RUMINATIONS OF A REVEREND

Here are the facts about the AIG bonuses as I have been able to ascertain. AIG received over $170 billion of federal bailout money to stay solvent. The company used $165 million (now their saying $218 million) to fulfill contractual bonuses to over 400 employees ranging from $1000 to $6.4 million per individual. The Stimulus Bill passed earlier this year included an exemption crafted by Chris Dodd and the Treasury department to permit the bailout money to be used for such bonuses. News outlets have had plenty to talk about since the bonuses were revealed. The bonuses have incited public outrage. And finally, most Americans don’t even know what AIG stands for. OK, I can’t actually substantiate this last fact, but I have a feeling its true. Public outrage has in fact turned quite ugly. One person e-mailed the company stating, "All the executives and their families should be executed with piano wire — my greatest hope." Another person suggested publishing the names of those ...

I rarely remember my dreams and most of the time my dreams are not worth remembering much less blogging about. However, a few nights ago I had a dream that I want to put in print to remember. I probably want to do this more for my own sake than any other reason, but perhaps it may encourage someone else in the process. In my dream, I was driving on a highway into a metro area and about to cross a large suspension bridge. I looked up into the sky and noticed some odd features in the clouds. I saw some circle shapes that I can't really describe, I just know they were there. Then I noticed indentations in a number of clouds. There was only one indentation in each cumulus cloud and they were different sizes, but each one was perfectly symmetrical. It was like someone took a ball and pushed it into the cloud leaving a perfect indentation. Some indentations seemed to have a ring indentation around the bowl shape. Others were just the bowl shape. I believe I had just finished preaching a ...

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." President John Adams spoke those words to America's military on October 11, 1798, fifteen years after the American Revolution officially ended. During the infancy of our nation and in the midst of a military expansion Adams expressed a prophetic concern about the nation he helped form. What perspectives solicited such comments from one of our founding fathers? I don't claim expertise in American History or the life of John Adams, but I will venture a hypothesis regarding Adam's perspective. The founders of our nation established a limited form of government in contrast to the British monarchy from which th...