Around the world people are rediscovering the Solanum tuberosum, a starchy tuberous root vegetable that was first cultivated in Peru some 7,000 years ago, or so says Wikipedia. In the US we produce an average of about 450 million hundredweight (112 pounds) of potatoes each year. That's a bit more than one potato, two potato, three potato, or four. And you can expect that tonnage to increase in direct proportion to the decrease of dollars in peoples’ pockets. That's not all of the bad news; those dollars, wherever they're being kept, are being devalued.

America's renewed interest in this sugar-saturated vegetable is by choice--a choice they made at the polls. While it is true that sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity played a major role in the outcome of elections 2000 and 2004, their two siblings, fear and greed, made doubly sure that the white collar votes ended up in Big Oil's ballot box as well.

The man who sits in the Oval Office sits there as a merchant of fear. Fate laid honor and immortality at his doorstep on September 11, 2001; but unlike Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt, he stepped over it to go his own way and, to the everlasting shame of our nation, we applauded that decision.

"Pride precedes destruction, and before a fall arrogance of spirit prevails." Prov. 16:18. When a nation becomes arrogant, it will go through successive cycles of discipline, including economic destruction, loss of basic freedoms, military defeat, and the eventual destruction of the nation (gracebiblechurchbaytown.org).

The above Bible quote was provided solely to point out that pleading ignorance by those who elected and reelected our current president will provide them with the same protection an umbrella would in a hail storm.

Quoting the Bible, however, to make a point is a waste of time since there are contradictions above and below just about any verse one might choose to make a point; and more importantly, if people really believed in the God that is promoted in the holy book of their sect, their actions would parallel their beliefs. Most people do believe there is someone or something that is omnipotent, they just can't agree on who or what it is.

While scientists can make a good case for evolution, it leaves the human mind depressed. Where is the joy and optimism in knowing that this is it when nothing is going right? When you can’t see how it's going to get better anytime soon; and if it’s going to get better, it's entirely up to you to make it so? As strange as it might be for the sociopaths to comprehend, there are a multitude of people who need someone to thank when life is just too grand for words; otherwise, they too become depressed.

There can be no doubt that Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson were both right. Mr. Paine said, "It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive any thing more destructive to morality than this?" Mr. Jefferson added, "The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills." Nevertheless, both men realized that religion serves its purpose and both men used it expertly to promote their agendas.