Examples

I wish I were a better writer, especially when it comes to what I am writing. Maybe, I will get a little help from the Lord. The problem is that it is such a broad topic, and it is so easy to go chasing rabbits down trails instead of staying on topic. And to be sure, I am one who easily goes chasing rabbits.

I borrow the following partial definition from Miriam Webster of the word example. “1 : one that serves as a pattern to be imitated or not to be imitated a good example 2 : a punishment inflicted on someone.” I literally copied and pasted this into to my post. I hope they won’t mind.

We use the term so regularly that we sometimes overlook the meaning behind the word. Or maybe I should say the thought behind it. After all, words do represent thoughts. May I reword the above?

We point to good or bad examples to tell us what might be good or bad. That is to say, when our parents told us not to play in the street, they just might be able to point out what happen to the boy that was hurt. Sometimes, our parents point out what happened to an older sibling. In some cases, the sibling did something bad and that the example is not to be followed. In some cases, maybe the sibling did something good and went on to achieve wealth and fame. In some cases, it is impossible to live up to the example but at least we should strive to the goal.

We live in a world of examples: NY, NY; LA, CA; Chicago; SF, CA. They are all cities where the crime and murder rate is high. I certainly would not want to walk down the streets of NY, NY alone in the middle of the night. San Francisco is no longer the model city it was in yesteryear. The Windy city has some of the most stringent gun laws in the country and yet, hardly a day goes by where people there are shooting people. Sometimes, a person dies of an errant bullet simply because they happen to be standing where the bullet happens to be going.

I ask the question: Do we really want to follow the example of these cities? Is there a program that they are using, a plan that they are following that should serve as an example for the rest of the nation? I suggest the opposite is true. They have laws, regulations, and programs that should be held up to the world that should not be followed. They are horrid laws, and the cities are being led by incompetent people. They are not spending money in the right places, and they are giving monies to the wrong people. Their governments are corrupt, and they do not make decisions based on the good of the city or its citizens.

Yet, year after year, the same type people are elected to office. One might hang a sign outside their city halls, “Intelligent people need not apply.” Those who are honest have long given up the concept of trying to straiten out the mess the dems have created.

One can set off from afar and ask, “Why do they do that to themselves?” I mean, the people do get to vote in their choice and then they choose as they choose. Why is that? I don’t know. I have tried to figure it out but my feeble mind simply is not up to the task.

We can look at the states as well. We look at Florida, a really pretty good example of how to have a successful state. Then we look at NY and hopefully realize it is an example of how not to run a state. Or, perhaps we can use the state as an example of how to destroy a state. Yet we must assume it is what the people of NY want. It is what they voted into office.

Personally, I don’t understand it. New York used to be the most populus state. Next census, it might be fourth or fifth. CA is pretty much in a nosedive too despite their ideal weather. Is it their purpose to decrease the cost of living so all the elite will be able to get a good deal when they move in?

However…, being a poor example is not new. God had it all planned out. He would build a big powerful nation that would love Him, His law and follow His leadership. The idea was that the rest of the world would look at the Children of Israel and see how God built the nation up because they did as God commanded.

Well, at least in the short term, the plan failed. Don’t get the wrong idea. God knew the plan would fail from the start. Yet He decided to give Israel a chance and a short time later, the world looked on Israel and saw the example God wanted. Kings came from far and wide to see Soloman and the kingdom that God built.

And then it started falling apart. It’s not that I’m smart. A sixth grader can follow the pattern. Israel broke off from Juda and never did really follow the God. God issued warning after warning until he finally sent a king from the north in to take over. Israel became an example of what happens to a nation when they do not follow God.

Juda on the other hand, lasted a little longer. They followed a pattern. First, they would fall into sin and rebellion, and then they would repent, and God built them up again. I don’t remember exactly how many times that happened, but the last time was different. They fell into sin, and regardless of multiple warnings, they refused to repent. God raised up the nation of Babylon and they took over Juda.

Israel, that is to say, the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Juda, became an example of what not to do. For seventy years, Israel lived under captivity. Even then, they were never restored to their former glory. They lived under the control of Greece and Rome. The Jews had their kings, but they never were autonomous again. Now, today, when people talk about the Jews, there is no respect. They are disparaged and belittled. They are an example of what happens when people don’t do as God tells them. They had a free choice. God did not force them to follow Him. They made their choice and now we all see the example of what happens when man refuses to follow God.

