“If exporting [LNG] means accelerated development, then we will more rapidly deplete natural gas resources that could help sustain future generations of Americans, leading to higher prices as resources diminish,” he wrote. source: Should US export natural gas? Study for DOE fuels fiery debate. – CSMonitor.com. This was a rather lengthy article (3 pages) and it was not until the last paragraph (shown above) did the question “what is good for the nation?” actually come up. Throughout the article it was widely acknowledged that if we allow natural gas to be exported it will result in significantly higher natural gas and … Continue reading Our Natural Gas – What is Good for the Nation???

I know you expect this post to be about how the church is very much against the idea of evolution. But really it is going to be quite the opposite. Yes, many denominations within the church, like so many other areas of science, deny evolution of the species as originated by Darwin. The Scopes Monkey trial was evidence of that. William Jennings Bryan put up quite an argument about that and the church has for the most part has stiffly followed it up since then. But, this post is actually about how the church has practiced evolution over its two … Continue reading The Church and Evolution….

  Source: Lance Armstrong confesses to Oprah Winfrey about his doping – The Washington Post. The network’s Scott Pelley also reported that Armstrong is in talks with U.S. Justice Department officials, who are weighing whether to join a whistleblower suit against him, about returning a portion of the roughly $35 million that the U.S. Postal Service paid his cycling team in sponsorship dollars. I don’t follow sports much anymore but it is hard to not see that Lance Armstrong won a bunch of bicycle races that made him a multimillionaire and that he apparently won them because of drug use. It … Continue reading Your Actions Have Consequences….

Source:  Just the facts: Gun violence in America – U.S. News. The big picture: Every year in the U.S., an average of more than 100,000 people are shot, according to The Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence. Every day in the U.S., an average of 289 people are shot. Eighty-six of them die: 30 are murdered, 53 kill themselves, two die accidentally, and one is shot in a police intervention, the Brady Campaign reports. Between 2000 and 2010, a total of 335,609 people died from guns — more than the population of St. Louis, Mo. (318,069), Pittsburgh (307,484), Cincinnati, Ohio (296,223), Newark, … Continue reading Sobering Statistics — Gun violence in America

Source: President Obama, Hamid Karzai: US Combat Operations in Afghanistan to End in Spring – ABC News. Roughly 66,000 U.S. troops are serving in Afghanistan. The military has proposed keeping several thousand troops in the country after 2014 as advisers, trainers and logistical support for Afghan forces; the White House has said it remains open to pulling out all troops entirely. Leaving no troops behind when we finally exit Afghanistan?  That would be a first for us.  We currently have troops stationed in about seventy-five percent of the world’s countries.  It wouldn’t be so bad to just leave some temporarily behind … Continue reading Leaving No Troops???

I am sometimes accused of criticizing too much on this blog. Some seem to think that if we were all just more positive as a society good things would then happen. Being a history buff I know that is not the case. Sorry if you disagree but that is my current line in the sand so to speak. Criticizing things is just about the only way to affect change in our society and if we need anything in today’s gridlocked world it is a change. Until enough people are critical of things nothing changes.

Yes, we could like the German citizenry did during World War II, ignore the problems around us and say every thing is fine and dandy. We could ignore all the unemployed and underemployed workers the same way they ignored all the millions of people who disappeared from their streets.  We could ignore the horrendously increasing cost of medical care in this country and how so many were locked out of the old system the same way they ignored the stench coming from some of their smokestacks. Let’s face it ignoring problems don’t make them disappear; if only that were a solution wouldn’t life be easy.

I do try to celebrate many things in today’s world. Not everything needs criticism. Continue reading “Criticizing Too Much……”