I have just returned from another trip to Germany and the Netherlands. This time, I did not want to drive myself through the countryside, so I choose to take a train. Let me tell you, those folks know how to do it. The trains are clean, fast and most of all on time. If yours is scheduled to leave at 12:02, then you had better be on the platform waiting with your luggage because the train will leave at 12:02. Not, 12:03, the train will leave at 12:02.

When you are trying to get to smaller towns, you get stuck in various stages of commuter traffic. On one run I noticed that students got on (where the school was located) and rode several miles to get to where ever they lived. I asked them about it and they told me in very good English that they rode the train both to and from school each day.

These were ordinary looking kids, clean cut for the most part, joking and having fun, but serious about their studies and eager to talk. It was evident that they were interested in obtaining a good education so that their lives would be better and they would have more opportunities as an adult.

First off, I was impressed that these kids spoke English. I do not speak German or any foreign language, so they are out in front on that score. Secondly, they did not seem to think school or learning was a bore and should be avoided at all costs. Quite the contrary, they thought an education was necessary for their future. They did not suffer from any visible forms of low self esteem. In fact these kids looked really good.

Now contrast this with our system in the states. At this time we have approximately 30 million illiterate citizens in this country. This is roughly 10% of our total population. You know a large number of them passed through our school system. My question is, how did they graduate if they could not read or write? These people cannot read a prescription, an employment application, or the instructions on how to safely use any of our everyday appliances without causing serious bodily harm to themselves. I was thinking about this being dangerous this past weekend when I was trying to fix my gas barbeque grill. I can imagine what might happen if you could not read how to properly install the propane tank and get the burners to operate correctly. This is a disaster waiting to happen. Continue reading this post…

I was reading an article that said that many black Americans were going to vote for Obama simply because he is black and prior to this I had read, and heard of, many women who voted for Hillary Clinton just because she was a woman. I personally believe that is not only wrong but lacking in intelligence.
I mean, really, just because he is black and she is a woman doesn’t mean either of them is capable of running this country so why should someone vote for either of them based on that. By that logic then in this upcoming election all whites should then run out and vote for McCain, simply because he is white.
This train of thought is beyond me so can someone please explain it to me. I thought that we were supposed to vote for the person who would do the best job in running this country and protecting our country and its citizens, not just the person who was the same color or gender as the voter. After all, in what way does their color or gender make them a viable candidate for the highest office in the land and able to deal with the type of stressful decisions that will come with that position? Or any other level of public office for that matter? Continue reading this post…

When asked about what this column is about, I usually respond with … ‘oh, it’s a humor column…kind of satire…’ something along that line. I was thinking that this week I could write a light piece about something humorous, but no, not going to happen this week.

In Texas, when you hire an attorney to do some work for you, I’ll bet you didn’t know that attorneys are not required to carry malpractice insurance for their practices. At least half of those practicing in Texas do not carry the coverage. Now, we all know that doctors carry malpractice in case they cut off the wrong leg or do something equally tragic to cause any of us injury. I don’t know that I would do business with a doctor who wasn’t insured. I’m not certain if insurance is required for doctors, but you certainly hear more about them than you do attorneys. Read on a little further.

Anyway, here in the great old Lone Star state, if an attorney screws up your case, and has no insurance, the most you can hope for is a settlement from something called the Texas Bar Client Security Fund which allows for the payment of a maximum of $30,000 for any mistakes made by the attorney on your behalf. Last year, the fund settled 74 cases for an average of $5,900 a case.

