Everybody in America has been good to me and I love you all, even critics and Congressmen. – November 23, 1926  Will Rogers I don’t believe that Will Rogers had any strong religious convictions. In that regard he is like most people today. But that does not mean he was without compassion. He was very much into it for the little guy especially during the depression years. Maybe Will wasn’t a Christian but he lived out the command of Jesus Christ to love one another. He even included his critics and Congressmen!  This group is among the most unlovable but he … Continue reading I Love You All……

The leaders in the Republican party are constantly complaining that the Democrats are trying to start a class war with all their comments about how the rich are getting a free ride in the U.S.  But what they don’t say is that they are doing what they accuse their opponents of but in a different area.  They are constantly trying to incite voters against the older generations saying that we have gobbled up all the resources and left the debt to others. I hear comments on this blog and in almost daily news articles that seniors are gobbling up the … Continue reading Class Warfare….

Source: Foodies enjoy different tastes than the rest of us – USATODAY.com. Foodie flavor preferences are in stark contrast to that of the general population, whose favorite flavor characteristics are far more familiar: sweet (81%) and salty (67%). I don’t think I am a food snob but I really do enjoy savory and sour food as opposed to salty and sweet. I have been on a low salt diet for about six years now and have come to totally detest very salty things. For instance, for the most part, canned soup is no longer on my list of things to eat. … Continue reading I Don’t Think I Am a Food Snob…….

Source:  Life Inc. – The upside to not saving for your child’s college education. You may want to help out somewhat, however. In her study, the kids that seemed the most focused on school and the future were actually the ones that were getting no help at all. I can tell you from personal experiences that the above quote is true. I paid for 100% of my college education and totally understood that I needed to stay totally focused on being a success in my studies. Otherwise all the hard work I put into just being able to be there … Continue reading Paying For College…..

The trick is to grow up without growing old. — Casey Stengel Growing old does not insure that we are grown up. I seem to still be looking for the day when I feel like a full-blown grown-up ;) But then again I think that is not entirely a bad thing. When we are young and not even beginning to grow up we are probably the most open to new and adventurous things. We actually seek them out and get bored if we can’t find them. I think we all have to maintain some of that no matter how old we are. … Continue reading Growing Up…

Youth would be an ideal state if it came later in life — Herbert Asquith I paraphrased the Asquith quote in the title of this post but the message is the same. I have always had the feeling that our given stages of life are somehow out of their most idealistic order.  When we are young we have a seemingly endless supply of energy and vigor but we also are plagued with a lack of experience and wisdom that come later that come much later in life. If only we could reserve some of that energy for when we can … Continue reading Youth Is Wasted on the Young…

You are over the hill when your back goes out more than you do — anonymous This one hits very close to home for me. About the only time we go out anymore is when my wife tires of my cooking and insists on eating out.  That is a weekly occurrence for us.  On the other side of this saying is my back and it seems to go out a lot lately. The reason for that is because of the season of the year. For those of us in the hinterland Spring entails a lot of preparation in the yard … Continue reading Over The Hill…

Source: Tom Krattenmaker: Millennials aren’t amoral and adrift – USATODAY.com. This article certainly went into much more depth on this topic than most do today. I want to bring up three quotes from it and add my input to the discussion. Yes, it’s true, as critics point out, that younger Americans tend to be less religiously affiliated than older generations. But data show they are nearly as likely as their elders to pray and believe in God. While their support for gay rights might suggest moral confusion to social conservatives, they are just as likely as older Americans to judge abortion … Continue reading Millennials aren’t amoral and adrift

  It must be almost heart breaking for those splendid writers, to see what some of us syndicate birds get away with. – October 29, 1933  Will Rogers Don’t get me wrong, I certainly enjoy making my daily blog posts and having you guys interested enough to want to read them but Will’s message for today does bug me sometimes.  I am absolutely not the best writer/storyteller around but I think I do have somewhat of a gift in this area. The most “syndicated bird” around today is probably Rush Limbaugh. It is reported that he makes somewhere around $30 … Continue reading About Rush…..

The title of this post seems to be the attitude of many of our citizens lately. They want government to fix their roads, protect their food, catch the bad guys, put out their fires, and give them a myriad of different services.  But they want it all with nothing coming out of their wallet. This type of thing seems almost endemic in our society in the last decade or two. This seems especially true for the folks in California like the ones in Greece as reported in a book entitled Boomerang: Travels into the New Third World (thanks Bob for … Continue reading Something for Nothing…..

