A Layman's Look

Imagine with me, if you will, a non-railed causeway that is just  wide enough for two cars to pass. Now imagine that you are driving a car on that causeway when you look up and see another car coming at you.  You need to get to the other side.  They need to get to the other side.  It seems scary and dangerous to move over.  There's no railing, and a precipitous drop into the water awaits if you go too far.  As I see it, there are five options: 1) Back up until you get to the start of the causeway so that the other car can get past you and out of your way. 2) Force the other driver to back up until you can get past him. 3) Sit there bumper to bumper and don't go anywhere. 4) Try to shove the other car off the causeway. 5) Carefully move to the side while the other driver does the same in order to provide space for both cars to get where they're going. Options 1 and 2 put one of the drivers in the position that they might encounter the same situatio...

So I've been trying for a while to get my mind around what the main problem is for the Democratic party going forward.  There are many problems, of course, including but not limited to a weak message, apparent inability to find the right candidates, and lack of authenticity in their efforts to fight the Republicans on the R's terms rather than on their own.  I have finally come to a point where I've been able to boil it down to something that is easily communicated. The Dems have a distribution problem. Having just released a CD I now realize just how important distribution is.  If the CDs aren't out there and available, if the message isn't spread, the interest will not be there to want to purchase them.  The Democrats have the opportunity to spread the word about their message through the media.  They have a product they want to sell, and they have buyers for the product.  The distribution problem is not one of product or of buyers.  The problem ...

I was flying recently and as we were banking during the initial ascent I was able to look out of the window at the city with its skyscraper-abundant skyline getting further and further away.  Suddenly a suburb came into view and I noticed that the tallest structure was unmistakably a church steeple and was reminded of something I read years ago.  I don't remember who wrote it, but the gist of it went something like this: The Gospel of Matthew tells us "where your treasure is, there will your heart be, also."  For centuries before the Industrial Revolution, the largest building in any city or town would have most likely been the church.  It was the central meeting place.  The citizens came together and gave their money to build large, beautiful churches, edifices to stand as a testament to the importance of that faith in their lives.  The people might not have had much, but they spent their treasure to build those churches because it was so important to th...

I just wrote this letter to Rachel Maddow. Hi Rachel, and her team, (Disclaimer: I wanted to write something shorter and more to the point, but this wound up being shaped in my mind like one of your A-blocks, with a somewhat-random-and-seemingly-out-of-the-blue starting point that comes around to underscore the point that is being crafted for the end just before the break.  Please understand that as you start this.) While I love to laugh and know the value of laughter to help us through tough times, I have been frustrated on occasion with the laughter that happens on any number of news shows when describing our illustrious President's behavior.  Don't get me wrong, I understand that things are so bizarre for normal, rational people that it seems uncomfortable and inconceivable that someone would act the way he acts, and so we laugh.  However, it is my opinion and belief that serious times and serious actions call for serious people and serious responses.  ...

Here's just my thoughts about the exchange rate for the currency pair.  It seems to me that the low around 1.057 was a failed fifth wave after a long sideways trend.  From the 1.057 mark, I think we're headed up over a long, multi-year trend.  The question is, "What is about to happen from 1.117?" I think there are two options.  Option one is that 1.057-1.099 was the first leg and we're in the third leg now, which would mean moving upwards towards 1.15.  The other possibility, and what I fear is the probable scenario is the move from 1.057 to 1.124 is wave one and we're now in a correction for wave two that will bring us back down to around 1.08.  That would also fit nicely into the gap of the close of 4/21 and the open on 4/24.  We'll see, but I think that's where we're headed next.  After that, it would be off towards 1.18 or higher. Only time will tell.

I just saw a beautiful image of the Lincoln Monument at night.  It is so majestic, and such a wonderful monument to a fallen leader who held this country together by sheer will during the Civil War.  It got me to thinking if today's government would see fit to memorialize a fallen leader, military or civilian, in such a magnificent way.  Then I had to ask myself the question, "Do we have such monumental leaders today?  Where have they gone?" I realize leaders such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr. only come along once every several generations.  The question still lingers in my mind, though.  Do we have such monumental leaders in our midst today?  If they are, it seems to me that they are needed.  Will they step into the spotlight?  Can you, can I, provide a smaller version of that leadership in the corner of the world in which we find ourselves?

I got to sit for about an hour this morning and listen to the discussion between President Obama, Chancellor Angela Merkel, and two moderators in Berlin during the German Kirchentag (Church Day).  It was wonderful to hear them answer questions in such a thoughtful and deliberate way.  They touched on refugees, wealth disparity, separation of church and state, conflicts between different religious ideas, and much more. A statement by the Chancellor struck me in a particularly deep way.  She said, "My freedom is not unlimited.  It is, indeed, limited by the freedoms of the people around me." Think about that for a minute. We Americans love to talk about our freedoms and our rights.  These are wonderful things, and yet we forget that they are, indeed, limited.  We have a certain sense of privilege as a nation, and the trick for us, as I see it at this point, is to learn anew how to respect the freedoms and rights of those around us and to see the impact ...