old killing his two-year old sister with a gun given to him by his parents! How sad and tragic is that. That is probably one of the saddest parts of the twenty-first century for me. Thirty-five thousand Americans will die as a result of guns in our country this coming year. Why can’t we find a less deadly toy to occupy our weekends?

Growing consensus” in Senate for U.S. action in Syria 1

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GrahamWith evidence indicating that Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime has used chemical weapons in Syria, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Sunday on “Face the Nation” that “there’s a growing consensus in the U.S. Senate that the United States should get involved.”

Source: Graham: “Growing consensus” in Senate for U.S. action in Syria – CBS News.

It is interesting that Senator Graham is able to find a “growing consensus” in the Senate but what about a consensus of the people who elected them? Do any of these guys actually listen to their constituents anymore?  Everyone knows that Senator Graham is a war hawk. He like Senator McCain seem to have never found a conflict they didn’t want to be involved in.  I thank the Lord everyday that we didn’t give Mr McCain the Oval Office five years ago. Lord knows how many more wars we would be in right now. President Obama is bad enough for continuing to throw money into the two he inherited.

But, getting back to the topic at hand just where do our elected representatives go to find out how to vote? It seems that the party they belong to is the top source. If the party leaders says vote for or against something then they almost always heed that call. They know if they don’t they won’t get the powerful committee assignments they so desire and Washington, if nothing else, is about power. The second source seems to be the lobbyists. Since many of these guys go on to be lobbyists themselves this is known as investing in your future to them. Kind of like almost every general who does the same thing at the DOD.

The next one on the list  of who are representative listen to seems to be the NRA and folks like Grover Norquist, or Rush Limbaugh. When any of these yahoos open their mouths scores of our supposed representative anxiously await their marching orders.

Pretty far down the list for how to vote comes the people they represent. That is a sad but obvious fact in today’s world. One basic thing that allows that to happen is that we the electorate seem oblivious to the power that we hold. Only about half of us even bother to vote and the half that do seem more attached to a party line or just plain selfishness than to the common good of all of us.

If only the electorate realized that they could easily change almost anything to do with our political system if they only had the will to do it. The true power in the country still resides in the vote; someday we may actually come to realize that fact.

The latest polls show that almost 2/3 of us think that the U.S. should stay out of this latest conflict. We don’t need to be the policemen of the world. Let some of the regional players who have much more to lose  get involved. If we kept our nose out of these things I’m sure others would come forward. But why should they bear that burden now when they can so easily push it off on us?

More Diagnoses of Hyperactivity… 2

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kidsThose are astronomical numbers. I’m floored,” said Dr. William Graf, a pediatric neurologist in New Haven and a professor at the Yale School of Medicine. He added, “Mild symptoms are being diagnosed so readily, which goes well beyond the disorder and beyond the zone of ambiguity to pure enhancement of children who are otherwise healthy.”

And even more teenagers are likely to be prescribed medication in the near future because the American Psychological Association plans to change the definition of A.D.H.D. to allow more people to receive the diagnosis and treatment. A.D.H.D. is described by most experts as resulting from abnormal chemical levels in the brain that impair a person’s impulse control and attention skills.

Source: More Diagnoses of Hyperactivity Causing Concern – NYTimes.com.

The whole idea of medicating kids who are a little different is very disturbing to me but it seems like this is becoming more and more common. I am sure that if I were born fifty years later than I was I would be one of those drugged kids sliding through life.  Are we really medicating out a large degree of creativity in this next generation?  I really fear that is the case.

I’m sure severe cases of A.D.H.D. are about chemical imbalances in the brain but like many things today that diagnosis seems very much abused. I hope that it is not the teachers who are promoting this new pattern.  Maybe they are just tired of that over rambunctious kid in their class who disturbs the normal class flow. Just who is behind this dramatic increase in drugging our kids?

I am very aware that through numerous media the drug companies are trying to increase their sales by having patients go to their doctors asking for certain drugs. I know that I am currently on five different medication to deal with various health issues I now have.  Am I being drugged more for a beneficial effect or to increase a drug companies profits.  One pill I take that is still under patent protection costs more than the other four combined.

Viagra is one of those cases of obvious abuse in my mind and no I don’t take that one. :)  It supposedly produced to help older men maintain a satisfying sexual life but has since morphed into a drug to be used by every male who is seeking and enhanced sexual thrill. I’m sure that Bob Dole is no longer the typical user of Viagra.

Getting back to the original thoughts on this post are we drugging creativity out of our kids in order to obtain increased conformity in our society. That is the fear I have…..

Brainwashed??? 4

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brainwashI just read a news article about a woman who says she is going to convert to Islam. Her family shouts that she has been brainwashed and needs an intervention to prevent that from happening. Just what does it really mean to be brainwashed? Brainwashing like many other words and conditions has a myriad of definitions depending on the speaker.