Now. One day, likely soon. The world will once again see what happens when a nation will not follow God. People will look at the history of our once great nation and point and say, “They were once a great nation. The US was once undefeatable. But then they turned away from God.”

Then we will be the example, and not for good.

I suspect I did not do the subject justice. As I said, I am not that great with words. Yet, there are those who have read this are good word smiths. Feel free to use my words and thoughts to further my feeble efforts.

Forest Fires and Point of Fact

In this world where the dems are so busy trying to convince us of climate change, they are simply overlooking one simple fact. Had they removed one out of three trees in those forests, if they left the healthier trees, there would be 1/3 less fuel for the fires, 1/3 less smog and it would be somewhat easier to control the fire. (Incidentally, healthy trees do not burn as readily as as unhealthy trees.)

The truth is that the fire would have not spread as fast making it even easier to control. In the end, perhaps there would have been less than half the damage. I suspect that there would have been only 1/3 the smog.

But then who am I to say anything about the obvious. I mean, there is that climate change thing that must be sold to the public. If we have to burn down half the timber on the continent, so be it. The Greenies just must make their point no matter what the damage.

Notice the Connection?

Suddenly, Budwiser appears to be trying to commit corporate suicide, losing, not just millions, but billions in a few days.

Overnight, Target starts losing their billions. Why?

It seems they know better than we, the public. About what? About cross gendering. With Budwiser, it is their choice of spokesman during a TV ad. With Target, it was their choice of products to push.

Kind of a dumb thing to do while the object is to make money. If you watch, you get the idea it’s not their goal. It literally isn’t. Corporate boards are no longer required to represent the shareholders by making profits for them.

A short time ago, Joe came out with an executive order allowing corporations to make decisions based on social, environmental, and governmental reasons too. Now doesn’t that make you feel better about you 401k?

All y’ll invested in Target and Budwiser must feel good about now.

Selectve Concern

Joe’s press secretary just brought to mind that 14 thousand died from guns in one year. That’s horrible. One is too many.

Yet they ignore the 70,000 that die from drugs. Maybe it is because of the dems open borders. Maybe it is because of Joe’s close relationship with China. For the life of me, I don’t understand why, but he also seems to be friendly with the cartels and drug smugglers. Maybe it is his hope to rid the nation of drug addiction by killing all drug addicts.

I like the idea of cutting down on addicts but I certainly didn’t approve of his methods. I also dislike his misplaced concerns. If we look closely at the deaths by gun, we’d likely find at least a third drug related. Seems to me, if we stop drug abuse, we’ll also cut down on gun deaths. Also, we’ll cut down on robbery, knife assaults, child abuse and wife beatings.

Better to treat the real problems more than the symptoms.

BUILD THE WALL!! NOW! Fix the illegal alien proplem, the drug problems and the crime problems. The gun problem mostly will go away… all by itself. Generally, law bidding citizens rarely shoot people without a good reason.

Food Deserts

I don’t know about where you live, but on the local news here, recently the news is carrying stories about “food deserts.” These are areas in Memphis where there is no food. No supermarkets exists in the desert. Those that want to shop for food must either go to a convenience store or go some distance to another part of the city.

I hope you won’t mind my borrowing a liberal term, but I suspect it is evolution. I suspect that the deserts just might be or have been high crime areas. Indeed, the areas without grocery stores are likely business deserts as well. I mean who wants to open a business in an unsafe area? It is not profitable. It is dangerous for employees, customers and vendors.

It does make me wander why they can find convenience stores. Well, they do charge more and they generally have less cash. Nonetheless, if they keep letting the criminals have their way, if they don’t start putting them behind those big walls, the convenience stores too, will disappear. They’ll fade away with all the past neighborhood markets

Evolution is not just survival of the fittest. Smartness, common sense and fiscal matters all figure into it too. It is likely why many come south of the stateline to do business, to eat, to go to school, and, in some cases, live. Northwest Mississippi is the fastest growing part of the state. My guess is that most of the new residents are from Memphis.

Just a shame that we have no way of filtering them. We have to let the libs settle here too. Notice I didn’t say dumb libs. That would be redundant. Hopefully, after a year or two, they will get smart. I mean, when we catch a criminal here, he goes to the hoosegow. Incidentally, no one here is calling for defunding of the police.

Some may find this strange but neither do we have food deserts. Oddly, you check the parking lots of the stores just south of the stateline, you will find many Shelby County car tags. Don’t mind that much. They are helping us pay for our law enforcement. They are helping us pay for our streets. Mostly, they are driving the value of my house up. Once or twice a week, I have an offer.

