What happened, however, wasn’t an abandonment of my faith, but a shift in my understanding of Scripture. While I had always read the Bible and knew large portions of it by memory, I had relied on the expertise of my religious mentors (some of whom were simply laypeople teaching Sunday School or Christian education classes) to help guide me through its interpretation. The more I read the text through unfiltered eyes and the more I learned about scholarly investigation, the less sense their point of view made. Their old Jesus looked nothing like my new Jesus. I could no longer … Continue reading How Studying Religion Made Me a Liberal

“You keep a Republican broke and out of office and pretty near anybody can get along with them.” – Will Rogers, 11 November 1923 I don’t know Will, maybe some things were different during your days. But I just don’t see too many broke Republicans around now days.  They all seem to have a fair amount of money and will do almost anything to keep it for themselves. But you are right that if you can get them off the topics of their money and below the belt issues  they are pretty likable folks. Continue reading Broke Republicans???

Schizophrenia—an impairment in social cognition which is associated with paranoia and  social isolation. Paranoia, which is a major symptom of schizophrenia, is a mental condition in which the person often loses touch with reality.  Here is some of what Wikipedia says about this condition: Paranoia is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself. (e.g. “Everyone is out to get me.”) Making false accusations and the general distrust of others also frequently accompany paranoia. … Continue reading Schizophrenia and the Republican Party….

Source: https://rjscorner.net/2012/02/27/where-are-you-john-sherman-when-we-need-you/ It seems literally impossible for another Republican to take charge of these types of matters (controlling fraud and abuse). Most of those folks are just too beholding to big business to ever try to reign them in. So, currently that leaves the Democratic party to take up the mantel. I don’t see that as much of a possibility either. Where all this “too big to fail” will end I just don’t know. I don’t find myself quoting myself very often but when I re-read this post from almost a year ago about how Republicans have been the party of … Continue reading Republicans and Innate Goodness….

  I sympathize with my conservative friends. 2012 was just not a very good year for you in the political realm. So, in the spirit of cooperation I want to give you a very serious (well sort of serious) New Years Resolution. Quit Being The Party Of The Rich That one thing alone probably cost you the presidency and several other of your recent political defeats. Let’s face it Paul Ryan’s drastic budget cuts to the nation’s safety net in order to give millionaires bigger tax breaks was the death knell of your hopes for the White House.  Mr. Romney’s … Continue reading Some Advice From A Liberal Friend…

Source:  Conservatives urge GOP leaders to be bold, prepare to go over cliff – The Hill’s On The Money. “I think Obama is very mindful of his legacy and is horrified of going over the cliff,” said Andy Roth of the Club for Growth. “Going over the cliff might be a signal that needs to be sent to the president, that he needs to play ball.” He argued that President Clinton was forced to become a less liberal president after Speaker Newt Gingrich shut down the government in 1995. “Clinton would not play ball with Newt until Newt shut the … Continue reading The Pro-Scrooge Christmas Story….

Source: Sojourner Mail November 16, 2012 The day after the election, Southern Baptist Seminary President Albert Mohler said, “I think this was an evangelical disaster.”  Not really. But it was a disaster for the religious right, which had again tied its faith to the partisan political agenda of the Republican Party — which did lose the election. But Nov. 6 was an even deeper disaster for the religious right’s leaders, because they will no longer be able to control or easily co-opt the meaning of the term “evangelical.”  During this election, much of the media continued to use the word as a … Continue reading Those Words….

I want to warn you up front that this will be one of those serious posts by me. I try to keep this blog light-hearted at least on some level but the topic I am going to discuss has no possibility of that. In the 1950s the “a” word was the atomic bomb. As a school kid during that time I was taught to get under my desk if the teacher told us an atomic bomb had been dropped. I never understood how my desk was going to protect me but that is another story. In the 1970s and beyond … Continue reading The “A” Word….

I have always been a person who is constantly saying “Why?” Here are some whys that have been spewing off the top of my head lately.  :) They are too small for an entire post so I am just going to throw it out here and in no particular order: Why do fifteen percent of the population think they are in the top 1%  ?— So there are fifty times more people worried that their taxes will go up if President Obama is re-elected.  We all want to believe that we are somehow special but 1/6 of the population just … Continue reading Why???….

Source: On renewal of Violence Against Women Act, Senate Democrats have upper hand – CSMonitor.com. After passing the Senate unanimously in years past, the Violence Against Women Act, with revisions, faces strong partisan opposition. Still, Republicans don’t want to be tagged as waging a ‘war on women.’ As the quote says this bill has been unanimously approved in past years, so what happened this time?  The thing to notice is what I underlined and that is “with revisions”. The Democrat leadership wants us to believe that it is just the Republicans being against everything. But reading further into the article you … Continue reading Another Proof of Partisanship…..