Here is what Wikipedia says about brainwashing:

Mind control (also known as brainwashing) refers to a process in which a group or individual “systematically uses unethically manipulative methods to persuade others to conform to the wishes of the manipulator(s), often to the detriment of the person being manipulated”. The term has been applied to any tactic, psychological or otherwise, which can be seen as subverting an individual’s sense of control over their own thinking, behavior, emotions or decision making.

Who is to say what is an ethical vs. unethical manipulation for convincing someone of a different truth? Aren’t we all manipulated in one degree or another almost every day?

  • When I was a kid if I wanted to go ride my bicycle I just went to the garage and jumped on board. Now if you want to ride a bike you have to go to a store and get all the proper bike riding clothes, riding shoes and especially a helmets before you ride. Am I being brainwashed into thinking that somehow this additional $200+ expense for clothes I would not normally buy will somehow make the ride more enjoyable?
  • I have spent sixty-seven years on this earth brushing my teeth twice a day but now I find that isn’t good enough. Now I am supposed to spend several dollars a month for products that bleach them to a very unnatural white. Am I being brainwashed into doing something that actually have some long-term negative consequences?
  • I am told that I just can’t cook a tasty meal unless I have granite countertops, stainless steel appliances and cherry cabinets. Everything else is just substandard and will therefore make tasteless meals.
  • For pretty much most of my life I was told by numerous sources that the founders intended this country to be a Christian nation. It was not until I researched it on my own that I found that to be false.  Was I brainwashed into something that served a political or religious agenda?
  • I was first told by my Catholic teachers and clergy that Catholics would be the only ones in heaven. Later when I became a Lutheran I received the same message except that now it was Lutherans who are the only ones going to heaven.  Have I been brainwashed all these years?
  • When I was a rebellious teenager I was told by all the tobacco company experts that cigarettes were not addictive and definitely didn’t cause cancer. I know I was brainwashed in this area. It took me twenty-five years to break that addiction.

I could go on and on about being brainwashed about one manner or another. In order to sell their products Madison Avenue and the drug manufacturers attempt to brainwash me everyday to buy their products. They want me to go to my doctor and tell him I need the particular drug that sell. Religious organizations try to brainwash me into believing that they are the only ones among the thousands of religious denominations out there that have it right about things spiritual. Everyone else is simply wrong.

Let’s face it brainwashing sadly  is just a fact in much of today’s world.  I think we all need some serious intervention for many of the things we have been brainwashed about.

But I’m just a simple guy so what do I know….

An Inspiring Spring Day 5

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Spring 2013 Front Yard

 

I have chosen the crabapple tree in the front yard as my inspiration theme for this Sunday. I just love watching things come back to life after a dormant cold season. The horses across the street are wintered someplace else. This was the first week they were back.

A Reagan Apostle On The GOP

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GOP“The Republican Party is not really a party. It doesn’t stand for anything except re-electing itself,” Stockman, who directed the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan, tells Newsmax. “The neocons are only oriented to an aggressive, imperialistic foreign policy of big defense establishment and suppression of our civil liberties. That’s bad.

“The tax cons want to just cut taxes — any time, any day — regardless of the fiscal situation,” Stockman adds. “That has gone to an absurd length. The social cons, social policy people — the right-to-life issue and gay marriage and all of that — that’s irrelevant to governing a democracy in a free society.

“That’s basically the heart of the Republican Party,” Stockman concludes. “In that mix, how can you find anything that’s going to stand for conservative economics, fiscal rectitude, free markets, sound money? It’s not there.

“The Republican Party is basically irrelevant to the economic crisis that faces the country.”

Source: Former Reagan Budget Head Stockman Critical of GOP.

Now before you conservatives out there start piling on I want you to know that these words above are from David Stockman who was a Reagan apostle who invented “Trickle Down” which still remains the siren of the GOP. The party seems to have taken on the mantel of being anti-deficit even though Reagan was anything but a deficit hawk.

I won’t add too many other words. These speak very well on their own:

  • imperialistic foreign policy of big defense
  • suppression of civil liberties (that was a Bush thing)
  • just want to cut taxes – anytime any day
  • No stands on fiscal rectitude, free markets, sound money.
  • basically irrelevant

These are awfully strong words coming from an apostle within the party. And here I thought Karl Rove was pretty harsh…..

Fodder For Our Prison System?? 11

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jail cell 2HOUSTON — As school districts across the country consider placing more police officers in schools, youth advocates and judges are raising alarm about what they have seen in the schools where officers are already stationed: a surge in criminal charges against children for misbehavior that many believe is better handled in the principal’s office….

