I just heard the words in the title of this post in the movie “Matrix Reloaded”. I hear some of you probably saying “you watch that type of stuff???”.  I realize the Matrix movies have a bad rap from the conservative community because it is waaaay out there but to me its symbolism is awesome and I do like SciFi movies. Getting back to the topic, some versions of religions including  quite a few Christian sects believe that God controls everything in the minutest detail, including every breath we take and every thought we have.  I guess that idea is … Continue reading I Just Wish I Knew What I Am Supposed To Do..

One of my default satellite TV channels is Velocity. It is dedicated to almost everything about cars. As I am writing this they had the Barrett-Jackson car auction from Scottsdale Arizona.  All the CEOs and others willing to put out the big bucks are there in person or via the internet. Many 1960s and 70s restored cars are sold for $200,000 and beyond to anxious buyers wanting them for their already massive collections.  It amazes me how much they are willing to fork out! I turned sixteen years old in 1962 so I was around during what is now the peak … Continue reading I’m A Car Guy, But…

When Steve Jobs presented his proposal for a new Apple campus to the Cupertino City Council back in 2011, he had one aim: to create the best office building in the world. via 16 facts about Apple’s Campus 2 – Tech Insider. If you are interested in architecture or forward looking building I would highly recommend that you click on the source above to see all the info about the new Apple campus being build. It is going to be a place almost beyond imagination but being from Apple that is not too surprising. I have included a couple of … Continue reading About Apple’s Campus 2

These facts are being treated as grand mysteries by most commentators. But may I invoke Occam’s Razor and suggest the simplest explanation is the right one: There’s not enough stuff going on in the economy that’s worth investing in. As the amount of money in the financial markets grows compared to the amount of worthwhile investments, it’s like having more and more rich people standing on a shrinking platform. Of course financial markets become more volatile, and begin panicking in response to what would have seemed, in earlier decades, like no big deal. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that … Continue reading Rich people have nowhere to put their money. This is a serious problem.

I can’t even guess how many times I have heard the phrase in the title above.  We all seem to say that we just don’t have enough time to get it all done. We wish life would slow down! But in reality you have the same amount of time in your day that your great great great great grandparents had. The twenty-four hour day is the same, it hasn’t been shortened during your lifetime. Yeah there are differences in how you spend your day compared to those heirs so many years ago. It took them several hours to prepare for … Continue reading Things Are Moving Too Fast!!

Part of questioning everything is to be suspicious of things you are “told” to be truth. If it doesn’t make sense it probably isn’t. That’s a version of Occam’s Razor that I follow. Another is that actions have consequences. Every decision we make in life causes some effects down the road. How does all of this relate to the title of this post? While I don’t deny anyone the right to believe in the god of their choice I tire of hearing so many put the results of their previous decisions on God.  They say things like “God why did … Continue reading Don’t Put It On God…Shit Happens…

I don’t know whether to give credit to El Nino or global warming for the forecast above but I welcome it whichever it is. I always dread mid-January to mid-February here in the Midwest as it is for the most part bitterly cold, windy, and often snowy and that is a combination that gets me down.  I am one of those who get pretty seriously depressed during this time of year but maybe it won’t be so bad this year. I know global warming is a bad thing but I kind of appreciate it this time of year. I wonder if … Continue reading Snow Birds…By Necessity..

There are a lot of improvements waiting to be made in our national tax structure but reducing tax brackets should be a very low priority in the work. The loop holes put into the structure over the years needs immediate changes.  It’s time to throw them all out and start over again and only add them back with a lot of restraint!  It is a simple as that… But, how to accomplish that is the gargantuan problem especially with a gridlocked congress and all the special interest groups tugging at them. Obviously from the graph above the largest portion of … Continue reading The case for more tax brackets

I must admit, at least in my senior years, I am a rebel rouser of the Don Quixote variety. That is I seemingly fight for lost causes. Things like less killing because of an overabundance of guns in our society or that we Christians should start acting like Christians. The latter is the topic for this post. For so many years I comfortably fell into the belief that Christianity is a “something for nothing” religion. That is all we have to do is to say the right words and believe the right things in order to self proclaim that we … Continue reading Christianity Is Hard…

I don’t know if the “all you can eat”  is just an American thing or is it more world wide? But I do know that obesity is a very prevalent in America.   Kind of like our obese military budget we rule the world when it come to overweight. I will readily admit that I, like most American I think, have a weight problem. I gain weight in the cold weather months when I am pretty much a couch potato. Going into this winter season I started out on the heavy side so I knew I had to do something … Continue reading All You Can Eat….