Source: A rich guy’s case for higher taxes. To give you a little background on the rich guy this article talks about here is a quote introducing piece. Like Warren Buffett, David Levine — retired executive, student of the federal tax code and very rich man — is begging the government to raise his taxes. Here, he explains why. David Levine spent his life in the corporate world studying the federal tax code. If anyone knows about its effect on the prosperity of the country it is probably him. He retired in his forties and flatly states he might have worked … Continue reading Another rich guy’s case for higher taxes

This is a continuation of a post I did in March 2009 on my blog at RedLetterLiving.net This is a continuation of the last post where I covered George Washington’s religious beliefs. I will conclude this topic by talking about Thomas Jefferson.  Thomas Jefferson — Jefferson was undoubtedly the strongest advocate for religious freedom of the Founding Fathers. This was quite evident when he composed the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom in 1777. Jefferson was definitely raised in a Christian household. He seemed to have also been brought up in the rituals and customs of the Anglican Church as it existed … Continue reading The Faith of our Founding Fathers… continued

Some of the things we celebrate tend to be a double edged sword.  I recently say a TV program celebrating the multi-million dollar restoration of a home at Newport Rhode Island.  Newport was one of the areas known as a playground for the robber barons of almost one-hundred years ago. The home in particular was actually a summer home build by Edward Berwind. His wife for several years spent about six weeks there during the summer months.  The mansion as shown to the right was about 86,000 square feet and will filled with utter opulence. The TV show proudly announced … Continue reading Some of the Things We Celebrate….

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.  — Thomas Jefferson These are powerful words for today and it is absolutely amazing that they were actually spoken more than two hundred years ago! It is no secret to those of us who are studied in American history that Thomas Jefferson was not a big fan of corporate interests. He believed in giving the power to the people; he was the first real Democrat in … Continue reading Monied Corporations…. Even Then….

This is a post I did in March 2009 on my blog RedLetterLiving.net related to whether we are founded as a Christian nation as so many conservatives seem to say. I will finish it up next Sunday. There are a lot of different views of what the Founding Fathers of the United States believed when it came to God. Many evangelicals like to say that we were founded on Christian principles and that is what makes us so unique, some would say superior, but I definitely don’t buy into that. I found the book entitled The Faiths of Our Fathers, by … Continue reading The Faiths of Our Fathers…..

Source: Father: ‘My kid made a mistake’ in school – USATODAY.com. Authorities say the boy brought a .45-caliber handgun he got from his mother’s house to an elementary school in Bremerton on Wednesday, and the weapon discharged from inside his backpack just before classes let out, critically injuring Amina Kocer-Bowman. Have we come to the point in our gun laden country where we are now charging nine year olds with gun crimes.  The pitiful thing about this story is that there is no mention of holding any adults responsible for the nine year old having the weapon in his back pack! … Continue reading ‘My kid made a mistake’ …

Source:  Letters: To spare tax filers pain, phase out deductions – USATODAY.com. I guess you could call this a guest post in that I am going to leave the words of Michael Bugg as found in the source at USA Today pretty much stand as they are. No free lunches –I am tired of the large number of Americans who want the best country in the world, while clinging to the absurd notion that no one has to pay for it, or worse, who want a country like one in Europe in the Dark Ages! I am also tired of … Continue reading No Free Lunch….

Some Christians believe that each and every word in the Bible is literally true and without error. I belonged to one of those churches at one time. I often asked embarrassing questions during our weekly bible study. Questions the clergy leader really didn’t care to try to answer.  Asking those questions is probably one of the reasons they tossed me out. I never got to ask the question in the title of this post but I would be very interested in knowing how they might answer it. According to the biblical account Adam & Eve were the first humans. They had a … Continue reading What Language Did Adam & Eve Speak??

To all you city bound folks out there I wanted to give you a picture of what is currently happening in America’s heartland. Continue reading The Rights of Spring

The Lord split knowledge up among his subjects about equal. The so-called ignorant is happy. You think he is happy because he knows any better, maybe he is happy because he knows enough to be happy. The smart one knows a lot, that makes him unhappy because he can’t impart it to his friends. Discontent comes in proportion to knowledge. — Will Rogers Intelligence and being happy I’m sure there is  some correlation but I am not so sure I would agree too much with Will’s assertion that if you are smart you are unhappy because your friends don’t know … Continue reading Being Happy….

The big oil companies and their backers in congress insist that we must open up everything to drilling and give them billions of dollars a year to help them search for new oil. They say if we will open up all public land to oil production we can become less dependent on foreign oil. But what they don’t say is that, as far as the oil companies are concerned that doesn’t mean that the price at the pump will go down even a penny.  The above cartoon does a lot to explain why that is the case. The Republicans like … Continue reading The Price of Oil….

I want to say out front that I am very impressed with Omaha. It seems like the quint-essential city to me. It is probably the cleanest city we have visited during our twenty-six years of April road trips. Today, at least so far, we have browsed through the Old Market area and spent several hours at the Durham Museum. Here are some pictures  of that. The Old Market is perhaps twenty to thirty square blocks of very well restored buildings that contain restaurants and shops. Even though it was pretty chilly it was a very pleasant day of browsing through … Continue reading On The Road – Omaha/Durnam Museum (Day 4)