Wow…..I’m impressed. Continue reading this post…

For all of you out there who think socialized medicine, run by our lovely government would be a good thing, and for those of you who think it will be the answer to many Americans who don’t have insurance, let me tell you about what happened to a woman in Oregon. This woman, who is 64, lives in a low-income apartment in Springfield, Oregon and she has lung cancer and is on the Oregon Health Plan which is state financed though it is run by a company called LIPA in that particular part of Oregon.
Now, I know you are thinking that it is a good thing for this woman to have insurance in a time of medical need such as being diagnosed with cancer. But is it really? For her it hasn’t been as they refused to cover the chemotherapy, in the form of Tarceva which her doctor prescribed. Instead they offered to pay for her assisted suicide, or in their term “palliative or comfort care measure”. Continue reading this post…

Cannibalism is the act or practice of members feeding off other members of the same species. With few exceptions, humankind has evolved beyond this barbaric practice, at least in its commonly understood form. To civilized societies, the practice of devouring one’s own species is uncivilized and abhorrent. It is an image that all should find gruesome and repulsive…but do they?

Humankind’s historical, social and political evolution should have taught us much, but in spite of the multitude of examples that preceded we have chosen to reach back in mankind’s historical past and adopt as our social compact a new form of cannibalization, albeit less severe than the common garden variety of cannibalism.

Nonetheless, it is cannibalism, not of the body, but of our neighbor’s possessions.

This modern version is political and social cannibalism. It is the civilized version; refined, subtle, and always for a good purpose…even for the victim. Continue reading this post…

I think I’ve heard it said that some things are better left alone.
Here’s the deal, up in Kansas at something called the Kansas Underground Salt Museum they’ve discovered an organism about 250 million years old. And that’s not all; they’ve succeeded in getting it to reawaken. As in bringing it back to life. You got it; they have located some species of bacteria that has been locked inside of a Kansas salt cavern for those 250 million years.
Better still, they think they might have found some other strains of the stuff that could be 275 million years old. They said all of the bacteria that has been found is older than the dinosaurs.
Let’s think about this for a moment.

The dinosaurs and a lot of other species died off sometime long ago, right? I mean we don’t see a lot of prehistoric animals or reptiles running around the planet except in the movies. So what killed them off? Who knows? There are all kinds of theories, such as some giant asteroid or comet having hit the earth and blocking out the sun for a thousand years and so on. We certainly don’t have any written records left over from that time frame to research and talk about, do we? I mean Uglue the European Neanderthal didn’t look around one day and notice that a lot of the animals had just disappeared and then went back to his cave and jotted down a few notes expressing his concern and thoughts on this subject. Continue reading this post…

Free money, free healthcare, free education, free love….free…free….free…..
Huzza,huzza,huzza…hooray…hooray…hooray
Let the good times roll.

I would be willing to bet a dollar to a donut hole that the folks who are running around in sheer ecstasy thinking about change for the old US of A have never owned a business or had to run a business. Trust me, there ain’t no free lunch.

There never has and there never will be. One of the first rules of Perry Pervasive Philosophy is that nothing comes to you in any way shape or form without a price.

Grace isn’t free, neither is anything else….everything costs something to someone. Christ had to pay for our sins in order for us to receive his grace. So, is it free? Not hardly, there was a price. There is a price to everything, no matter how free it sounds or appears. Don’t be fooled.

How far do the kool aid drinkers in this country think we can go without a healthy business related economy to pay for what we have much less what they want to give away? Show me how the great society produced anything great? We have more of our citizens on welfare and handout programs today than when it was first started in 1964. Have we achieved any success? Has our education levels in this country gone up or down? Do we have more divorce than we did in 1964? Do we have more single family parents? Do we have more crime? How have we provided real jobs for our young people? Continue reading this post…

Wednesday - May 28, 2008
Hello once again from the West Texas Headquarters of The Vast Right Wing Association For Typical White Conspiratorial Xenophobic Gun Clingers. That should be enough to put the liberals even more off course than they already are.