Such criminal charges may be most prevalent in Texas, where police officers based in schools write more than 100,000 misdemeanor tickets each year, said Deborah Fowler, the deputy director of Texas Appleseed, a legal advocacy center in Austin. The students seldom get legal aid, she noted, and they may face hundreds of dollars in fines, community service and, in some cases, a lasting record that could affect applications for jobs or the military.

Source: With Police in Schools, More Children in Court – NYTimes.com.

As if we needed more opportunities to put our citizens into the prison system; we are far and away already the number one incarcerater in the world. Now it seems, especially in Texas that we are dipping into the youngest generation for additional fodder.

I don’t know how the NRA feels about our prison system. Since they seem to have so much sway with our government representatives maybe they should chime in here with their opinions. I know that our prison systems were severely privatized by Mr. Bush and most Republican governors in the last decade or so. I also know that those corporations are among  the most profitable in America. But to increase profits, and isn’t that the sole purpose for corporations, means more prisoners.  I know there are documented cases of judges getting kick-backs for sending more people to prisons but I just don’t know how wide-spread this is.

Lets get back to the core of this post. More police in our schools as the NRA is advocating is adding to misdemeanor tickets in a serious way.  Is that a necessary requirement for protecting them from a nut job with a legal assault weapon?  Maybe there is some grand conspiracy that I am missing out on here. :)

Long and Complicated…

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Moses“The minute a thing is long and complicated it confuses. Whoever wrote the Ten Commandments made ‘em short. They may not always be kept, but they can be understood.” – Will Rogers, 17 March 1935

What is even more amazing it that Jesus turned those ten into just two. Love God and Love each other. How could it be simpler than that.

A Test of Leadership…. 2

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JusticeAttorney General Eric Holder says he will not need to furlough any Justice Department employees in the current fiscal year.

The attorney general says he will be able to avoid furloughs because of additional money in the recently enacted legislation, combined with aggressive steps to freeze hiring and cut contracting and other costs

via Holder: No furloughs at Justice Department – CBS News.

I’m sure the purpose of this article was to show how well the Justice Department was run. They brag that they don’t need to lay off workers because they found the necessary 10% budget cuts elsewhere. Being the contrarian that I am while it is a good thing to not have to lay off anyone, to me it shows the opposite of good fiscal management. It means their budgets were bloated to start with and now some of the bloat had to be removed.

I know from having to do budgets in the corporate world that budgeting and expense planning are as much of a game as anything else. You always put more into the budget because you know that some of it will be cut.  The secret was to know where the line is.  If you bloat your budget too much  to where it is obvious that you have done that then a much heavier knife will be used and you end up a loser. If you are naive enough to only put down what you actually need then you also suffer the consequences.

Knowing all these games I was almost in favor of the sequestered  10% across the board cuts to government spending. Where the cuts do real damage like in the recent case of air traffic controllers they can be amended. Where there are cases like the above with the Justice department we should maybe be looking at additional cuts in next year’s budgets.  I’m sure government agencies are not immune from this typical corporate gaming.

But then we come to the defense department all of this stuff seems to be moot. Every year, at least for this millennium, the defense departments bloats their budgets beyond any actual need and then the congress adds even more. Defense department spending has increased dramatically during this period while everything else has suffered. I am hoping that the recent talks about serious reviews of the DOD budgets are well, serious.

The other thing we need to get serious about is healthcare costs. Since we have thrown out the most obvious solution that the rest of the world has discovered to these ever rising costs (that is single-payer system) we will have to find a unique solution.  Reigning in costs means giving some people and corporations less money for their services or finding more efficient ways to do things.  I have not really studied this area much but I seem to remember that there are billions, if not trillions , of dollars wasted each year due to medical errors and over-billing Medicare. Lets get serious about those things too. Maybe they need a sequester too. :)

I know that some folks will look at this post and the previous one and see a conflict. Since I am a pragmatist  I like to look at all the angles. You never know which one might be right for a given situation.

Tread on Me, Please….

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libertyWe’re often told that our liberties are under assault. The right warns that our Big Government nanny state is plotting to seize our guns and our Big Gulps, while strangling our economic freedom with taxes and regulations. The left rails against our Big Government security state—the drone warfare, indefinite detention and electronic surveillance that make the war on terror sound like an Orwellian nightmare. The National Rifle Association had just finished bellowing about background checks violating our Second Amendment rights when the American Civil Liberties Union started shrieking about the FBI violating the Boston bombing suspect’s Miranda rights….