I am bringing back one of my favorite posts for January of last year. It seems appropriate given all we have learned from the twenty-odd, and I mean odd, Republican debates we have had to endure so far. I’m sure that if the topic had come up during one of their debates they would all have throughly backed this theme. From January 11, 2011 Source:http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20110118/cm_csm/354973;_ylt=At28KK0Z7OndNM3vfaeRt82s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFlZW4ybXNuBHBvcwMyMTcEc2VjA2FjY29yZGlvbl9vcGluaW9uBHNsawNiYXJyaWVydG9iZXQ- The first words of this article caught my attention today.  Let’s pull a few quotes from the article; they are in blue below. If you want to see the original article by Anthony Schlaff click … Continue reading Deserves a Second Showing….

Source: Ford’s Theatre, citing errors, refuses to carry Bill O’Reilly’s ‘Killing Lincoln’ – CSMonitor.com. Just because you write a book doesn’t mean you are an expert in something. Fox New’s Bill O’Reilly I’m sure has a large following on his news show. I know he rants and raves just like most do on that network. He often mentions that he is a self-proclaimed expert on Lincoln who was the founder of the Republican party. However, it seems that his book on the subject of Lincoln’s assassination will not be sold in Ford’s Theatre where the killing took place. The historians there … Continue reading Just Because You Write a Book…

Source: Wolfram Blog : Stock Market Returns by Presidential Party. The New York Times recently published an “Op-Chart” by Tommy McCall on its Opinion page showing what your returns would have been had you started with $10,000 in 1929 and invested it in the stock market, but only during the administrations of either Democratic or Republican presidents. His calculations showed that if you had invested only during Republican administrations you would now have $11,733 while if you had invested only during Democratic administrations you would now have $300,671. Twenty-five times as much! This must be one of those deep dark secrets … Continue reading An Investment Strategy No One Talks About….

Source:  What’s being said about debt panel failure – USATODAY.com. This article is about what some are saying about the debt panel failure to come to any reconciliation on how to manage the deficits. Here are a couple of quotes: New York Times: But, had a single Republican on the panel endorsed even a modest increase in upper-income tax rates, Republicans could have won trillions in cuts from entitlements and discretionary spending. … None would take that courageous step, and now it seems foolish to have expected that they would.” National Journal: “Shame on Republicans for a stubborn unwillingness to … Continue reading Dug Into the Trenches…

I started out my adult life as a Republican who voted for Richard Nixon in 1972 but after Reagan became president in 1980 I was pushed into the Democrat party by all his radical and anti-people policies. Things like “trickle down” and “cutting taxes to increase taxes” just made no sense to me and ended up being total nonsense in its practice.  He was probably the original modern day deficit king. I’m not sure who I voted for in 1988; neither candidate seemed to be really qualified. It was a boring election. In 1992 I voted for Clinton and then for him … Continue reading I Just Don't Belong….

Here I am sitting in our hotel room on a Sunday morning blogging again. Somewhere along my long life path I became a morning person; I do my best thinking then. It would be nice to read a paper, I mean the actual paper kind, that just seems to be more soothing for Sundays but since we could only discover the french version that isn’t happening. I’m looking out the window at a twelve lane road going into Montreal and it is hard to believe that it really is Sunday morning. Wait a minute I had better check on the … Continue reading On The Road — On a Sunday Morning…

The above cartoon kind of mirrors what I think of the Obama administration to date. I actively supported his candidacy for president based on his rhetoric during the campaign. He said he was for change and I think the country can use an awful lot of that right now. I had very high hopes for the first African-American president. And then came the compromises. They all seemed to be pretty one-sided to me. Yes, he did get Obamacare passed but it had morphed into an insurance company windfall by the time it became law. He started out with great plans for … Continue reading I Kind of Figured….

Over all, it (a poll) showed that Republicans who are considering making presidential bids will have to woo a party that largely identifies with the Tea Party movement…. …more than half of Republican voters said they considered themselves Tea Party supporters — and has questions about President Obama’s origin of birth. A plurality of Republican voters, 47 percent, said they believed Mr. Obama, who was born in Hawaii, was born in another country; 22 percent said they did not know where he was born, and 32 percent said they believed he was born in the United States. (See link below for whole … Continue reading Don’t Confuse Me With Facts….