The idea for the title above came from a recent post by Philip Gulley. He basically says that We are morally at risk when we see only the light of [fill in the blank] and never its shadow. I agree, but I want to also look at it from another viewpoint. We can’t ignore the light because of its shadows. That is what this post … Continue reading Without Looking At The Shadows.
Given that my world was turned upside down forty days ago, daily life is just not the same now. Since my wife’s recent heart attack and a slew of other serious problems that followed it, my daily routine has been obliterated. Given my Aspie traits, routines and schedules have been a critical part of how I live my life. It is proving hard to adapt … Continue reading Normal Is Relative
To keep from getting the bends from rising too abruptly from the ugly Trump depths, I have been in a decompression mode, and that is a good thing. I have been letting life pass me up for a little while. I am avoiding getting into the new political arena too early. I know that it continued without me because I have occasionally dipped my toes … Continue reading Decompression – A Welcomed State
One of my triology of mottos for RJsCorner is Think For Yourself It basically defines who I am and who I want to be. When the crowd is all going one way I think to myself “I wonder what kind of opportunities does the other path have?” That makes me a contrarian, and I am proud of that fact. There is No possibility that I … Continue reading Think For Yourself – A Very Foreign Idea…
Perhaps the most serious long-term damage that Trump has propagated is religion. Of course, in this case he was only the catalyst, not the only one primarily responsible for that. For the most part, individual religious institutions have done pretty severe damage to themselves. One of those religious leaders that comes to the top of this deadly heap is Franklin Graham. He took over the … Continue reading Perhaps the Most Serious Long-Term Damage
I need to get Trump’s name cleared from my post queue and also my mind. To achieve that, I am devoting the next five days to finishing anything I have to say about him. Hopefully (yes “hope” is a word that I can put back into my vocabulary now) I will never refer to him again. But, I wouldn’t count on that! His legacy much … Continue reading Closing It Out Week… Good Riddance
Now that the political season is finally over, at least for a few months, it’s time for some personal thoughts about that process. I know that the title of this post is not exactly how Reagan described the problem, but I kinda think my words are more accurate than his were forty years ago. When the Supreme Court decided that money is a form of … Continue reading Money In Politics Isn’t The Solution, It’s The Problem
Since going forward I am trying to confine my political posts to primarily Mondays, this will be the last one for the year. I want to end it on a positive note to talk about Generation Z in general and Greta in particular. I think you know who I am talking about but to make sure I am giving you the bio of here. Greta … Continue reading Greta & Generation Z
This post is my final one about the presidential race before people actually start voting for who will defeat the despicable person in the Oval Office. It will primarily be about Change vs Restoration and the candidates who fit into those molds.
Continue reading “Change vs Restoration – The Final Look At It Before The First Votes”With this post, I am introducing yet another new special project here on RJsCorner. It is entitled Seeking a “Joyous Journey” Through Our Retirement Years. This project will hopefully become a major part of this blog in the coming months. I have also redesigned the header above to reflect a new direction for RJsCorner. Joyful is often a very misunderstood word, especially in today’s hectic … Continue reading Seeking a Joyous Journey – Joyful??
I can actually see some positive things that might come from these current times inside the beltway. “Shutting down the government should be as off limits in budget negotiations as chemical warfare is in real warfare,” Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, said on Friday. Source: New York Times There seems to be a small crack in the Trump support among the Republicans in Congress. … Continue reading Shutting Down Shutdowns
I have written several posts here at RJsCorner about needing another option for a political party in the US. I have not been timid about my feeling that neither of the current parties represents what I believe America should be about. After the recent mid-term elections I have come to see that a 3rd party option is just not a solution to our problems, at … Continue reading Progressives Have A Lot To Learn From The Radical Right
If you believe the latest polls you have to come to the conclusion that “The times, they are a changin” as Bob Dylan said in his 1964 album. But, given how wrong the polls were in 2016, seeing is believing this time around. If more of us moderates get off our butts and vote, it just may happen. Of course, I am talking about the … Continue reading The Times, They Are A Changin…
If I were a conspiracy theorists I would believe that #CO3 and his cohorts have this all planned out. First, they try to convince everyone who will listen that the current news media is all fake and not to be trusted. And then they put out their version of news as shown by this New York Times snippet below shows. I’m sure their base believes … Continue reading DoubleSpeak…
“Congress is deadlocked and can’t act.” I think that is the greatest blessing that could befall this country. -Will Rogers (Weekly Article #59, January 27, 1924) I just can’t understand how the leadership of the Republican party can blame the Democrats for not getting anything done this year. Come on Mitch, you guys control everything and still can’t accomplish the daily chores necessary to keep … Continue reading Tit For Tat…
I didn’t realize how freeing it could be to disentangle myself from the political world. It used to be that I spent a good half hour every morning browsing my internet feeds for political stories. That process now takes about five minutes or less. The PBS Newshour that I watch the morning after now takes about 10 -15 minutes of my time. The rest goes … Continue reading I Get All The News I Need From The Weather Report…
I will admit up front here that I cherry-picked the quotes below and the Facebook shot from a very long, agonizingly long, article from a Catholic site entitled Patheos. The author is Mark Shea who is evidently a regular contributor to that venue. The gun debate is an obvious case in point. Virtually everything I have had to say about it turns on a very fundamental … Continue reading Christianist Cult of Trump…
Most of us can probably cite at least a couple of reasons for the conditions we find ourselves in today. Some blame the Internet, some religious exclusivity, or maybe religious politicization. Others say it is just plain self-centeredness. I don’t suspect that many put loneliness as part of the mix but maybe it is deeper than we realize. When politics is used as a cure … Continue reading Politics As A Cure for Spiritual and Social Loneliness?