In the Obama era, Tea Party Republicans like Senator Rand Paul have portrayed the U.S. government as a threat to individual liberty, an oppressive force in American life. They just want government to leave us alone. But while the Stand With Rand worldview is quite consistent—against gun restrictions, traffic-light cameras, drone strikes, anti-discrimination laws, anti-pollution laws, and other Big Brother intrusions into our private lives—it’s wrong. And most of us know it’s wrong, which is why we celebrate our first responders, our soldiers, our law enforcers. They’re from the government and they’re here to help. We know our government is fallible, because it’s made up of people, but we still count on it to protect us from terrorists, from psychos with guns, from exploding factories. We also need it to protect us from floods and wildfires, from financial meltdowns and climate change. We can’t do that kind of thing ourselves.

via Tread on Me: The Case for Freedom From Terrorist Bombings, School Shootings and Exploding Factories | TIME.com.

Wow!! This article by Michael Grunwald has some pretty poignant words of wisdom. I like the way to points fingers at both ends of the political spectrum. I guess I am like Michael in that I really don’t mind that there are cameras everywhere now recording what I do on a daily basis.  I don’t mind when our government regulates things that are clearly known to be a very net negative on our society.  If I want to own a gun why shouldn’t I be required to get a license for it the same way as I do to drive on our highways?

Yes, Senator Rand Paul is correct that government is sometimes a threat to our individual liberties; I’m OK with that. I don’t mind that I can be punished for yelling “fire” in a crowded theatre.  I don’t mind being ticketed if I choose to run a red light. I don’t mind being required to provide a government provided ID to get on an airplane. These are just things that are necessary to protect me.

But there are certain things that I will adamantly protest against when it come to restricting my liberties.  There are those who suggest that the recent Boston bomber should have been arrested when he came back from Russia because he might be a potential terrorist. I will fight the idea of incarcerating someone for something that they “might” do in the future. If I say too many critical things about our government on this blog would I also be on that arrest list? I might be but I also know that there are thousands of other bloggers, not to mention Mr. Limbaugh and his clan, that would be picked up before me. :)  Freedom of speech and thought are worth fighting about but for many other things as Mr. Grunwald said please tread on me.

The Gasoline Conspiracy….. 2

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Gas pricesNEW YORK — A sharp decline in the price of oil this month is making gasoline cheaper at a time of year when it typically gets more expensive. It’s a relief to motorists and business owners and a positive development for the economy.

via Drivers benefit as oil prices drop sharply – Business on NBCNews.com.

I don’t know about where you come from but it seems that gasoline prices around here jump $0.30 a gallon in an afternoon. Most of the times that happens in Friday mornings. Friday is one of the mornings I drive 40 miles round trip to the soup kitchen. Last week when I went there in the morning gas stations were advertising $3.43 per gallon. When I returned home that afternoon they were at $3.79 per gallon!  This sudden price jump seems typical. Then over the next three weeks or so will inch down penny by penny and then take another leap forward.

One of the sad things about this phenomenon is that it seems to always happens on Friday mornings. I think the reason for that is because so many people who live from paycheck to paycheck get their checks that day. I usually am pretty much a mocker of people with conspiracy theories but this is one I kind of believe in.

I don’t really know just who is pushing these sudden sharp rises? Is it the station owners or someone else?  I know when it happens at one station it almost always within an hour or so happens at all the stations around town.  Do these guys call each other up and have a conversation similar to this?

“Hi (fill in name), how are you doing today. I wanted to let you know that I am hiking my gas prices by 40 cents in a few minutes. Maybe you want to do the same?”

So, when I see articles like the one above talking about how the price of oil dropped significantly and see at our local stations the price of gasoline rise I have to wonder why.  I know whenever we have an event like the South Korean kid rattling his saber the price of gas correspondingly rises. It doesn’t take much to get a sudden spike up but never down.

But I’m just a simple guy so what do I know…..

Abraham Lincoln’s God…..

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Starry NightI never behold the heavens filled with stars that I do not feel I am looking in the face of God. I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist. but I cannot conceive how he could lie looking up into the heavens and say there is no God.

When any church will inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification for membership, the Saviour’s condensed statement of the substance of both law and Gospel. “‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and thy neighbor as thyself.” that church will I join with all my heart and all my soul.

Abraham Lincoln

I have scores of books of quotations from many different people but one of them that I enjoy the most, besides Will Rogers of course :) , is Abraham Lincoln.  He had a way of being able to find just the right words to say something simply but in the most meaningful way. The above quotes are a glowing example.

I was a moody kid growing up. I was much too serious for my young age. In that regard I used to spend hours looking up at the sky at night. It was a wondrous sight to behold. It seems I remember that there were many more stars visible in my early years than now. Could that be because of childhood perceptions or maybe increased air pollution? That is beyond the topic of this post so I will leave it unanswered.

In my studies of Jesus and religion I have come to very much agree with Lincoln’s second quote here. The very core of the message of Jesus is to love God with all your heart and to love each other.  Unfortunately it seems to be lost, or at least vastly shrunken in importance, in many of today’s churches. It is nice to know that Abe believed this long before I did.

By the way, I am still looking for that church at puts others ahead of their membership…..