"Without God, all things become permissible." -The Brothers Karamazov Happy Easter to the three people who still read this thing once in awhile. It is Easter eve. Easter is an important holiday in my family which always marked the arrival of spring. It also marked the one day you must absolutely attend church. Easter was for my mom. Always there was dinner afterwards. Unfortunately, there are a significant amount of people that don't believe in God. I'm ok with that just as long as they don't ridicule or berate my beliefs. If folks cross that line, well things tend to get ugly and animated quickly.  For many years I struggled with the concept of God. I read books, I talked to people, pastors, priests. I discovered that the Vatican had removed books from the Bible in the grand editing process that they employ. And then, through a series of sobering events, I came to believe. It started in my 47th year.  It began with forgiveness. How could a man, charged with some

This post was first published in September, 2014. Sorry for the delay today. Late night, didn't get home until 2 a.m. A couple of weeks ago, I was reading some interesting stuff about societies and how they eventually crumble and implode. More than a few people have postulated that the first things to go wanting are values, morals, and integrity. This was first proposed by Socrates and then expanded on by Plato as they spoke of virtue as moral excellence. How are people supposed to understand the importance of virtue if your society doesn't teach it and your leaders don't possess it? Not only do we lack any type of "leadership by example" but when was the last time you actually heard anyone, anywhere, describe a President or a  Congressman as honest?  If all you ever see is this current day "dog eat dog mentality" from your leaders doesn't that become the standard? If you look outside politics, you see greedy corporate pirates such as the Koch B

 I was lost and now I am found. A month or so ago, I was messing around with my control panel and managed to lose everything on my computer before re-installing it. This is what happens when you barely have enough know how to turn your computer on and then attempt to change all the settings. Anyhow, what was lost is now found. After an ample amount of work and cursing. In the comments, I saw an old friend ask if I was still around. To MM and my 3 other readers, yes, and while I have achieved a level of writer's block that has me wondering if I should have even bothered to restore the settings on my laptop- I am still here looking for new subject matter. This morning I was perusing the old town's newspaper when I came across the obituary of a former colleague of mine. I am so used to feeling a sense of loss every time one of my old friends die- that I have never felt an opposite emotion. A bit of glee when an old enemy left this earthly coil. Now I've never gone looking for

 Mrs. Elizabeth Powel asked Benjamin Franklin the question. What do we have, a republic or a monarchy? Franklin answered, "A republic if you can keep it." Probably historically true.  In a republic, the power to govern is held by the people or their elected representatives. By consent. We have checks and balances for those representatives, and we have a rule of law. That theory was meant to keep an oppressive government at bay. To keep them from acquiring too much power In a democracy, the people directly make every decision. There are no representatives. Democracies often devolve into mob rule democracies. Like the one we have now. A republic is meant to protect the minority from the oppression of the majority. A rule of law is what keeps it civil. A minority member's interests are protected. Until the mob takes over. Now we can debate who, what, when, and how we have lost our republic. We can even debate whether we still have one or not. On paper, we might have a republ

"Anger is brief insanity." Mom attributed that quote to Hemingway. Having been on the receiving end of mom's wrath more than a few times, that phrase has always made sense. Craig Robertson, age 75, died in Provo, Utah on August, 9, 2023. He was killed by an FBI tactical team for making threats. He was an Air Force veteran, welding inspector, and wood worker. He had been married twice and widowed twice. He had three children.  He was not in the best of health and walked with a cane. He loved guns and was a member of the NRA. Robertson was no fan of the democratic party. To be fair, Robertson had made several threats regarding Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and Attorney General Merrick Garland, among others. These were descriptive threats wherein Robertson went into great detail about how he would accomplish the killings of those individuals. We must assume that he actually made those threats on social media, since he never

 This week was one for the ages. The Michigan State Police confirmed that hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots, a conspiracy in the swing states, was not only caught on video and investigated- Michigan did nothing and the FBI did nothing. This video amazingly coincides with the 3 a.m. miraculous election of Joe Biden in 2020 who was losing and then suddenly pulled a Presidency out of a hat. Via the Gateway Pundit, you will likely not see this anywhere mainstream.  https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/now-we-have-proof-tgp-exclusive-massive-2020/ The Biden family was paid over 20 million dollars by Chinese, Russian, Ukrainian and Kazakhstan nationals while Joe was the VP. Funny now that Biden and the democrats have been sponsoring the Ukrainian war with US tax dollars after receiving bribes in the millions. This while Obama was President. What did he know?  https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/foreigners-paid-more-than-20-million-to-biden-family-associates-bank-records-5453849 The J