shoes_untied

In the sea of mindless posts I've seen on social media, I came across one that made a lot of sense. Basically, grocery stores that are closing earlier than usual to stock, clean, and sanitize should reserve the first hour of the day for senior citizens to shop while the store was in it's best state of cleanliness for the day. Ideally seniors would have someone help them with shopping but that is not always the reality.

I agree and I hope both incidents are being thoroughly investigated. When you have a country like North Korea that has nuclear capabilities but inferior to us, complacency is their best friend. If they can desensitize us to warnings, it increases the chance that we could be hesitant to respond and give their weapons time. Not good.

oops meant to reply to a different comment.

While I personally like Romney and voted for him for President, I hope they come up with someone about half his age to run. Romney is 70 and I think he also needs to retire. The problem I have with his age group is not that they don't have the wisdom or fortitude. On the contrary, I think the 70+ age has tremendous wisdom. The problem I have is that they don't seem to understand how to assess the world in the digital age where information travels at lightning speed and where the world is full of video capturing devices that can distribute every bad thing that happens onto social media to get played and shared over and over. They seem to think the world is coming apart at the seems when in fact things are not only improving but improving at a record pace. I think we need to get more young people active in politics because they have better filters for what is happening in the world. BTW, I am 55 so I'm not touting my own age group.

I agree with you that I would choose somebody that would be completely unknown and who probably wouldn't want the attention at all. I view it more as a notoriety contest than a popularity contest though. With Obama winning with only 17% of the vote and Trump taking second with 14%, it is not at all hard to believe that either would get that percentage of the vote, if for no other reason, they are easy to recall if someone asks that question. So, with only 31% of the vote going to those two, my guess is that most people are like us in that their heroes are less notable. I wonder what the result would be if you could just choose a generic "somebody I know of who is unknown but who is doing great things?" I think it would get more than 17%.

Thank you for posting this. Having met a few Navajo Christians over the years, it touched me and made spend a little time praying for them.

I think those are all good questions to ask, especially the one about honestly asking yourself if you reaction is tainted by political outlook. My observation is that women (I am not one so any females can correct me if I'm wrong) often gain strength from each other and in movements and I believe the #metoo movement has given courage to a lot of women to bring things up that they might not have in the past. There certainly can be a political aspect and I think the higher a person rises, the more public their statements are and the more likely it is to rub salt in the wounds of people who were victims thus prompting them to go public. I've been in management positions for too long to discard claims like this because I have had to interveen in situations where extremely pios talkers pulled stunts like this that were completely oposite of what the way they talked. Nothing surprises me anymore. In addition, we have a President who bragged about being able to walk through dressing rooms of beauty pageants and they had to let him because he was the owner so I can see how that could be an inspiration to other predators to not let their pasts keep them from public ambitions. As far as innocent until proven guilty is concerned, that is definitely applicable in a court of law but in everyday life you (especially if you are a parent) should feel free to use judgement that is not girded by that. I would never put my daughters in a situation where Roy Moore had power over them even though I didn't have the resources or information to prove him innocent. My two cents....

The fact that the week between Christmas and New Year is one of/if not the largest giving weeks of the year points to the fact that people have their eye on their upcoming tax filing when they make end of the year gifts. I am like you in that my faith and beliefs guide who I support but since I itemize deductions, as I review my giving at the end of the year, if I realize that my giving is down but my tax withholding has been the same, I start weighing whether I want to support a few more causes or pay more in taxes. If my standard deduction is doubled, that incentive is gone. At least it would be for me since we have minimal mortage interest being towards the end of our mortgage. There are other reasons as well such as realizing I've fallen behind on church pledge, holiday spritit, etc... but taxes play a big part in overal philanthropy.

I think another loser will be charities that depend on donations from middle class americans. Our country has a unique and long history of philanthropy but doubling the standard deduction will take away a key benefit of giving for the average person by effectively giving the benefit to everyone whether they contribute to charities or not.

This seems like a contradiction to his campaign Rhetoric where he claimed he would not play his cards like this in advance.

The audit results are real, they just were not findings under Dr. Carson's watch. The reason the findings are much larger than their annual budget is because the findings relate to assets not operational financial statements. HUD's assets are far larger than it's annual operation budget in the same way that often a person's home and other assets are worth far more than what their annual household budget is.

In a nutshell, the audit results were issued months before Trump took office and contained, a disclaimer by the auditors that HUD was not able to produced final consolidated financial statements for the years under audit. Subsequent to the original report, HUD provided those statements but the the overall audit findings still stood so they simply reissued the report in March 2017 with that disclaimer removed. The audit findings had nothing to do with Ben Carson - who is not even making the claim put forth here. https://www.hudoig.gov/reports-publications/audit-reports/fiscal-years-2016-and-2015-restated-us-department-of-housing-and Fake news by the daily wire.

Haha. Well our landscapers would go out of business during the winter if they couldn't double up as snow plow drivers.

