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)

We in the U.S. have chosen to get our health insurance primarily through our employers.  But that proves to be a very complicated process. The rest of the world has chosen their government to provide for their healthcare through their tax dollars. Employer Paid Healthcare is Complicated: If our employer is small he is likely unable to afford the going insurance rates. Therefore those employees are pretty much own their own. If our employer is a religious based institution they will likely exclude things that other might  be covered for. If our employer is having some financial problems they will … Continue reading Employer Paid Healthcare is Complicated…

We didn’t have much of a drive today; just across the river to Omaha and then north to our first sightseeing venture. But we did make some new friends today while visiting the Wildlife Safari Preserve. My wife being a super animal lover that she is insisted this be our first stop. We are now settled down in the Magnolia Hotel for a quick nap and then it is on to our first visit to the Old Market District just four blocks down the road.  The hotel is somewhat unique; it is a completely renovated 1930 hotel that is done in the … Continue reading On The Road – Omaha (Day 3)

It seems that the favorite hobby right now is to complain about gas prices and particularly to blame the high prices on President Obama :) We all like to remember the good old days when gasoline was much cheaper. When I first started driving gasoline was $0.28 per gallon! But what if I told you that you can get gas even now for $1.75 per gallon? Well that is not exactly true but the result is the same thing. There is a rather simple way to accomplish this feat and that is to dump your SUV or pickup and get … Continue reading $1.75 Gasoline Just Down the Road….

I recently watched an interview of a Christian clergyman of twenty years.  He was having doubts about his faith.  All of us have doubts and one time or another. Even Mother Teresa was troubled by them. Having doubts is not too unusual but this particular minister’s doubts were leading him to make the leap back to an agnostic or even worse. This is sad but it is not really the purpose of this post. During the interview the pastor noted something  I think he called the clubhouse effect. This is basically where religious beliefs take a back burner to maintaining … Continue reading The Clubhouse Effect…..

Here we are at the end of day one; well at least the traveling end of it.  We are in Quincy Illinois which is right on the Illinois/Missouri border. Today was mainly a travel day but we did take the majority of in on State roads instead of InterStates. Going the entire width of Illinois, which is about 225 miles, on local roads brought to mind an article I read on the Internet this morning. source:  Tiny towns go up for sale – USATODAY.com. This is an article about a small town that is up for sale but could just … Continue reading On The Road – Quincy Illinois

Source: http://www.aarp.org/money/investing/info-01-2012/war-on-savers.html I see the Federal Reserve has again announced that they will maintain a near 0% interest rate through at least mid 2013.  That might be good for the young couples who are looking to buy a foreclosed home but it is killing us seniors. I have had this topic on my blog list for quite some time now and the recent article in the February/March AARP magazine entitled The War on Savers  by Carla Fried brought it to the top of the list.  Here are some of the words from the article: “This country was built on hard work and savings … Continue reading These Low Interest Rates….

Source:  Maine GOP Sen. Snowe’s retirement makes way for Democrats – USATODAY.com. “I do not realistically expect the partisanship of recent years in the Senate to change over the short term,” she said, adding that she would seek opportunities outside of the Senate to encourage civility in government. “It is time for change in the way we govern,” she said. It truly saddens me to see our politics move to the extreme edges. Moderates in either party just are not welcomed now. The same goes for voting your conscience. If they don’t vote how their political leaders instruct them then … Continue reading Pragmatists and the Democratic Process….

The title of this post may at first glance seem unChristian but I don’t believe it to be so.  To convince you of that I will repeat it here but with an ending. Don’t spend you life studying God’s word but instead spend your life putting his words into action as he intended. In other words God’s messages are not meant to be just contemplated but instead we are meant to do what He says. There are several Christian denominations who seem to base their Christianity on “letting the Lord’s grace flow over them”. They see that as their life’s … Continue reading Don’t Spend Your Life Studying God’s Word….

When I show people this picture they ask me if I went to MIT and I say yes.  As a matter of fact it was also in the same week that I went to Harvard and Yale. ;) Continue reading I Went To MIT…..

  I, like so many others was saddened to see the death of Whitney Houston. She became famous just before I went deaf so I sort of remember some of her songs. She indeed had a rare talent. It sounds like from the initial reports that her death was at least partially caused by her addition to drugs and alcohol. Of course Elvis, and quite a few other rich and famous people have had a similar ending. I’m sure Whitney had an entourage of people constantly around her to grant her every desire. She was certainly rich beyond what anyone of … Continue reading And He Went Home One Night….

I just got this from a niece and wanted all you seniors to learn the correct way to call the police :)  This is supposed to be a true story. George Phillips, an elderly man, from Walled Lake, Michigan, was going up to bed, when his wife told him that he’d left the light on in the garden shed, which she could see from the bedroom window. George opened the back door to go turn off the light, but saw that there were people in the shed stealing things. He phoned the police, who asked “Is someone in your house?”  … Continue reading How to call the police when you’re old, and don’t move fast anymore..

Source: Apple scores with digital textbooks and app – USATODAY.com. To encourage development, Apple launched iBooks Author, a free authoring tool for the Mac that encourages anyone to produce their own iBook textbooks, cookbooks, how-tos and other works. Apple says more than 600,000 copies of the tool have been downloaded since launch. Authors can distribute the books for free. But if they put the iBook textbook up for sale, they must do so through Apple’s iBookstore. (Authors can use the content in other digital and print formats, Apple says.) Who among us, especially us bloggers, doesn’t want to be a published … Continue reading Do You Want To Be A Published Author??