BY THE NUMBERS

good/bad
right/wrong
pass/fail
plus/minus
debit/credit
win/lose

We are addicted to rating ourselves. Glibly summing up the event, the result, our lives. We are a numerical species, we use numbers to measure everything. The most popular numbers we use to rate ourselves are:

Amount of our money
Number of offspring
Numbrt of friends
Years of marriage
Time at same residence
Square footage of house
Job longevity
Number of trips

And they all add up to...? Nothing.

Try these instead:

Percentage of each day your soul is at peace
The number of times you smile each day without a joke having been told

Works for me.





ucks! The ups and downs of life.

DON'T BUG ME!

I was sitting outside by the lake, and a small bug/fly flew onto my shirt. I brushed it off and after a few moments, it landed again on my shirt. Three times, four times, a dozen times, I brushed it off and it came back.

Ha, ha, I thought, that must be it. Those more in the know that me say that our setting up a lifestyle with...dare I say, monotonously boring...repetitive acts done generally at the same time each day, in the same way...that our penchant for doing so is in our genes. Bugs do it, bees do it, birds do it...chimps probably did it...and so we humans, despite our unique capacity to exercise free will and to choose...we do it, too.

So, a toast to irregularity, spontaneity, the changeable, the unfixed, the unsteady, the indecisive, the unpredictable, the fickle, the erratic, the impetuous, the whimsical.

I ain't no bug/fly.

Are you?

THE PREVIOUSLY UNTHINKABLE

Freedom and force are the two combatants. Make your choice. You cannot have both. They cannot live together.

Properly seen, the function of our government is to eliminate force from our lives, thus letting us bask in freedom. The preamble to the Constitution saying it was enacted "to promote the general welfare", was a recognition that freedom was to everyone's welfare and benefit.

Today, those few words are mistakenly interpreted...worse, intentionally misinterpreted...as authority for the government to do basically whatever those in office wish to do, imposing restrictions, limitations, on our freedom...and worse, forcing us to do things we have not individually chosen to do.

Every...EVERY...government law, ruling, edict, agenda, is backed up by FORCE.

The beast has turned and is feeding on us. Its hunger appears insatiable. Control this, regulate that, give money away to foreign nations , refrain from enforcing certain laws, favor one group over another, impose higher and higher taxes to pay its freight. Worse....run up $14,000,000,000,000 in debt for us and future generations to have strapped to our backs.

The illusion that this evolution is in our general welfare has long since been buried. A few choice words in the Preamble now ignored: "TO SECURE THE BLESSINGS OF LIBERTY TO OURSELVES AND OUR POSTERITY". Obama has intentionally and maliciously, with the aid of his blind supporters, has run our country over the edge. And I hear no voice of reason, of intelligence, of sanity, to turn back the political tsunami that has engulfed us. So that does away with the idea of a second American Revolution as a possible fix.

The major force exerted against me today comes from the government, the organization set up for the purpose of protecting me FROM force. That is unacceptable

Anarchy looms. Couldn't be worse.

KILLER SILENCE

A friend of mine asked me where morality in our society has gone. I have not taken a verifying poll, so I cannot say with certainty whether there are indeed fewer moral people than there were, say, 40-50 years ago, though it sure seems that way. But what seems clear to me is that those who believe in living by a moral code that encompasses integrity, honesty, independence and productivity, have gone underground.

Concerned about being classed as being "square", living by old rules, being out-of-date, and ridiculed for "not being with it", many, many moral people have chosen, I think, to be relatively quiet on this critically important issue. Their choice to keep their morality to themselves is further spurred by their general inability to prove the validity of their moral code, based as it most often is on subjective feelings, whims and unprovable ancient dogma.

And their silence has devastating consequences. Youngsters struggling to define a way of life for themselves, hear little to rebut the immoral onslaught coming at them daily from friends, in popular music, new wave movies, and just about everywhere else:

"It's a dog-eat-dog world"

"Gotta do what you gotta do to get ahead"

"Everybody's doing it"

"Times have changed and we have to, too"

"Everything's in"

As always, when the good, the right, the wise, are silent, the bad, the wrong, the unintelligent and uninformed, win...by default.