My guess is, not so many moving north. There won’t be until those “woke” people up there put the bad guys in jail and make it safe. Nothing brilliant about it. No need for a college degree. They have been doing it for centuries. Some are just stubborn. They insist on using the new unproven.

Neutral Law Enforcement

During my thirties, my job took me to New York, just outside Syracuse. There’s a nice park there where I used to walk. It beat looking at the hotel room walls.

It was the right time of year and the evenings were almost always wonderful. There was a baseball diamond there and, of course, little leaguers playing baseball.

When I stopped and watched the game, they found out I was from Mississippi. They suddenly realized they found the perfect unbiased umpire. They immediately put me to work calling balls and strikes.

Apparently, they were impressed with my fairness, if not my accuracy. They kept calling me back and they never complained, not once. Now that, in itself, is something of which for me to brag.

The point is this, people love an honest neutral arbiter, whether it be an umpire, a judge in a courtroom, a prosecutor or even law enforcement officers. I guess that nowadays it’s too much for we Americans to expect. No more fair umpires in our government. No more fair observations from TV and radio reporters. There are no hopes of getting unbiased reporting from newspapers. Finally, and worst of all, the historians are twisting history. They say things happened I know didn’t happen. At my age, I actually remember stuff firsthand.

It makes me sad. However, I have hope. There is a righteous judge. All accounts will be settled. The most devious government officials will pay. I don’t need to do a thing. God’s judgment is true. God’s judgment is sure. No one will get away with anything. Those who don’t believe it are only deceiving themselves.

What amazes me is some actually think they know and understand it. Yet, definitely, they continue their march. I can’t think of anything more foolish.

Half a Billion Tons

That’s how much silt the great Mississippi River dumps into the Gulf of Mexico each year. I might add there are a few others that are similar. There are some that dump more, many less.

That is a bunch of bunch of dirt displacing millions of tons of ocean water.

Now, let’s see. Do you suppose that would cause the ocean levels to rise.

Simple solution. Dig some of the dirt back out or pump ocean waters into man-made salt lakes and add lake front property. Make channels for shipping. Add beautiful landscaping for big hotels.

Build a bid wide beautiful mote just north of the Mexican border to stop illegal migration. Well, that wouldn’t work well in the mountainous areas. It’s a thougt, anyway. It sure would be nice to cut down ont the drug traffic too.

While We Can

Invariably, the first thing tyrants do as they take over a country, it to silence populace.  One of the first things to disappear from a free country is the freedom to speak or publish freely.  It is odd here in the US that we have gained some freedoms of expression while we have lost others.  While books containing drag-queen literature is becoming prevalent, the Bible and literature about it are more frequently being banned.  If a teacher should have it on his desk, it just might be grounds for dismissal.

On the other hand, in my son’s intermediate school, the teacher thought it would be a good idea for all the students in the class to plot their astrological charts.  May I say, astrology is more of a religion than Christianity?

However, my point today only brushes with the subjects.  My real concern is beyond the argument of which religion is or isn’t true.  The fact is that Christianity is currently hated more than any religion from any country, and this includes religions that openly worship the devil.  Indeed Satan worship is protected in all military services and all chaplains are required to honor it.  It seems it is completely contrary to the reason to have chaplains in the first place.

To be sure, every time someone raises a voice against the way Christianity is treated, whoa to he who speaks it.  Oddly, in some cases, it is a person right within the church that speaks ill of him who has the nerve to say that homosexuality is wrong, though God, himself speaks against it many times.  For sure, it is the primary, if not the only reason for the utter destruction of Sodom and Gomorra.  It is at least one reason that God Brought Israel into the promise land.  God, through the hand of Moses said as much, though most would like to ignore it.

Most times, it’s not a matter of knowing right from wrong.  The vast majority of us know from our youth.  The two problems are getting people to admit to the obvious and then do that which they know to be right.

Let us take a look at it.  Do you find Bibles in porn stores?  When you enter a bar, will you see reruns of Billy Gramm sermons on the TVs?  Of course not.  To the current public, there are many other things more important, not to mention, they can get embarrassing…seeing such things in such places.  It is as if we can keep God from seeing us if we leave our Bibles at home.

So now.  I guess we can’t take our Bibles to school.  Why?  Because we just might do something that the Lord will disapprove of?  I guess, when it come comes to sex ed.; we really don’t want God looking over our shoulder.  We certainly don’t want God to see the encouragement of killing the unborn.  Boy, would that get in the way.

