Saturday, February 14, 2009

A Better Love

On Valentine's day, there is lots of talk about love, about candy, flowers, cards with hearts on them, etc.  But what is love really?  I ran across this video on the statesman.com web site today and couldn't help but be amazed as people's definitions, or attempts to define love.  Watch it...





Now, contrast this to the one who created love.  He defines it this way.  It's not only a better love, it's the best love anywhere at anytime, period.


Monday, February 9, 2009

Socialism or bust

That's what the President and his men think. Socialism or bust. They apparently don't believe in free enterprise and true capitalism. They believe that a socialist economy, where the government controls corporations and banks, is better than free enterprise and letting the natural consequences of peoples corruption and mistakes occur. Or why else would they want to print nearly a trillion dollars to "stimulate" the economy? Why else do they think they can make the country better by creating more government jobs? They apparently think that the government is a god that can save everyone from all trouble!

This whole thing was caused by lending money to people who couldn't afford to pay. Now the government is going to borrow tons of money with no reasonable way to pay for it. There's an old saying that goes "If a bank lends $500 to a man who can't pay it back, the man suffers. If a bank lends $5,000,000 to a man who can't pay it back, the bank suffers." But what if the government borrows $1,000,000,000,000 and can't pay it back? Everybody suffers.

I really believe that the government cannot spend this country into prosperity. That is really upside down economics. What this country needs is confidence. Confidence that the government is not going to go broke. Confidence that inflation won't hit double digits in the next few years. Confidence that real change is ahead. Instead, we get the same thing from Washington - the same spending without knowing where the money is coming from, the same adding to an already humongous debt without a plan to pay for it. This is not change, but simply more of the same, just with bigger numbers attached than ever before!

What this country needs is encouragement and incentives to save money, to buy things with cash not credit, to invest money, and to be generous to those in need. Our current tax system punishes people for saving and investing by taxing their interest on savings and capital gains. Our income is taxed like it belongs to the government instead of to us. We need a new tax system that rewards people for doing the right things.

I've read about a better way of doing taxes called the Fair Tax. You should buy the book and read it too. It would be real stimulus and, in my opinion, would be real change that would encourage saving, investing, and would eliminate the dreaded income tax.

In the meantime hang on, because our government will again be sending us money that it doesn't have so that we can buy things made in foreign countries. Why don't they just send us a coupon for a new car from Ford, GM, or Chrysler? This might prop them up for a while!


Monday, February 2, 2009

He would be sixteen

He would be 16 years old tomorrow.  Except he's not.  He never took his first breath.  I would be taking him to get his drivers license. I would be worried about his safety, about him wrecking my car, about him driving too fast, about the music being to loud and distracting. Except I'm not.

It's amazing to think back about our excitement of his coming birth. We tried so long and hard to get pregnant. Spent thousands on infertility medicine, Dr's visits, and procedures. It took many attempts over 5 years and finally she was pregnant. On June 1, 1992 we got the news. I called my Dad and told him - we both wept in our happiness on the phone.

Thirty nine weeks later he was born.  But not like we dreamed. Vasa Previa took his life. We were shocked and very upset. In my anger, I punched a hole in the Dr's wall. Not a great response, but it was how I felt.

God sustained my wife and I through it all. He'll do it again, I'm sure. Now I look forward to seeing him in Heaven.

Brandon - I love you and miss you.

Dad.



 
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