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Raining Cats and Dogs: Bob and Me
When Marie and I sat down in the doggie greeting room at the Portland Humane Society, a little light-brown mutt with short legs and a smile on his face trotted in and adopted us.
Bob the dog had been just a few days from being euthanized in a shelter in Fresno, California, when the Portland Humane Society, a no-kill shelter, told Fresno that it would take in a few of their dogs. Bob was in that lucky lot.
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Bill Maher has made a very successful career in show business with his particular brand of social commentary. He is viewed as an urbane intellectual with a cutting wit. He attempts to establish his dedication to independent thought with the title of his hit show, “Politically Incorrect,” but rarely deviates from modern leftist orthodoxy. Why, you wonder? If he’s as smart as he’s supposed to be (and I suspect he is), wouldn’t his comedy benefit from the occasional excursion into more controversial positions? Much of modern comedy is about making your audience vaguely uncomfortable and challenging their ways of thinking. Why doesn’t he do this to his mostly liberal audience? Why not occasionally challenge one of their assumptions? This is comedy, right? I’ll allow Mr. Maher himself to explain why he can’t do that.
Evidence is mounting that President Trump is sticking closer to his 2015 Second Amendment pledges. Pot-stirring accounts from the left and right point to President Trump settling back towards his campaign positions.
Scrolling through the scanned images from many years of 35mm manual camera photography, I ran across this image. It was one of my better shots from my first military assignment, in Bavaria, West Germany. But who was that young officer doing a standing backflip under the elevated barrel of a King Tiger tank? I had not spoken with him since I left Germany in the spring of 1990, and his name had faded from memory. A bit of poking around the internet answered that question and filled in a vague memory with surprising detail.
“We Americans are the peculiar chosen people—the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world. God has predestined, mankind expects, great things from our race, and great things we feel in our souls. The rest of the world must soon be in our rear. We are the pioneers of the world; the advance-guard, sent on through the wilderness of untried things, to break a new path in this New World that is ours.” — Herman Melville, from White Jacket
A German theme park owner has been forced to shut down his newest thrill ride. Somehow no one seemed to notice that, fully extended, the attraction forms two massive “flying swastikas.” The owner says the ride will be “redesigned.”
For Blaine Adamson, there’s no separating his beliefs from his work. His Christian faith is what guides and drives him. It’s what makes Blaine who he is at home, in his community, and in his business.
Perhaps we got it all wrong.