Integrity, wherefore art though?

[Ray]

“If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies... It would be a sad situation if the wrapper were better than the meat wrapped inside it.”

Albert Einstein

I find myself in somewhat of a quandary and think I probably need some self-therapy and possibly a short sabbatical. I am getting more and more frustrated with people that seem to have lost reason and their ability to be sensitive to the needs of others.

Politicians have sold much of the public a bill of goods. They promise tax cuts, balanced budgets and jobs but leave out the specifics primarily because the math does not work. There is not enough money in the budgets of governments at any level to be able to cut without cutting or eliminating such things as education, police, fire, defense and almost all health and human services. The interest on our debts is at record lows and yet the debt service is staggering. We might as well be living in Alice’s Wonderland if we buy into the fantasies. And yet we seem to have become so self-centered that we buy into myths as being truths as long as we don’t have to do anything and then feel OK as we ignore reality.

I was a lifelong fairly conservative Republican but no one seems willing to make realistic plans while asking us to bite the bullet and share in the inevitable sacrifices that we keep shifting to our kids. I sometimes feel like giving up so now I am an independent searching for a home. History has proven that when a few of us are alright while most others are not it is not long before everyone suffers and yet many of us seem to think we are invincible and societies problems are not our responsibility.

I am sorry for the non-traditional harangue but a couple of events got to me yesterday and I need to choose, either drop out completely for a month or so or find a way to pick myself up and not let events take me down. Knowing myself I will probably be able to start anew this morning for I know if we all give up there is no hope.

I just wish more people would not accept someone else’s version of the facts and invest a little time on their own to objectively learn what are supportable truths. I guess part of the problem is that there is so much misinformation being promulgated these days that we can prove our version of the truth even though it is inaccurate. That way we are off the hook and are no longer required to think.

Oh and one last thing, name calling is not debate nor are manufactured claims of any use, and hate does not justify ones believing that integrity no longer matters. Now I am off to another day that I hope allows me to start to regain my belief in people.

~~~

If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.

EMILE ZOLA

~~~

We miss Bob Hope, but at least he left us his humor, here are a few of his one liners.

ON TURNING 70 "You still chase women, but only downhill".

ON TURNING 80 "That's the time of your life when even your birthday suit needs pressing."

ON TURNING 90 "You know you're getting old when the candles cost more than the cake."

ON TURNING 100 " I don't feel old. In .fact I don't feel anything until noon. Then it's time for my nap."

ON SAILORS "They spend the first six days of each week sowing their wild oats, then they go to church on Sunday and pray for crop failure."

ON HIS SIX BROTHERS "That's how I learned to dance.  Waiting for the bathroom."

ON HIS EARLY FAILURES "I would not have had anything to eat if it wasn't for the stuff the audience threw at me."

ON GOING TO HEAVEN "I've done benefits for ALL religions. I'd hate to blow the hereafter on a technicality."

~~~

He said: My wife and I divorced over religious differences.  She thought she was God and I didn't!

~~~

It had been snowing for hours when an announcement came over the intercom: "Will the students who are parked on University Drive please move their cars so that we may begin plowing."

Twenty minutes later there was another announcement: "Will the twelve hundred students who went to move twenty six cars return to class."

~~~

"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side."

Aristotle

~~~

An American history teacher, lecturing the class on the Puritans, asked: "What sort of people were punished in the stocks?"

To which a small voice from the back of the room responded: "The small investor."

~~~

Why do they lock gas station bathrooms? Are they afraid someone will clean them?

~~~

At a golf course, four men approached the sixteenth tee. The straight fairway ran along a road and bike path fenced off on the left. The first golfer teed off and hooked the ball in that direction. The ball went over the fence and bounced off the bike path onto the road, where it hit the tire of a moving bus and was knocked back on to the fairway. As they all stood in amazement, one man asked him, "How on earth did you do that?"

He shrugged his shoulders and said, "You have to know the bus schedule."

~~~

The remarkable thing about my mother is that for 30 years she served us nothing but leftovers.  The original meal has never been found.

~~~

Jill had applied for a job and when she returned home, her mother asked how the interview went. "Pretty good I think", replied Jill, "but if I go to work there I won't get a vacation unless I'm married.

Her mother of course, had never heard of such a thing and asked "Is that what they told you?

"No", replied Jill, "they didn't tell me that, but on the application it said "vacation time may not be taken until you've had your 'First Anniversary'"

~~~

Scrawled across the dorm wall were the words, "Question Everything!"

A couple of days later someone added one word... "Why?"

~~~

Willy had been misbehaving and was sent to his room. After a while he emerged and informed his mother that he had thought it over and then said a prayer.

"Fine", said the pleased mother. "If you ask God to help you not misbehave, He will help you."

"Oh, I didn't ask Him to help me not misbehave," said Willy, "I asked Him to help you put up with me."

~~~

The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.

Herbert Agar

~~~

Stay well, do good work, and have fun.

 

Ray Mitchell

Indianapolis, Indiana

Management is not responsible for duplicates from previous dailies. The editor is somewhat senile.

 

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