Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is planning to cut the U.S. Army to its smallest force since before World War II and eliminate an entire class of Air Force attack jets, the New York Times reports. The moves are part of a new spending proposal that officials say is the first Pentagon budget to push the military off the war footing adopted after the terrorist attacks of 2001. The officials argue the military will be able to defeat any adversary, but would be too small for long foreign occupations. The plan will be released Monday. SOURCE:  The Health-Law Rollout. It is … Continue reading Hagel plans to shrink Army to pre-World War II level

For those of you who have read some of the classics of the past I”m sure you will finish this post title with “Walter Mitty”.  I think all of us at one level or another live our own Walter Mitty lives in our minds.  There are those missed opportunities where we could have made fundamentally different choices that might have radically changed who we are.  Regrettably most of us cower during those times and then can only live that alternate choice in the depths of our minds. I am certainly one such person. Here I am getting toward the end … Continue reading The Secret Life Of…..

As we age we become more aware of who we are, and we have more time to enjoy the smaller, ordinary things that fill our days. These words or something like them fill a myriad of books about living a fulfilling retirement. But on some level this seems to me to be a cop-out of not trying to do something to live out remaining dreams. It is just easier to say we enjoy the simple things now than it is to get off our butts and fully live the life we have left. Is “carpe diem” just an unfulfilled dream … Continue reading Savoring vs. Seizing….

Half of American adults ages 18 to 33 are self-described political independents, according to a survey out Friday, but at the same time half of these so-called millennials are Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party, the highest share for any age group over the last decade. In addition, young adults tend to be single and churchless — turning away from their predecessors’ proclivity for religion and marriage, according the Pew Research Center survey. Almost two-thirds don’t classify themselves as “a religious person.” And when it comes to tying the knot: Only about 1 in 4 millennials is married. Almost … Continue reading Many millennials are skipping church, marriage and political affiliations…

THIS JUST IN… Louisiana Judge orders Glenn Ford to be released after 30 years on death row. Glenn is African American convicted by an all-white jury, and lost 30 years of his life and was nearly executed for a crime he did not do. Huge news, hopefully moving us one step closer to abolition of the death penalty. Louisiana Judge Ramona Emanuel ordered Glenn Ford to be “unconditionally released from the custody of the Louisiana Department of Corrections.” (KTAL NBC News, Mar. 11, 2014). Glenn Ford, who has spent 30 years on Louisiana’s death row is likely to be freed … Continue reading Released after 30 years on Death Row…

In my opinion, those concerned with justice must lead the fight to re-humanize those we have considered criminal. Rather than looking at individuals as the unwanted other we must begin to learn their stories and connect with them as people again. We must aggressively seek to eradicate the incarceration of our young people and provide services rather than prisons. Though once outlawed, at the beginning of the twentieth century, private corporations once again can own and operate prisons for profit. The juvenile justice system is the feeder for these privately owned adult prisons, if we are going to dismantle this … Continue reading The Unwanted Other…

                    I can’t help it. I’m dabbing my toes into the political arena here. When I saw the picture on the left recently I was immediately struck by how similar these two guys appear. Except for one having a little more hair than the other they could be brothers.  And the effect they have on the country is almost identical. They both use fear as their prime motivator. They both are extreme narcissists who care very little for the good of their country. They seek personal attention above ABSOLUTELY everything else. They … Continue reading Any Similarities???

No slick lawyers, or income tax experts can get you out of a national sales tax. It’s so much on the dollar on every luxury you buy. Then, if you live in luxury, the poor fellow knows you are paying for it and he will even encourage you to buy more so it will help out the government.  — Will Rogers November 2, 1924 Continue reading An Argument For A National Sales Tax…

To all my more conservative readers, if I actually have any, I want to give you a head’s up. This post is about David Simon. No I am not talking about the billionaire David Simon who is CEO of the Simon Property Group. The David Simon we will be hearing from is an in-your-face Baltimore liberal who doesn’t parse many of his words. I know that many who come across these types of people immediately head for the exits.  But I think that even if we don’t agree with a lot of what he says he still can give us … Continue reading David Simon…

This is going to be one of those totally off-the-wall unrealistic posts that pops off the top of my head. But it sure would be great if somehow, anyhow it could be accomplished. So here goes. We all know that profits are the total 100% driver for American businesses for the last thirty years or so.  Ever since the MBA’s took over during the Reagan years profits are the god of business.  Of course directly linked to profits are CEO’s pay. I believe that other things besides global competition have contributed to the income inequality now in this world. When … Continue reading Its All About Sharing…

Do the best you can, and don’t take life too serious. Will Rogers This is one of my favorite quotes from my hero Will Rogers. He just had a way of finding humor at almost all situations. I try to emulate him in that regard. I often mention that much of what I say has a certain level of jest in it.  I just love pulling people’s chains because some just take life too serious. Some of my readers and especially one who was once a frequent commentor seemed to often forget that. She took almost everything I post here … Continue reading Don’t Take Life Too Serious…

Conformity is kind of a dirty word for me. I think of myself as anything but a conformist. A big part of conformity is accepting what you are told without questions. That makes good soldiers but I don’t think it makes good citizens.  Here are a couple of quotes from one of my heroes on this topic. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science. The important thing is not to stop questioning. — Albert Einstein When we quit questioning we allow others to tell … Continue reading Conformity…..