For me the opinions of persons like yourself who live in border states hold quite a bit of value for me. It's easy for persons like me in northern states (I'm in Michigan) to be desensitized to boarder issues because, for me, my experience with Mexican immigrant communities where I live is that they are extremely hard working and do jobs that, frankly, many others won't do. But again, I don't experience the issue as up front and close as you do. For me, being opposed to the wall is about something more fundemental. I simply do not want to wall off the whole sourthern border of my country because what can be used to wall people out can also be used to wall people in. I am willing to accept some risk to ensure freedom. For me, it's not any different than second amendment advocates who are willing to accept some gun violence risk in defense of their second amendment rights and freedoms. It is a bit baffling to me to see people who proudly display bumper stickers that say "I love my country but fear my government" turn around and, in essence, say "Wall off the whole souther boarder so that 3/4 of our country is bound by either walls or ocean, sounds good to me!" Then when you combine that with having someone as President who I see as a bit of a lunatic while others are having second Sampson fantasies about him does not give me warm fuzzies. I agree with your comments about the debt (although I think you mean derivative market) but nobody is talking about the debt and I am hearing a lot about big spending (including the wall). My fear is that my kids don't even understand the danger our debt presents us because they have grown up with it. It is the single biggest threat to our freedom in my opinion. For the record. I did not cry during Old Yeller but I do get choked up sometimes at the end of It's a Wonderfull Life.

I understand where you are coming from in that you are tired of illegal immigrants getting the same level of credence as legal immigrants but the definition of an immigrant is simply someone who comes to a country to live permanently. You are adding a bunch of other characteristics that simply are not actually part of the definition. Even some who come legally never fully come heart and sole. My wife's grandmother who immigrated from Europe after WWII paid taxes, ran a business, raised to sons who were job creators but her heart sole and loyalty really never left her mother-land and she always resented her family dragging her over here. Illegal immigrant is an accurate description.

I don't think even Steve Bannon would necessarily disagree with this article. What newsheist (and I appreciate the honesty in their self naming) spins it to make it seem like they are being compared as whole people when they are mearly pointing out a similarity in philosophy which happens to be true. Both Reformed Christians and Muslims believe in pre-destination. Does pointing that one similarity out mean I'm saying that I'm claiming they are similar religions? Newsheist is playing with words to generate clicks.

Certainly you have a right to think this but to many of us the lazy and selfish cried "waa waa waa the government has forgotten us waa waa waa we can't compete in a global economy, waa waa waa we need someone to make it easier for us", and then when Trump came along and their guy got elected they stood behind him looking over his shoulder saying "hey snowflake". Good grief. Sorry but not buying responses that are based on the assumption that Trump is "God's choice."

The violence, while reprehensible, is people accepting Trump as President. Look at Trump's campaign. He encouraged violence, even offered to pay the legal bills of those who assaulted protesters. He is now living in the bed he made. I'm sure the Trump apologists will show up shortly to claim that he was misrepresented but it is pretty obvious to thinking humans what he started with his campaign. Having said that, most people who don't like Trump are indeed waiting out his candidacy. In the information age it is very easy to make isolated incidents seem like wholesale riots. It sells and generates clicks.

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” Merry Christmas all! Hope you all have a blessed Christmas wherever you are! We have packed our bags for a few days and left the enchanted mitten to visit our family in Ohio because, hey, who wouldn't want to spend the holidays in a swing state. SU

When I first saw this I thought: "here we go again" but good to see people admitting that martial law is not eminent. I don't know if the website that created this fake news is one of them but there have been a number of recent articles about all the pro Trump fake news sites that are being run by teens and college students in the Balkans. https://www.yahoo.com/news/macedonia-become-haven-pro-trump-233500678.html

Also, who wants to go bass fishing with me in the palace reflecting pond?

I have not seen this anywhere else which means we are the first to know. Don't spread word of this until we have landed the good jobs working for the monarchy.

You have a lot more experience with this board than I do so I will take your word for it.

I would hardly call fbi.gov liberal kool-aid. I posted this a couple days ago from the National Review which I doubt many would call liberal Kool-aid http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/427758/careful-panic-violent-crime-and-gun-crime-are-both-dropping-charles-c-w-cooke The fact is that even with an increase this year, you would need to go back to the first half of the seventies to find a time when violent crime was this low. Hillary is looking at this long term trend. Co-mingling the violent crime rate in the US with comparison's of violent crime in the US vs. other countries just creates empty argumentative noise as they are two completely separate things. Mismuffet, the reason it doesn't seem like it is down is because of the change in the speed and volume of how information spreads during the information age. Donald Trump is banking that his followers don't understand the difference. By the way. If you overlay a graph of the percentage of the overall population by year that is in the age group the commits violent crimes (teens - thirties) you will see that the curve follows very closely with the violent crime curve. Simply put, as the baby boomer generation passed into the age group that commits crimes, crime went up, and as they aged, violent crime declined. There are of course many things that impact crime rates but I think that is a big factor.

A while back I saw something on the life cycle of a special interest which basically showed how a special interest starts out with a core important cause and as it attains success is forced to pursue increasingly marginal new issues in order to justify it's existence to the point of where it's demands become unreasonable and instead eventually marking the end of the special interest. While I don't view the basic civil rights cause to be a "special interest" is the term has grown to include negative connotations but I do believe this shows signs of that life cycle. I recently hear an African American person speak to this very issue on college campuses and say that when you are part of the minority culture, sometimes you just need a break. While as a Christian I am sorry about that, I do think when it gets to that point the movement has to define what is the end we are trying to acheive as someone else has mentioned.