Free-for-All Friday

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

"Accepting ourselves for who we are:  That' a necessary step in establishing healthy relationships with anyone else--wife or husband, brother or sister, parents or children."  D. Bruce Lockerbie, Men's Devotional Bible

RESOLUTIONS UPDATE

These updates may be tedious & self-serving, but I blog for my own pleasure. I'm just sayin'.

1. Write a 365-day devotion book. Done. I still haven't decided whether to try & have it published. It may be that I would have to have it self-published.
2. Average one road trip per month. So far we're on track, but ongoing social distancing may make this difficult to accomplish.
3. Add to our National Parks & bucket list. I've reported before that our Alaska trip in July has been cancelled. I've worked on Plan B, which would be a visit to National Parks in Colorado, Utah, & Nevada in October, but again, social distancing may make this difficult to achieve.
4. Lost at least 10 lbs. As of this morning I've lost 6 lbs. Working at home helps. When I'm at work, I'm tempted by the snacks in our break room; also tempted to go through a drive-thru for fast food.
5. Work out at least 3X per week. I've been doing physical therapy 3X per week, but I'm not sure this counts. I've also started walking just about every day.
6. No politics in my Mental Health MON blog. So far, so good, with the exception of one slip-up.
7. Receive a DNA report from Ancestry.com. I'm staring at the kit.
8. Cut back on coffee. I'm down to 2 cups/day. Again, working at home has helped. At work there is always a pot of coffee brewing.

ABORTION

"Abortion and medicine are opposing terms; not interchangeable ones. Medicine promotes the welfare of human beings and saves lives every day. Abortion destroys a life that, from the moment of conception, contains a unique set of DNA. Instead of being a disease to fight, the unborn child is a patient to protect. But here’s one thing that even the media can agree on: An unborn baby’s heart often begins beating before a mother even knows she’s pregnant. Abortion stops it."  Katie Yoder, Townhall, 4/30

RISKS

"This country -- like most -- was formed by risk: the risks of separating from what was then the most powerful empire on the planet; the risks of instituting a form of government and an economy that depended upon the virtue, decisions and self-interest of free people; the risks of carving a nation out of a wilderness and climate that could be brutal and deadly; the risks of accepting from all over the world people who had neither language nor culture nor history in common but who sought the opportunity to fashion their own lives; the risks of new inventions; the risks of taking the human impulse to explore beyond the planet.

"It isn't that our history is one of unvarnished success; many risks we have taken have failed -- most notably (though not exclusively) our inclinations to meddle in the complicated affairs of other nations. And some of our "successes" have come at great human cost, or with trade-offs we could not have foreseen at the time."  Laura Hollis, Townhall, 4/30

ELECTION 2020

"If presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden were forced to live by the standards he wants to set for college students accused of sexual misconduct, he would already have been presumed guilty, have been denied a genuine opportunity to refute the charges leveled against him by Tara Reade, and had his life ruined."  David Harsanyi, National Review Online, 5/1  I don't like double standards.

SCIENCE & THE CORONAVIRUS

"The invocation of science as the ultimate authority capable of settling questions of how we should govern ourselves is a persistent feature of modern Western life going back several centuries and has always been a mistake. It is especially so in this crisis, when so much is still unknown about the coronavirus and immensely complicated and consequential public-policy questions are in play."  Rich Lowry, NRO, 5/1

LOCKDOWN

"The final say, however, goes to the American people, perhaps ultimately as voters but more immediately as consumers. They may avoid restaurants if they're "more awkward, more expensive, and less fun," as The Atlantic's Derek Thompson predicts, but throng to churches and gyms, weighing risks against rewards. Sensible people will presumably factor in experts' and officials' recommendations. But in a self-governing republic, they're likely to come to their own conclusions."  Michael Barone, Townhall, 5/1  I'm not necessarily a skeptic. I honestly don't know what I believe.