Here we are starting out another new year. I’m just happy we survived 2017 without too much permanent damage or at least damage we can’t undo when sanity finally returns. I’m sure you are like me in thinking that the current Oval Office occupant is the worst in our nation’s history. But maybe he isn’t, at least quite yet. I choose two years from the … Continue reading Was 2017 the Craziest Year in U.S. Political History?
I don’t know why the 1973 song “Killing me softly ” by Roberta Flack got stuck in my head recently. Maybe it has something with my brain bleed of eight months ago but that is pretty much a stretch. 🙂 But those verses put the foundation together for this post. If you want to see the lyrics click here. Now on to the purpose of this … Continue reading Killing Religion With Your Political Cause..
Let’s get a political post in today without talking about the Oval Office occupant. It was interesting to see the two Republican Senators who gave an impassioned speeches about these current times. Their words reminded me of the McCarthy years in the 1950s. I was just beginning to get my political legs then so couldn’t understand the obvious witch hunt that was going on by … Continue reading A Centrist Position??
With my brain trauma event, I seem to be taking life more personally now. After some deep reflections, I have decided that what might happen twenty years from now should not be on my radar screen. Even ten years is questionable as I will likely not be around even then. Why should I fret over a time when I won’t even exist, especially since I … Continue reading I’m Taking Life More Personally Now…
The new RJsCorner will include politics as it has in the past but instead of getting bogged down in the day-to-day insanity I will be taking a higher level view. A good older analogy for this is looking at the forest instead of individual trees. But a more modern example is taking a drone level view. A major problem with our political, especially federal processes, … Continue reading A Drone Level View
Here we are at the end of another year so I guess it is time for some reflections on life. Tomorrow’s post will be looking forward but let’s look back on this one. To say the least it has been a very interesting year. Healthwise it has been a good one for both my wife and me as we had no major health events and … Continue reading Looking Back On A Weird Year..
Anyone who has experienced a hurricane knows that in the middle of the storm there is a point of almost complete calm when the eye of the hurricane passes over. Being that our national elections are tomorrow I thought it appropriate to try and write a calming post here today. To do that I went all the way back to my 1976 mountain hiking in … Continue reading The Calm In The Eye Of The Storm…
Now that the final segment of this political season is upon us maybe it is time to take a break from politics until at least the first debate. That is what I intend to do. I don’t think I can handle all the mudslinging that will surely occur in the coming days and weeks. Ninety eight days from now it won’t matter, either we will have … Continue reading It’s Time For A Break…
I seem to go in cycles as far as my tolerance for politics goes. I regularly reach a point where it becomes intolerable to read another article about the absurdity of today’s election cycle. This seems to be one of those times. I just want this nomination process to end, the sooner the better so we can get to the next stage. Not that the … Continue reading Cycles…
It seems that the GOP presidential wannabes are constantly arguing that their opponents just aren’t conservative enough to be president. Of course, they wrap their radical ideology in the American flag and somehow that gives it legitimacy. If any of them were to even hint of compromising on any issue they are quickly and firmly put down as not being conservative enough. Are they winning … Continue reading Are You Conservative Enough…
Is our country about “obedience training” or critical thinking? That seems to be the question at hand at least for the Texas GOP. Should we have a subservient society or one that is educated to ask questions? Many of the leaders in Texas seems to think the former and like so many other things are trying to force that opinion on the rest of us! … Continue reading Texas GOP Declares: “No More Teaching of ‘Critical Thinking Skills’ in Texas Public Schools”
Sometimes it seems that the NRA is a police force who forces “their” laws on the rest of us. They have such a strangle hold on so many politicians as to get their way even when it is opposed by a vast majority of our citizens. Realizing that we have more gun violence in a day than Great Britain has in a year should be … Continue reading Move Along…
Just another afternoon snippet about my recent header work of late. I added a “politics” box to the header with a sub title “Because it matters”. That sums it up for me. Yeah, I agree that politics is a very dirty business and taints everything it touches but it is so critical to the future of our country and the world that we all need … Continue reading What’s Good For the Country…
There is the sentiment that we can let the victims and families know we’re sorry for their loss, but those words fall on grieving, frightened and mostly, deaf ears. I am sorry about the loss of human life anywhere, but saying it to the internet has all the veracity of signing an office sympathy card, accompanied by those trite phrases we use, so that we … Continue reading Listening….
It has been a while since I brought up a new category here at RJ’sCorner. After seeing so many people stuck in one mode of thinking I have come to passionately embrace the concept of pragmatism. Let’s look at its definition: I like to think of myself as being a pragmatist. All my life I have looked for solutions instead of alliances. I try to … Continue reading I Love Pragmatists
Mr. Obama ordered flags at the White House on Friday to half-staff to honor the victims of the shooting. “When Americans are killed in mine disasters, we work to make mines safer,” he said on Thursday night as early reports of the dead and injured in Oregon reached the White House. “When Americans are killed in floods and hurricanes, we make communities safer. When roads … Continue reading Stuff Happens….
Then there are Biden’s recent statements staking out a more conflicted position on abortion than one expects to hear from such a prominent Democrat. This places him far closer to the consensus position on the issue than most leading members of his party and may indicate that he would cultivate more of a working-class, middle-American sensibility than we’ve seen from a Democratic presidential candidate… Biden … Continue reading Anybody but Hillary?
Win or lose, Sanders seeks to transform his party and redeem American politics through an epic battle against some of the wealthiest powers in human history. “A lot of people have given up on the political process, and I want to get them involved in it,” he tells TIME. “In this fight we are going to take on the greed of the billionaire class. And … Continue reading The Gospel of Bernie…
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