When will the USA become the DSA? Will it be in my lifetime or further out? I don’t really think I have an answer to this dilemma but if things don’t change soon I think that, like the Russian professor who generated the map shown here, the DSA is a very distinct possibility. I am proud that our forefathers had the wisdom to create a constitution that has allowed us to flourish for more than two-hundred years. But that does not insure that the USA is a perpetual entity. Division seems to be the way of the world right now. … Continue reading Divided States Of America…

It would be so much easier if God spoke to us through burning bushes or from boiling clouds, or even just sent a text message. But unfortunately, we’re expected to discern what God’s call is on our life, without specific, written-down instructions, custom made for each of us on what to do. SOURCE: When do you know something is a calling from God? | Christian Piatt | Red Letter Christians. Continue reading Text Message From God….

We live in an age disturbed, confused, bewildered, afraid of its own forces, in search not merely of its road but even of its direction. There are many voices of counsel, but few voices of vision; there is much excitement and feverish activity, but little concert of thoughtful purpose. We are distressed by our own ungoverned, undirected energies and do many things, but nothing long. It is our duty to find ourselves. Woodrow Wilson, Baccalaureate address, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, June 9, 1907 It is funny how somethings are very different than they were one hundred years ago and … Continue reading Even Today…

Let’s face it, everyone is a liar to one degree or another. Lying is so prevalent in our society that we are assumed to be a liar until we prove ourselves honest and even that proof has a limited time span. We all have serious scars from being lied to. We lie to ourselves — We say we did the best that we could when we really never even put up much of an effort. We invent stories in our distant past so that our lives sound more interesting.  Sometimes we lie to people to make them feel better. Sometimes … Continue reading Everyone Is A Liar……

This just popped up on my Facebook page. I don’t know if the figures above are valid but they are rather sobering. Yes, the church should be taking care of all these things and obviously they are not.  But they could be if we forced them to do it via taxes. What an interesting thought!!! Continue reading If Churches Paid Taxes…

What they haven’t been doing is giving extra cash to employees, despite s a year of solid – and often record – profits and huge cash hoards. A survey by Aon Hewitt on compensation trends for 2014 shows that companies plan to raise salaries by just 3% this year – the highest since 2008, when the average raise was 3.7%. Economist Ed Yardeni notes that employee compensation and capital spending as a percentage of GDP has been the lowest since the mid-1950s. But suppose each company with $1 billion in cash took 5% of that stash and give it to … Continue reading If companies shared their cash with employees

The vast majority of donations come in from middle-class-to-poor people who give twenty-five to thirty dollars a month and often even less. The vast majority comes in from this class of citizen, and not just in number of people giving, but in number of dollars given. Sure, I have people on our list giving hundreds. Some churches dropped four figures on our project, but most of our donations stream in every month from faithful people like you and me whose “little acts done with great love will change the world.”… It’s the obscure old woman living on a fixed income … Continue reading The Total Sacrifice…

The company “unveiled” the new product in an online video this week. In the ad, which refers to the offline world as “the thing that happens when you run out of battery,” people buried in their phones have a eureka moment when an absurd red funnel is placed on their heads and they’re forced to witness sunsets and look into other human beings’ eyes.   SOURCE: Coca-Cola Social Media Guard Commercial | TIME.com. I will admit up front there that I am not a social media junkie. I seldom go on any media site except for Facebook and that no more … Continue reading Coca-Cola Social Media Guard Commercial…

We know that the majority of households now require both spouses to work outside the home. That fact has contributed significantly to the number of seniors in nursing homes and other assisted care facilities. Simply put there is just no one at home to care for aging parents or grand-parents anymore. As a result more seniors are institutionalized than ever before. Of course this is just another example of the problem with the gross income inequality here in this country and even around the world to maybe a lesser degree. Just when our population above 65 starts to explode there … Continue reading Dual Income Requirements…

He went on: “The answer is to promote views that are open-minded and tolerant towards those who are different, and to fight the formal, informal and internet propagation of closed-minded intolerance. “In the 21st century, education is a security issue.” SOURCE:  The West needs a global strategy to deal with terrorism threat, says Tony Blair | World | News | Daily Express. Even though I did not usually agree with Tony Blair’s stand with Mr. Bush on the invasion of Iraq, I always respected his intellect on other issues. Much more so than Mr. Bush. The more I study the … Continue reading Religious Tolerance When Dealing With Extremeism…

A new study shows that the jet stream over Northern Europe and North America may be taking a longer, more meandering path as a result of a rapidly warming Arctic narrowing the differential between upper and middle latitudes, reports the BBC. Temperatures in the Arctic have been rising two to three times as rapidly as the rest of the globe, and as the difference in temperature between the Arctic and middle latitudes diminishes, the jet stream that separates them slows. That means that cold weather over North America tends to linger longer, according to the study presented at American Association … Continue reading In Case You Wondered….

