Thanks for the Memories - wedding pictures delivered 27 years late
They're Here! - Shirley MacLaine claims Dennis Kucinich saw UFO
To Serve and Protect - cops stop man for too many air fresheners
On this day in history: October 24, 2002 - The Washington Sniper attacks come to an end when John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo are arrested. The pair chose victims at random, then shot at them with a sniper rifle. In three weeks, they killed ten people and critically injured three others before a suspicious trucker noticed the pair napping at a rest stop.
Born on this day in history: October 24, 1939 - Paula Gunn Allen (1939 - ____) poet, writer. Her Pueblo/Sioux background is expressed in her poetry collections that include "The Blind Lion," 1974 and "Skins and Bones," 1988.
Scripture of the Day:
Video of the Day: The Remo Four - Peter Gunn Theme
Here is a photograph of me in 1980. I am at poolside at my father's ranch. The chlorine in the pool has affected the color of my hair. Click to enlarge.
How Long Do We Have?
About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:
1. from bondage to spiritual faith;
2. from spiritual faith to great courage;
3. from courage to liberty;
4. from liberty to abundance;
5. from abundance to complacency;
6. from complacency to apathy;
7. from apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage.”
Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:
Number of States won by:
Gore: 19
Bush: 29
Square miles of land won by:
Gore: 580,000
Bush: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by:
Gore: 127 million
Bush: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by:
Gore: 13.2
Bush: 2.1
Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare..."
Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.