Time to come out of the moral closet before the door gets jammed shut for a long, long time.

A HISTORY LESSON

Research reveals:

The Philistines complained to the Israelites that David's use of a sling and his beheading of Goliath when the giant lay wounded on the ground, violated the rules of combat at the time and that recrimination against the Israelites would continue for thousands of years.

The Philistines further argue:

1. That though Goliath had daily dared a soldier to fight him, David was but a child and Goliath would not have harmed him;

2. That Goliath's proposal that the war be decided by one battle between him and an Israelite soldier was designed to save lives and was in harmony with the Elaj accords;

3. That at the time of the beheading, Goliath was not attacking David and David was not in harm's way;

4. That slingshots were not an internationally-approved weapon of war, and could have injured non-combatant civilians who were interspersed with the non-uniformed Philistine soldiers;

5. That history has unfairly portrayed Goliath as a cruel, killing machine, when in fact he was a brave, heroic warrior.

There is much to think about and to learn from this ancient tale, though it is not likely ever to be repeated, is it?

RUNNING

I’m running
Who asked?

I’ll announce by July 1 if I am going to run”
Did you announce when you were going to announce if you are going to run?

I may run
Me too

I might not run
Same thing

My family doesn’t want me to run
Who does?

The polls say I should run
Who knows better than 348 people out in Wyoming?

I never thought of running before
Sure

I don’t know if I can raise the money to run
Why is that, do you think?

My health is good
What better reason to run?

My health is not great
Better run soon

I don’t know who else is running
Anything else you don’t know?

A lot of good people are running
Is that a Yes or a No?

Maybe I shouldn’t run
Now you’re talking

GENIUSES AT WORK

Now here comes the sophisticated analyses by the political intelligentsia, academia and think tankers, of the "legality" of our killing of Bin Laden:

On one side:

"The raid was conducted in a manner consistent with the laws of war"

"He wasn't armed but he put up resistance"

"He didn't hold up his hands and surrender"

"The U.S. gave OBL the possibility to surrender, but he refused"

On the other side:

"He was not moving at the time he was initially shot"

"Were arresting officers in fear of their lives?"

"Was it lawful for one country to conduct a raid in another country?"

"Bin Laden was shot shortly after he had eaten breakfast and the food was not fully digested, no doubt causing him undue and unnecessary and unlawful indigestion before his death"

"The bullet that killed him was made in Mexico and that country had not been consulted about, nor had it approved, our use of that bullet in this international murder"

"Bin Laden was killed on Tuesday, and in that region of the world, the Goddess Tushi, after whom the day is named, is a symbol of pleasure and delight"

Good arguments all for our elimination of the man who had declared war on America, attacked us, and in every waking moment, plotted, orchestrated and directed his plan to kill us all. What could we have been thinking?

And, Mr. President, I trust you were kidding, talking tongue in cheek, when you said your reason not to release the picture of our dead enemy was that it would inflame anti-U.S. feelings around the world. What you should have said was: "Attack us and we will destroy you with unremitting and unparallelled force," and then dropped pictures of it in every town and hamlet in the anti-American regions of the world." Never took "Bullying 101" did you?

STILL A TRAGEDY

Any reference to the killing of Bin Laden as an American victory, triumph, or achievement is an absurdity and insulting to the thousands of Americans Bin Laden killed, and their families. It took 10 years for the most powerful, technologically sophisticated country in world history to locate and remove this one, weak, hapless, enemy...while he continued his destructive ends.

And what I sense will likely be the characterizing of this event as a political success for the President and the Democratic party is an abomination and reprehensible.

Americans are fighting and continue to be killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and a host of other regions of the world. Contrary to political garbage-talk, we have no business being in those countries, they pose no immediate threat to us, we have no responsibility to dictate in any way what happens there. Our enlarging of the Gunfight at the OK Corral to world scope is not OK.

From any and every perspective, Bin Laden was a tragedy for the U.S. His removal from the landscape is of course positive...but it fills not one empty chair.