So it's the last Snippets before the election. What can I say, except that I feel like a lamb being led to the slaughter...

Thomas Sowell, one of the finest minds in our country and a man who I wish would be our first black president, says today in a column entitled "Ego and Mouth,"

After the big gamble on subprime mortgages that led to the current financial crisis, is there going to be an even bigger gamble, by putting the fate of a nation in the hands of a man whose only qualifications are ego and mouth?

Barack Obama has the kind of cocksure confidence that can only be achieved by not achieving anything else.

Anyone who has actually had to take responsibility for consequences by running any kind of enterprise-- whether economic or academic, or even just managing a sports team-- is likely at some point to be chastened by either the setbacks brought on by his own mistakes or by seeing his successes followed by negative consequences that he never anticipated.

The kind of self-righteous self-confidence that has become Obama's trademark is usually found in sophomores in Ivy League colleges-- very bright and articulate students, utterly untempered by experience in real world.

Did you see the Swedish study this week that found that heart attacks decrease by 5% on the day after the fall time change? Unfortunately it works the other way in the spring, but it does give one food for thought...an extra hour of sleep per night might lessen the overall risk?

My math for the week: assuming a 35% increase in the cost of living, a $20,000 cost to move, Hawaii state income tax, and several thousand a year for flights to see the A team families, how big a salary increase would The Papa have to demand in order to accept a job in the Islands? Hmmmm.....

I brought half my Christmas card envelopes to start addressing them here in the hotel this week. Wanna take bets on whether or not I'll get them done?

Also up this week: more Christmas shopping and Thanksgiving meal planning.

My stay in Hawaii so far has brought a nice mix of seeing all the new and remembering the old. Last night we drove through two parts of the island that are virtually unchanged from what they were when we first came thirty years ago. We had dinner with some fine folks who live in a house on the north shore, built in 1906 in a little town in the middle of what had been the sugar cane fields. The island of Oahu has changed all around it, but its idyllic setting makes it easy to imagine the world in which it first stood.

I'm reasonably certain that one of the reasons God doesn't let me live here permanently is that I would turn into a papaya. Ahhh....

Going into this rather scary week, where by Wednesday the world is probably going to look very different, I will continue to remember these words:


~~A Mighty Fortress is Our God, Martin Luther, 1529

Please, go vote. And pray.

Please, read this.

And please, God, bless America.

Labels: Health, Political Observation