So, our neighbors, our community, our government is doing what they can to shut us up.

So, before they do.  Before they remove from us the most important right of all, while we still can, perhaps it is time to say something.  Or we may not be able to say anything.  While we still can, maybe we should remind one and all, just cause you say it’s right, doesn’t make it so.

If we lose the first amendment, most certainly the rest of our freedoms will soon follow.  Then.  You just might think, I should have said something.

Frequently Asked Questions

On the subject of Frequently Asked Questions, I have this to say.  Are they truly frequently asked?  Out of all the times I have ever consulted frequently asked questions, I never found the one for which I needed an answer.  Worse yet, I could never find a category.  They always list 4, 5 or 6 categories, then “Other.”  Then when I look under other, I can’t find my question there either.  Not a thing comes close.

I guess that either makes me weird or their questions aren’t as inclusive as they would like to imply.  Moreover, it would seem that I am mostly on my own.  Frequently, I actually figure things out, though it takes some time.  On the other hand, I just tried to install a product that should have not taken over 3 hours to install.  I gave up after 16.  I don’t need any piece of software that I can’t install after 16 hours.  Moreover, it was also difficult to de-install.  Moreover, it was difficult to use.

Taught me a lesson or two.  Next time I am going to install something, I will make sure to mark the spot so I can return to whence I came.  Even that brings me angst.  I have not yet established much trust in the ability of the software that can restore that well.

Be that as I may, the whole thing prompted a thought.  Maybe the US government could establish a frequently asked question web site.  I’m not suggesting it would help much but it would be interesting just what questions they would post and what kind of answers they would concoct, for instance, “What is a woman?”

God’s law was clear, “Though shalt not murder.”  Simple.  Requires little in the way of explanation.  On the other hand, the government at every level has pages and pages on the subject.  Can you imagine querying murder on frequently asked questions?  Did you say you have a day or two to read the reply?

How about something on the subject of abortion.  No problem for the dems…any time, any place, by someone with an MD after his name.  No follow-up exam necessary.

Then, there is the matter of theft.  All you can get away with as long it has a value of less than a grand.  And, by the way, if someone stops you, you can sue their socks off, and get them too.

Contrary to the commandment, we are not to honor our parents.  The job of parenting has been turned over to the daycares, schools and colleges.  In short the government.  By the way, we’d better not forget it or the FBI will be after us.

Incidentally, if we ask who should be in control, it’s the dems.  We best not forget that either or we will be tossed in the hoosegow and we’ll not see the light of day for years, if ever.

I guess it would be a bad idea to look for that on the FAQ list.  They will look for you and prohibit you from publishing a book, being on TV or radio.  Your name will instantly be mud, perhaps literally.

Incidentally, lest I forget, bribes too are wrong, even the ones that are completely legal. The Bible does make that perfectly clear. You wouldn’t doubt what this had you read the entire Bible. It really is in there, plain and simple to see for all. It says something about the way bribes cloud judgement. I am sure that is indisputable, even if you do not believe what is written.

I Don’t Do Surveys

I have had a little to say about surveys already, but maybe it is a good time to revisit the idea. The problem with the surveys is the wording of the questions. Many times, there is no true answers. They ask true false questions when the reply is neither true nor false. They ask multiple choice questions when they don’t have my answer listed. Unfortunately, they do not include a choice of none of the above.

Generally, after the 1st 3 or 4 questions, I know the purpose of the survey and who is behind it. Without doubt, the questions are worded to benefit those sponsoring the questionnaire. Indeed, the survey is obviously intended to affect opinion more than determining opinions.

The promp for me writing this is a request for my cellphone phone provider to take a survey. Thought about taking it just to gather evidence. You think, maybe those questions just might be worded without bias? I think not.

On the other hand, if you want my opinion on my provider, I will be glad to tell anyone. But don’t expect it to be either rosey or horid. However, there is one thing I would like to tell one and all. They have included some things on the phone that I cannot remove. For instance; I can’t remove tic toc. There are holidays on the calendar that cannot be removed. Perhaps worst, I keep setting the ‘do not disturb ‘ function unintentionally and without knowing it. As a result I missed 5 calls, 3 of which were important… sort of the reason I carry a cell phone.

It does make me wonder if that was in some way on their survey.

And, oh yes. I am still wondering how I turned the do not disturb function on. Just maybe I’ll find out one day…hopefully before I miss another important call, as when my wife is desperately trying to call me.