Ale for the Soul

TRUMP: Thank you, everybody. So great to be with you. Thank you.  Great to be back at CPAC. It's a place I have really... AUDIENCE MEMBER: We love you! TRUMP: I love this place. Love you people. So thank you -- thank you very much. First of all, I want to thank Matt Schlapp and his very, very incredible wife, and boss, Mercedes, who have been fantastic friends and supporters and so great. When I watch them on television defending me, nobody has a chance.  So I want to thank Matt and Mercedes.  And when Matt called and asked I said, "Absolutely I'll be there with you." I mean, the real reason I said it, I didn't want him to go against me cause that... that one you can't beat.  So I said absolutely.  And it really is an honor to be here. I wouldn't miss a chance to talk to my friends. These are my friends.  And we'll see you again next year and the year after that and I'll be doing this...I'll be doing this with CPAC whenever I can a...

Exactly seven years ago today, I became a resident of the City of Fort Worth.  Moving here out of a very toxic environment, I suppose the reason for the change was a fresh start of sorts.  Prior to officially coming here, I don't ever recall having set foot in Fort Worth, and I sure didn't know anyone.  In fact, once I moved in to the duplex I had rented, I couldn't tell you where I lived or where anything was beyond the front door.  Even though I needed a geographic change versus where I came from, the circumstances behind the move were less than desirable.  To be honest, I hated it here with a burning passion.  People sometimes ask if I like it here any more than previously, and I usually respond I have given up out of resignation of ever getting to leave.  To mentally and emotionally help me to accept this small town, I have to tell myself this time of residence is an exile.  This is at least until God's timing opens up the future and I learn w...

Peace and quiet!  Do they go hand-in-hand?  I don't believe they do, but one can lead to the other.  As I go about my day, I observe people around me always listening to music, talking on the phone, or engaging some sort of auditory medium.  Sometimes I wonder if these people can simply meditate for a few moments with nothing other than the thoughts floating around in their mind.  In observing people, I do occasionally listen, and I am shocked at the vain subjects of discussion.  Is it that people are talking to hear themselves speak?  My ears violated by meaningless chatter uttered by people who rather think they are on top of the intellectual food chain, so to speak.  Is there not more to this life than the selfish interest of the one who is seeking someone to talk to.  Notice I said talk to and not talk with .  There is a huge difference.  The lost art of conversation and listening is an entirely different subject matter, but so...

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,  The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,  The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,  While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;                           But O heart! heart! heart!                              O the bleeding drops of red,                                 Where on the deck my Captain lies,                       ...

The Mighty One, God, the  Lord ,      speaks and summons the earth      from the rising of the sun to where it sets.   From Zion,  perfect in beauty,      God shines forth.   Our God comes      and will not be silent; a fire devours  before him,      and around him a tempest  rages.   He summons the heavens above,      and the earth,  that he may judge his people:   “Gather to me this consecrated people,      who made a covenant  with me by sacrifice.”   And the heavens proclaim  his righteousness,      for he is a God of justice.   “Listen, my people, and I will speak;      I will testify  against you, Israel:      I am God, your God.   I bring no charges  against you concerning your sacrifices  ...

When I first saw this obscure holiday, I immediately thought of Uriah Heep in the Charles Dickens book David Copperfield .  In essence, Uriah tells David how hard it is to be humble.  Simply by saying this, the reader already knows Uriah is not humble; in fact, he is a self-serving twit who is full of himself using his superficial "humility" as an evil weapon.  On a more serious note, it is very difficult to acquire and maintain a sense of one's own size in this fallen, sinful world.  Every day, I am bombarded with messages about: how I deserve this and am worth that; life owes me a great career, two-car garage, and a nuclear family with 2.5 kids; no problems should exist in my family or obstacles bar the way of a successful career; and so on.  As a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, I realize I can do nothing apart from what is ordained by God's Will.  In fact, even what little I have to contribute to my relationship with God is given to me by Him, and tha...

**Russian exile Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in Washington, D.C., on June 30, delivered a dramatic warning to all the world - and to Americans in particular. The Nobel Prize winning author, in his first major public address since his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1974, stripped bare the crimes and excesses of the Communist masters in his native land. And he denounced the West for a "senseless process of endless concessions to aggressors" in the Kremlin. The text of the 90-minute address that follows is the translation approved by the author, reprinted with permission of the AFL-CIO, which invited him to speak.**       Most of those present here today are workers. Creative workers. And I myself, having spent many years of my life as a stone cutter, as a foundryman, as a manual worker, in the name of all who have shared this forced labor with me, like the two Gulag prisoners whom you just saw, and on behalf of those who are doing forced labor in our country, I can start m...