  Continue reading What We Sow, We Eventually Reap….

And there’s more. A few years ago researchers made an unexpected discovery that, around the age of forty, people begin to experience feelings of dissatisfaction and a diminished sense of well-being. They were surprised to find this in men and women, rich and poor and all over the world. But the bigger surprise was the rebound effect. At around the age of fifty, feelings of well-being begin to rise again—and keep on rising, well into the seventies. In the twenty-first century, fifty is the beginning of a new and aspirational time of life. SOURCE: Jane Pauley makes the case for … Continue reading Feelings of Dissatisfaction…

The United States spends almost $1,000 per person per year on pharmaceuticals. That’s around 40 percent more than the next highest spender, Canada, and more than twice as much as than countries like France and Germany spend. So why does the U.S. spend so much? Is it because Americans take more medicines or because they pay higher prices? Can Americans afford the drugs they need? And will the Affordable Care Act change anything? SOURCE:  Why do Americans spend so much on pharmaceuticals? | Updates | PBS NewsHour | PBS. This is a very interesting article so I encourage you to … Continue reading Why do Americans spend so much on pharmaceuticals?

The church frustrates me. I was once asked by a wealthy church what they could do to help end homelessness. I looked around and saw the thousands of square feet that lie empty every night, the dozens of toilets, the showers in the family life center, the full industrial kitchen and wanted to say, “It is a two step plan. 1) Read the Gospels. 2) Take it seriously.” I wanted to say that. But I didn’t. Look, Jesus nowhere says to stamp out poverty. However, he does say, fairly often, to love your neighbor. And if you truly love your … Continue reading Not Taking Jesus Seriously….

I’ve been using the word ‘empower’ for years. It’s a great word – one that implies giving dignity to others; the whole ‘give a man a fish and he eats for a day, but teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime’ type story comes up when I hear the word empower…. It had never crossed my mind before that what this word implies is that I have the power and you do not. Therefore, let me give you the power. This also goes against my theology of humanity: that no matter our circumstances we are all … Continue reading Empower vs. Inspire….

What About The Bible… ? (Chapter 2) I know that from all the rhetoric about this topic you are expecting the next word in the title to be “Clear” but actually for me it is “Fuzzy”. I don’t know how many times in my life I have heard the phrase “just study the bible for the answer to your problems. When a child dies from a fall in the bathtub the Christian answer to our total devastation is to “read the Bible”. It is as if we can just randomly open a page and then the tragedy in our life … Continue reading I Read The Bible And Everything Became….

There are two ways to look at the great debate over light bulbs. One is that government regulations meant to save energy by filling the nation’s roughly 4 billion light sockets with vastly more efficient light bulbs are an outrageous offense to personal freedom. The other is summed up by a funny Internet spot last year for Cree’s super efficient light emitting diode (LED) bulbs: “The light bulbs in your house were invented by Thomas Edison in 1879. Now think about that with your 2013 brain. Do you still do your wash down at the creek while your eldest son … Continue reading More Heat Than Light…

Communities like RLC (Red Letter Christians) are so important because the Church, those of us who claim to follow Jesus Christ have more responsibility to be constantly examining our actions and behavior than anyone. This isn’t about being “self-hating Christians” or “criticizing the Church” it is about growing up. In the end, the wisdom and understanding needed to change the world and do real good will not come from the past, but from working together in the present SOURCE: What If God is Pragmatic? | Yaholo Hoyt | Red Letter Christians. Continue reading Critizing The Church…..

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”  ― John Steinbeck Continue reading Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaires….

This is installment four of my melancholy posts for this week. I know there are those who lament how bad things are right now. Unemployment is higher than it should be and many are stuck in low paying jobs that are way below their capabilities. Due to corporate greed and the overwhelming wealth that is stagnated at the top it now takes two jobs to replace the one needed just thirty years ago.  Yes, we are living in some pretty tough times, that is unless you compare it to most  of history past. If you want to understand how good … Continue reading How Good We Have It…

According to a 2013 study by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institute, 23 percent of 18- to 33-year-olds are religious progressives, 17 percent are religious conservatives, and 22 percent are non-religious. By contrast, only 12 percent of 66- to 88-year-olds are religious progressives, while about half are religious conservatives. Second, the conversation about income inequality in the U.S. and abroad — the driving force behind the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement — is gaining momentum. Taking up the cause of the poor is a central tenet of religious liberalism. Both Jews and Christians point to the Bible, … Continue reading Religious Conservatism On The Wane….