Are these lovely creatures related to apes? I may be, and you may be, but not these babes.

What government should do but doesn't

    The federal government pokes its nose into all things which are none of its business, such as worrying about whether you are too fat, and ignores the very things it should be concerned with.  For example every single developed nation in the world regards safe and comfortable passenger rail travel as one of the signs of a great civilization.  The USA is one of the few, if not the only, developed industrialized countries which practically ignores this even though the Constitution specifically makes interstate commerce one domestic responsibility with which the government is expressly charged.  All good passenger rail systems require subsidies.  Not one in the world is paid for entirely by passengers.  Now, with that in mind, try to get a train from St. Louis to Miami or Indianapolis to Houston.  Where rail does exist the roadbeds are dangerous and the tracks and railroad bridges are rotting away.  Yet you can travel all over Western Europe, Japan and China by rail and enjoy every minute of the trip (except for some trains in France where some cars do not have automatic door openers).

      More to the point.  We are pro-life.  Yet there is a crying need for assistance for teenage girls, sometimes victims of rape or incest and in some cases caught in the bind of violent alcoholic parents, no money, no friends, no place to go and then told to go to term by some pompous busybody who thinks he's an agent for the Lord and will never have to worry about having a baby himself.  We need safe houses, protection, counseling, etc.  This is one thing the government should do.  But the "conservatives" would rather pontificate to get the credit for being righteous and the liberals (and to be honest, a lot of "conservatives") really don't give a damn about anything but reelection so we get nothing but free contraceptives as the answer.  (I am for contraceptives, but that's the only answer that the holier-than-thou types ever offer.  They would rather have abortions, the more the better).  So we get nothing.  For all of the "caring" and Kumbayah bull shit in Washington, help for Saudi Arabia, crocodile tears for misunderstood terrorists, Obamacare and all the other nonsensical "solutions" to non-existing problems, the American girl has to shift for herself while being bombarded with lectures about moral behaviour.  As St. Paul wrote 2000 years ago "The good that I would I do not.  The evil that I would not, that I do". 

                                                                             

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Is the United States a Christian Nation?

Is the United States a Christian Nation?

     The United States is a Christian nation.   This is not to say that Americans have any official church with powers of taxation or coercion fixed by law as some nations do or have in the past.  No one wants that and any claim that anyone does is a red herring designed to obscure the real issue.  It simply means that America was founded by Christians for Christian purposes and  principles.  Americans are always free peacefully to practice any religion or no religion, as the First Amendment makes clear, but the right of the people as a whole to honor God through speeches, monuments, plaques on and within public buildings, and the voluntary practice of prayer in public schools or at public events is inherent in the "free exercise" of religion, understood from the beginning to apply to the people individually and collectively.  When George Washington declared the first Thanksgiving on October 3, 1789 he stated:  "Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the Providence of Almighty God . . . we may . . . unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations".  The anti-Christian bigots notwithstanding, that is the core of America's purpose in the world.

Hi ho! Hi ho! It's Off to Work We Go.

Gift From the Faraway Eastern Rim of the World

Death and Glory

I buried death in Shrouds of Glory.
                               Easter Sunday

There will always be hope when there is A Girl Next Door

Infidelity

     This is about being 'in love' and is addressed to heterosexual males, of which I am one.  The subject is important and practical, because most people have had or will have the experience of being in love, or think they have.  While directly addressing males this applies to females also, and equally. 

     When a man falls in love with a girl (and all women are 'girls' when you're in love with them) what is it like and how is it distinguished from lust?  The test is this; ironically, if you are 'in love' you think very little about sex.  That's not what you want.  You want the girl, not something she can give you or withhold from you.  You are in love if you can say "I would rather be miserable with her than happy without her".  You can confuse lust and love but they are quite different.  The way to distinguish love from lust is to think honestly about what it is that you really want.  That should give you the answer without trying very hard.

     And here's the danger, in either case, when you try to fool yourself into thinking that you are motivated by something high-minded.  You may let your imagination run away with you.  If the object of your affection is married to someone else, or if you are, you are likely to think that there's something almost spiritual about your emotion.  That's when you tell yourself, and then others, such nonsense as "We didn't want "it" to happen, as if you were considering something coming at you from somewhere else, something you could not avoid, not your fault or responsibility.  "We didn't plan it.  We were just good friends and just wanted to have lunch together and reminisce about old times" --- and all that garbage, for that's what it is.  The only reasonable and honorable course you can take is to put it aside.  If you don't, it will lead to something else, and much worse than you imagine.  Infidelity produces misery beyond measure, not only for the immediate victims but their families, their friends, frequently their employers, and everyone else who is touched by it.

     Don't let it start.  No, you are not "just friends".  No, you did not "just have lunch" or "just talk" about football, or the weather or anything else.  You did not "just" happen to run into each other in the mall.  It was planned, consciously or sub-consciously.  Turn around and walk the other way.  Forget about a lunch date, for that's what it is, a date, whether you call it that or not.  If you have already made the date, cancel it.  This is the only decent, honorable path you can take.  Never make the fatal mistake of assuming that you can resist temptation.  You can't. 

Gift From the Sea

North Korea

North Korea

     If North Korea's angry little dictator Kim Jong Un is rational he will conclude that threatening the use of  bombs and mssiles is dangerous and back off before he miscalculates and finds himself and his regime blown into the ashes of history where they belong. 

     On the other hand, if he is irrational, as appears not improbable, he may actually set off a spark which will have the same happy result for the world.  The only course for him which offers safety for now is to back off.

     The world will lose, however, by asking for talks which, as always, raises the question "talk about what"?  If the past two hundred years offers any lesson it is that  dictators intent on aggression, whether crazy or not, are deterred or removed only by force or its threat, and nothing else --- ever,  except by the surrender by their intended victims to their demands.  It gets tiresome to have to learn that lesson over and over.  War is horrible.  The surrender of a nation's honour and vital interests to some sociopathological nut case is worse

OREGON EDWARDS

Home is Where the Feet Are Up