In a recent entry (7 January), I expounded about getting our prayers answered in terms of our health and welfare. It got me thinking about stuff. Dangerous.

Is it wrong to pray for riches? If we do, will God give it to us?

My answers to those are no and yes. Prayers are never wrong. Interpretations and expectations may be, but the prayers themselves are not. Of course, if one prays for money and expects to awaken with a pile of gold at the foot of the bed, he will be sorely disappointed. If it is to shift the odds on the lottery, that is not the idea. But, we all have within us the ability to succeed. Pray for them to work. A lot of us do well, using the abilities God has given us. Through evolution and competition? Of course. How else? Evolution is one of God's greatest gifts (see 8 November and 10 September). And we have in our democratic civilization the system by which each individual's standard of living can skyrocket through his own will and ability. Another of God's wonderful gifts to us. Did our democratic civilization come to us through trial and error (Churchill said that democracy is horrible but we have tried everything else) and evolution? It surely did. That is part of life on earth which is a part of the universe which is proven (ala Stephen Hawking's proof) a gift of the Artisan.

So pray for wealth. God has already given you the response.

It would be nice to have financial wealth but I prayed for other things and got them.

Taxes. A couple of converging events. I finished mine for this year and Congress, the President, the Governor, and the General Assembly are all debating them at the same time.

In general, taxes are a bargain. When you consider what you get for your money, it is a good deal. And that is not just 'cause I am in the zero tax bracket. They were a good deal back before my Social Security days. We get our glorious nation and all it stands for, and that is not cheap. We have the structure from our town up to the whole government, security from our town police to the armed forces. We get our whole civilization!

Of course, some of my money goes for things that are not right. Things like crooks buying votes in West Virginia or Alaska. Subsidies for industries making record profits and also making huge donations to Congressmen. But, we are dealing with politicians, what can we expect. And the National Debt. That is beyond any shred of wisdom or morality. It would take a year of my income to pay my portion of it! I guess it is still a good deal but my confidence is waining as I write this.

Wish it was better managed, however. In the 22 January Newsweek, Robert J. Samuelson has a “package of proposals”. Things from gas tax to Social Security. Good reading. With a new leadership in Congress, maybe things will be better. The Democrats will be more honest and better economists than the Republicans? Wash my mouth out with soap!

Two years until the election! Do we need some control on when all of this starts and how much it costs? The candidate list is already crowded. That means how many millions of political ads are we going to see? And they have already started in the guise of campaign announcements. At least the news exposure is relatively inexpensive, if you can call Senator Clinton's carefully staged film clip inexpensive.

Hopefully, the initial candidates that sound the most honest and wise, Senator McCain and Governor Richardson, will continue to stay away from the negative advertising. As soon as MoveOn.org, the Clinton machine, and the other party groups get started, however, and they have to defend themselves, the whole attitude will undoubtedly change.

The Clinton machine has already started with their announcement that Barack Obama attended a “madrassa” in Indonesia. Of course, Senator Clinton's headquarters denied it but Insight insists that Clinton's hired killers started the story. She is a charicature of the “win at any cost”, “the end justifies the means” type of campaign that puts The Politician into The White House and Congress. I remember the phrase “the end justifies the means” being attributed to Hitler and the Holocaust.

Why can we not have a system that puts the most capable into office instead of the toughest and meanest, the most skilled actor and spin artist, the best liar.

A recent article in Newsweek (I am a few weeks behind with my reading) has an article by George Wills in which he relates the anecdote:

An insurgent in Iraq stopped a car at a roadblock. They checked his trunk and asked the driver “Why do you have a spare tire. You don't have trust in God?”

And another one I included before: A story from a television comentator. It concerned a frog and a scorpion on the banks of the Tigris River. The scorpion asks the frog for a ride across. Of course, the frog says “You will just sting me when we reach the other side.” The scorpion replies that he promises not to. So they start across. In the middle of the stream, the scorpion stings the frog and they both start to drown. The frog asks “Why?”. The scorpion replies, “Because this is the Middle East.”

There must be something in the water there that makes idiots out of sane men.

It also brings the thought, could that have happened here? We had a vicious civil war. But we also had some truly great men. President Lincoln “with charity toward all and malice toward none”. Grant and Sherman, Lee and Johnston who kept retribution and guerilla warfare to a minimum. The United States did not turn out to be a Bosnia, Ireland, Rwanda, Iraq. Thanks to these men, we are the great nation we are today.

But then, we were dealing with sane people. And President Bush is not Abraham Lincoln.

The story of the two boys, Shawn Hornbeck and Ben Ownby, kidnapped by Michael Devlin in Missouri, is in all of the news broadcasts these past few days. A couple of facts in all of it seemed to jump out at me.

The police were on the ball, following down leads. How many white pickups are there in the St. Louis area? They persisted and found the needle in the haystack.

Shawn and his parents never lost hope nor the will. He said that it was the knowledge that they were still actively searching for him despite the years that kept him going. They persisted and the outcome rewarded them. I wish I knew them better.

It made me remember a story that we were forced to learn when I was a Plebe at the Naval Academy many years ago (Class of '58). It is called “A Message to Garcia”. “The world cries out for such: he is needed, & needed badly- the man who can carry a message to Garcia.” See the whole article at: http://www.birdsnest.com/garcia.htm. Rowan persisted and did what was needed.

Hubbard's article was popular enough to spread all over the world to many types of enterprises. And it is over a hundred years old. The police and Shawn's parents must have read it, too. They persisted and did what was needed.