An interesting article in the Atlantic on the status of many of those involved in Occupy Wall Street.  We aren’t talking about truck drivers, nurses, or those working at McDonald’s, but about those in the lower part of the upper middle class who suddenly bumped up against a glass ceiling, and have chosen to blame Wall Street bankers over the entire fiasco.  Never mind that these same people went ahead and bought houses they could not afford, or that went to Ivy League schools on student loans that their not-for-profit dream jobs could not pay back.

Remember hearing about the day (“way back when”) when our parents had to start at the bottom and work their way up?  They rented for years until they could afford a good down payment on a modest house they could afford?  They sent their kids to state college, because they couldn’t afford Ivy League?

Anyway, here is a realist among the liberals who does not share the frustration of the OWS crowd, because she pulled herself up with her own bootstraps.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/10/the-rage-of-the-almost-elite/247638/

While all of America has a reason to be upset with the big banks and Congress for destroying our economy, do you think it reasonable that the people described in the article should be the ones on the front lines demanding their student loans be paid off?

So much to write about, that I put Lesson 43 into two blog posts.  Lots of good stuff, including the Testament/Assumption of Moses, the Book of Enoch, and other wonderful insights, if I do say so myself!

First and Second Peter

Blog Post on Jude

Read there / Comment here!

Time Magazine listed this year’s Top Ten Topical costumes for Halloween.

Here are the Top Five:

1. Pregnant Beyonce
2. GOP Presidential candidates (Pick one, or all!)
3. Muammar Gaddafi
4. Kate Middleton
5. Rebecca Black (who?)

And Number Six on the Top Ten Topical Costumes for 2011 is:

Dress like a Mormon Missionary!

And to think I already have that costume in my closet!!!!!

970496

On another blog (BCC) a recent post suggested a method for having more Christ centered testimony meetings.

I would recommend another possible method that can be used for all Sacrament meetings:

Those sitting in the front row are given small signs with the numbers 1-10 on them. Those on the front row will then rate the testimony or talk, changing their numbers up/down as the testimony or talk continues.  Since the raters are on the front row, only those on the stand will be able to see if a person is receiving good scores or not, preventing any undue embarrassment.  This will strongly encourage members to step up the quality of their discourses.

A second benefit to this idea is that members will begin coming early and clamoring to get to the front pew first, versus the current action of arriving late and taking the back seat.

Any other methods you would like to see implemented to improve the quality of Church meetings?

While it always seems good to see the death of a tyrant, it does bring up some questions for me:

1. Do we really have the right to enter into another nation and topple its leaders without a clear US need to do so?

2. Why do we choose to topple a tyrant like Qaddafi, and not topple tyrants in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Yemen, Pakistan, Venezuela, Bolivia, etc?

3. Who is to decide which nation’s leader is a tyrant or not?

4. If we break a nation, must we really have to fix it?  And if so, then why are we leaving Afghanistan while it is still broken?

5. Is it okay for a president to send in troops or engage in combat activities for longer than 90 days without Congress’ specific approval? (when does “days, not weeks” turn into months or years?)

6. Do we get involved in pushing the winners to choose someone to our own liking?  Or do we allow them to develop their own government, risking them developing a radical government, or a corrupt one (like Hamid Karzai’s Afghan government)?

7. Should we be spending billions of dollars on foreign wars when our own nation is drowning in trillions of dollars of debt?

8. Do you feel Barack Obama has earned his Nobel Prize for Peace? (I would ask about Bush, but they never offered him one)