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Just Who Are You???

RJ Walters

How many of us are guilty of buying a certain brand of jeans or sneakers because we liked the way they made someone else look? We don’t just want to look like that person, we want to embody a bit of their identity by wearing the same costume. Brands are everywhere, and sometimes, as Swarthmore psychologist Barry Schwartz told us in “The Paradox of Choice,” deciding between them can be so overwhelming as to discourage making a purchase at all. But often, we know what we want: the consumption choices we make are guided by how we want to see … Continue reading Just Who Are You???

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Keeping Safe vs Taking Risks…

RJ Walters

Are we depriving our children of the ability to take risks in the future. Many of the things I did as a child would never happen today. Things like walking five blocks to school without an adult. Or discovering the mushroom plant four blocks from our house. Yeah maybe I fell out of a tree I was climbing there and fell on an iron picket fence doing some pretty serious damage but… I explored the neighborhood at the young age of 10 years old. About the only rule was that I had to be home for supper. Are we over … Continue reading Keeping Safe vs Taking Risks…

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Clear Your Head Periods Of Time….

RJ Walters

That is what you do when you are not doing your grown-up things. They allow you to at least for a while forget about the world around you. I don’t have a direct source for this quote but it was from the NYPD Blue TV episode where Bobby Simone was dying. It was about his pigeon coops he maintained on the roof of his building in NYC. I admit that now that I have access to streaming video I am sometimes a binge TV watcher.  I think I watched the entire nine seasons of NYPD Blue in a little over … Continue reading Clear Your Head Periods Of Time….

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Those Comfortable Christian Questions…

RJ Walters

I was recently part of a Bible study where the tone – and apparently intention – was quite different. As the leader asked a series of programmed and predictable questions (literally from the back of the book), I noticed that almost everyone seemed to be looking at each other warily as if they were searching for the ‘right’ answer. And they seemed to share the assumption that there was – and should be – only one ‘right’ answer. And, above all, that the ‘right’ answer should be comfortable and familiar and should certainly not challenge any of us in our … Continue reading Those Comfortable Christian Questions…

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Common Sense…..

RJ Walters

Call them the invisible rich. How do they do it? Sure, money like that sometimes comes from an inheritance or another fortuitous break, but more likely it’s the result of diligence, smart choices and, well, deferred gratification. SOURCE: Wealth-building secrets of the millionaire next door – Yahoo Finance. Wealth-building secrets of the millionaire next door It seems like there are thousands of articles and books lately to tell you how to become rich. But do any of them actually have anything unique to say? I am not going to go into the details about the above article other than to … Continue reading Common Sense…..

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Wanting a Gun….

RJ Walters

“They want Peace, but they want a Gun to help get it with.” – Will Rogers, 9 February 1930 Yeah Will, nothing has changed much in this area since your day.  About the only thing different is that we have MUCH bigger guns now. It goes back to the old quote “If all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail”. I love this country but I simply can’t begin to understand its obsession with guns….. Continue reading Wanting a Gun….

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A Dreamer Or A Fighter…..

RJ Walters

I still vividly remember the election season of 2008. It was the year that I for the first time in a long time held out hope for a change in our political system. George Bush’s reign over the country was finally ending but the wars he put us in were still going full bore and still greatly affect us even today. He left the new guy with a total mess in our financial system. The worst mess in fifty years. I had confidence that this new-on-the-scene young guy could give us back our social conscience that George stripped away from us. … Continue reading A Dreamer Or A Fighter…..

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Why America needs more billionaires

RJ Walters

America needs more Mark Zuckerbergs, not fewer. How to create them? There is no magic formula, but Henrekson and Sanandaji find the rate of billionaire entrepreneurs correlates positively with nations that have lower taxes, more venture capital investment, and less regulation. High capital gains taxes seem particularly harmful. Worrying about those things would be a good start for Washington. While inequality hasn’t made it harder to get on the success ladder, it does make it more costly to stay stuck at the bottom. A more entrepreneurial U.S. economy generating more high-paying jobs will ensure more people are making that climb … Continue reading Why America needs more billionaires

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I Can't Do It For Them….

RJ Walters

This is going to be an extremely soul-searching post for me. It has been a week since the GOP route in the mid-term elections and I have been thinking about my philosophical and political leanings. Two things seem now apparent to me that were not so just a few short months ago. The first epiphany  is that I am not so much a Democrat as I am anti-Republican. There is just too much weight amongst the current Republican party in favor of the elite and so little for the average guy and almost nothing for the guy down on his luck. In my … Continue reading I Can't Do It For Them….

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Six Things Continued…

RJ Walters

Being Pessimistic … Today’s Christians have a bad habit of seeing the worst in everybody and everything: A natural disaster is surely a sign of the end times. An MTV show reflects our hideous moral decline. A particular nation (obviously not one of our political allies) is being used as the Anti-Christ’s puppet to eventually invade and destroy the United States. The apocalyptic and hopeless assessments about our world—and Christianity—propagated by Christians themselves are pathetic and worrisome. Do we have nothing to be thankful for? We treat our faith as if it’s in a rapid decline, as if the “glory … Continue reading Six Things Continued…