My wife and I recently had the opportunity to tour a few Western states and it gave birth to a flood of stirring thoughts - it was perceptive insight that one can only reflect upon by standing in the presence of such a great witness. During our trip we had the opportunity to see Mount Rushmore.  The day we got there it opened and we drove right in, but when we left an hour or so later the line of cars waiting to see the monument was a couple miles long.  There were thousands of people there from foreign lands speaking different languages, German, Spanish and Chinese. Mount Rushmore, a pillar of granite arising out of the Black Hills in South Dakota, gave inspiration to a man named Borglum, a sculptor and the son of Danish descent.  One...

Someone asked the other day if we’re close to another depression.  I’ve done research on the Great Depression and things got quite bad.  The Great Depression not only affected the United States, but spread worldwide - sound familiar?  Commodities had to be rationed, banks collapsed, and a quarter of the population was unemployed. “We shall pass this way again” might make a great lyrical line or proverb. President Obama was asked the other day what his greatest accomplishment was while in office.   His reply was that America hasn’t plunged into another Great Depression on his watch. When Donald Trump was recently asked about the frightening level of national debt he jokingly claimed: “We can print more money.” A lot of people are asking...

In the last few days, Donald Trump reached the number of delegates needed to become the Republican nominee for president in 2016.  A few remaining unpledged delegates pushed him over that threshold. You would think that would be cause for celebration.  In many camps it may be, but then it also gives rise to panic.  Donald Trump’s wife has been claiming “My husband’s not Hitler.”  Many in the media claim Trump will become an authoritarian figure if elected president - that quite literally scares a few folks. That would explain where the analogy of Hitler comes from. It was also announced recently that Donald Trump will have to testify in the fall in the fraud case that awaits him pertaining to the now defunct Trump University proceedings....

Around the beginning of April, a friend of mine shared something that would later trigger an epiphany in me.  He said: “Greg, my wife and I are Christians and neither one of us vote because we see no distinction between Democrats and Republicans.” Political ads then began to inundate our television sets and radios before the Indiana primary.  Millions of dollars were spent by the Cruz campaign and Conservative Super PACs to highlight Donald Trump’s true nature that he was a Liberal posing as a Conservative.  Ad after ad showed Donald Trump professing his allegiance to Liberalism, but in the end all that was ignored.  Trump won every delegate up for grabs in Indiana and Ted Cruz dropped out of the race. I came to the conclusion that...

There are many who think Donald Trump is repulsive.  Others see him as charming.  An ancient proverb says: “Charm is deceitful.” It was just recently announced that the court proceedings against Donald Trump and his now defunct Trump University will begin the opening day of the National Republican Convention slated to occur in Cleveland in July. Students who enrolled in that Trump University scheme weren’t awarded diplomas at all.  Instead, they were bilked for thousands of dollars.  It was a scam that Donald Trump steadfastly defends as nothing more than a business endeavor. The Indiana Primary will be held on Tuesday, May 3rd and there’s a lot being said about it.  Many of the pundits are saying the eyes of the nation are on the Hoosier...

I was having a conversation with a friend the other day and what he shared was insightful.  He revealed he’s been a Democrat his entire life and has never voted for a Republican.  He went on to add that he would never vote for Hillary Clinton, even if she was the party nominee in the fall presidential election.  He also claimed he would vote Republican for the first time if Mrs. Clinton won the nomination.  I asked why he felt that way.   He claimed: “Hillary Clinton is even scarier than Barack Obama.”  He said Clinton would take away his vast collection of guns and that he’s a patriotic individual who doesn’t want to see his country destroyed by socialism. Needless to say, my friend had never discussed politics before - even though he...

Is this great land we call America vanishing before our very eyes? We need to be reminded of the sobering words of Nikita Khrushchev, who said: “You Americans are so gullible.  No, you won’t accept communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won’t even have to fight you; we’ll so weaken your economy until you’ll fall like an overripe fruit into our hands.” In 2008, and again in 2012, I said America was in trouble.  We have a president who seems to be hell-bent on marginalizing America.  His socialistic ideology has been an absolute failure for the last seven years and his presidential legacy will be lost in the quagmire of those delusions. In...

Has there ever been common ground among opposing factions?  Maybe, but it’s seldom, for light cannot dwell with darkness nor can oil cohere with water. Nowadays, there’s a war raging for the realm of ideas, tradition, and beliefs.  For many, there’s no tolerance for such things anymore. It's human nature to want to live by definition.  We’re defined by this or that and labeled.  We’re born naked, yet undefined.  We’re taught our thoughts, instructed by an outside world.  No one’s born a liberal or conservative, a decent human being or monster, a Genghis Khan, Stalin, Lenin, Hitler, or a Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, a conformist or subverter. Those who claim to be indifferent, a nonparticipant in the process, fail to understand that...

Spring’s a time of rejuvenation and I must say it’s my favorite time of year.  But winter isn’t quite over yet, and I may just watch one of those old black & white films on DVD before the last snowflakes fly. My wife and I have an affinity for the holiday classics.  My favorite is “A Christmas Story” and hers is “A Charlie Brown Christmas” yet who could forget “It’s A Wonderful Life.” I have a painting on my office wall, I can’t recall the artist though, which depicts a town split in half.  It’s much like that of “Bedford Falls” and “Pottersville” that’s portrayed in “It’s A Wonderful Life.” On the “Bedford Falls” side of town a few people are stirring.  It seems peaceful enough, but the interstate came through a few years back and...

A new year is barely six weeks old, yet the life of a political season won’t conclude for months. Numerous Republican presidential campaigns were born in 2015, as were a few Democrats.  Some of those fledgling endeavors like that of Rick Perry, Scott Walker and Bobby Jindal didn’t last long - they expired before any votes were even tabulated. The first state to conduct an election was the caucuses held in Iowa.  New Hampshire followed with their primary election roughly a week later.  The Republican herd began to thin after Iowa when three dropped out of the race because of poor showings in the Hawkeye state.  The herd thinned once more after the Granite State contest when two more withdrew. For the Democrats, the first contest began with...