Within the past couple of weeks, my wife and I were privileged to have received visits from two folks who are on my direct mail list along with their wives. Curtis and his wife Lynn were on their way to San Antonio, Brenham and several other places before returning home to Nevada. Clarence and his wife Yuko and his sister-in-law Gloria were on their way back home which is in the Texas Panhandle. We got to visit with them and hope they stop in again sometime. Of course I better not hear of anyone coming through San Angelo, Texas and not giving me a call. They were just exactly the kind of people I knew they would be. Meeting folks with whom you have been communicating is plenty fine. Of course both families had GPS units in their vehicles and were able to drive to my front door without any directions from me. Now my wife and I feel like we would really get some use out of one of them and I am now in the process of shopping for one.

Let me first address a couple of statements made within the past week by the world’s smartest and most articulate human. That of course would be Barack Hussein Obama. First he appears a bit confused about exactly what the point of Memorial Day actually is. Now for anyone who resides in The Peoples’ Republic of San Francisco let me briefly explain why we have a commemorative holiday on Memorial Day. Memorial Day is observed on the last Monday in May and it is to commemorate men and women who perished while in military service to their country. It was originally known as Decoration Day and was to honor Union Soldiers who perished in the Civil War. It was expanded after World War I to include American casualties of any war or military action. Continue reading this post…

We just experienced an over hyped, positively outrageous primary
election season that has left me cold and wondering where the heads of
our citizens are hiding out. Must be someplace where the sun doesn’t
get to very often.

At one time in my life I was a determined, dedicated and ever loyal
registered Democrat. Then something happened (Lyndon Baines Johnson)
that turned my life around and gave me much pause as to the veracity
of a party that dwelt on and fed off of the most unfortunate among us.
Some of those unfortunates were in their positions in life by way of
their own choosing and others were there by circumstance. But always,
always with a door open to them to reach for new heights, achieve new
goals, change their lives for the better. And also, always ever
present were the bottom feeders doing everything they could to take
advantage of those who had not or have not seen the light of better
days and times nor realizing they were in fact the masters of their
own destiny. They had come to believe that they were dependent on
those in power in Washington and that they would look out for them and
take care of their every need. They are still waiting and expecting al
those promised freebies. Continue reading this post…

From your standpoint would you say that this country is presently at war? And, do you believe that whether we come back from Iraq soon or not, the war on terror we are presently in won’t end there? After all, we are still in Afghanistan going after the Taliban and al Qaeda where we all know they attacked us from on 9-11, right?

Now, how many of you remember the Cold War with Russia? If you remember it then you likely remember that one of the deciding blows delivered in that war was simply the fact that we were truly the Super Power, with the nuclear weapons capability to destroy Russia, not to mention our other military power at the time.

So, how do you feel about the idea of us cutting back on our military? By that I mean, no longer inventing more types of weapons that are more effective, building no more missile defense systems and no longer working toward placing long reaching weapons in space. Oh, yeah, and developing no new nuclear weapons.

Do you think that now, with Kim Jong Il already having nuclear weapons, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad racing toward that goal, it is the time to stop developing nuclear technology? Or do you honestly believe what Barack Hussein Obama claims when he says that a global ban on nuclear weapons would work? I mean, do you honestly believe that North Korea will just give in and say okay to getting rid of the nuclear missiles they fought so hard to get or that Iran will just give in and say they won’t continue working toward nuclear capability just because Obama wants them to? I don’t and something tells me you aren’t stupid enough to believe that either. After all, why give up the one weapon, that above all others, guarantees complete destruction of the opposition, especially when your hatred of an enemy comes straight from what you not only believe but that which you teach your children and are willing to sacrifice their lives for?

If you, like me and millions of others, realize that cutting our military at this time in history would be tantamount to walking unarmed and outnumbered to a gun fight, and with no body armor either, then get the word out and let people know that a vote for Obama is a vote for a weak America. An America who will not be able to defend itself against any future attacks, whether they are on other shores or against our allies.

And while you are thinking about the fact that he wants to cut the military funding, remember one other thing—he also wants to take your guns so you can’t defend your family either. Scared yet? I am! And I’m voting for McCain.