Of course the editorial cartoon above my Paul Combs is an exaggeration but it certainly has more than an ounce of truth in it. The media just seems to dominate almost everything in our lives now days. Cell phones are now on every restaurant table and are the main focus of those diners even to the exclusion of those sitting across the table from them. If it rings for whatever reason it almost always takes attention away from everything else. Fox News is the prime instigator of media bias. They have so many “ditto-heads” watching who totally fall in line … Continue reading The Power of the Media

I wanted to spend a little more time in reflecting on my recent trip to Branson MO the week before Christmas. This one has an artsy touch :) Continue reading Reflections…

Call it what you want but I kind of wonder what all the deniers are saying about this winter season? Certainly they can’t deny that things are much different this year than last. Tornadoes in December are just not normal and neither are blizzards in the south and balmy weather in the north. When we visited the Southwest last April I simply fell in love with the area and  dream of spending my final years there. As a result of my deafness I have a condition where my balance is tenuous at best so ice is a deadly enemy to … Continue reading El Nino… Climate Change…

Here is my favorite junkyard of all time.  It is located in La Fruto Colorado and I discovered it in April 2015 while traveling the back roads to from Santa Fe to Denver…  (click on it to see a larger image) Continue reading My Favorite All Time Junkyard

This is going to be one of those posts that wrenches my heart. It was one of the most tragic days of my life.  When my mother abandoned my father leaving him with two very young boys  we changed from a two-income family to one very low payed bread winner who struggled daily to make ends meet. Dad was never much of the communicator so he tried to shield us from all the problems he faced just getting by day-to-day. He never talked about his constant troubles with money and being so young I never realized what he faced in … Continue reading About Poverty… A Very Personal Story

Here is an afternoon thought to chew on….. Continue reading Cowboy Jihadists……

LaVoy Finicum says the Feds won’t take him alive One of the armed protesters occupying a federal wildlife refuge in rural Oregon said he would rather die defending the building than be arrested by the FBI. Source: Oregon Occupier Warns FBI He’d Take Death Over Jail | TIME I guess that not all the nuts in the country are running for president. Some of them are waving the flag and the constitution in the name of getting “free” stuff and saying they will die rather than pay for it. Ok, maybe that is a little harsh, lets look at it … Continue reading Let Me See If I Got This Right?

If strong enough, the storm of electrons and other charged particles from an EMP could disrupt the Earth’s magnetic field, disable satellites and the internet, ground all commercial aviation, silence telecommunications, and fry much of the electrical grid — catapulting our society back to the 19th century for months or years. Peter Pry, executive director of the federal EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security, told Congress this year that a major EMP could cause widespread “starvation, disease, and societal collapse” that could lead to the deaths of tens of millions of people. The Obama administration recently released a … Continue reading As If We Didn’t Have Enough To Fear…

Here is a thought that all us “mature” folks need to realize going into this new year. But even more so it needs to be learned by those at the other end of the message. Life teaches each of us lessons. Whether we use them to become better people is up to each of us. Continue reading Some Thoughts Going Into This New Year..

Here is wishing you all a Happy New Year filled with promise and hope. Yeah I know it is a presidential election year so it will be a dirty one but here is hoping that you will be able to ignore as much of that as possible but not so much as to not be able to come to an informed decision this coming November. Continue reading Happy New Years!!!

I was astounded when I heard that a Supreme Court Justice made the type of comments shown above during a Supreme Court hearing recently. Yes, I know it was Scalia and he is anything but for affirmative action or minority rights but still…  Maybe the Supreme Court is just not “supreme” right now? Kind of like the “Dred Scott” period… What scares me the most about any of the GOP presidential candidates actually getting into the White House is that they would be able to add more like Alito, Scalia or his “friend” Thomas to the bench and turn everything … Continue reading So Much for the “Supreme” Court..