Numbering Our Days

12 So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

13 Return, O Lord, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants.

14 O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

15 Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil.

16 Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children.

17 And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.

Psalm 90:12-17 (KJV)

Columnist Charles Krauthammer, 68, will probably die of abdominal cancer. He’s a medical doctor

and has been a quadriplegic since having an accident during his first year in medical school.

Designer Kate Spade and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain committed suicide in the past week. I’ll let others talk about depression and the present state of their souls.

The deaths and impending death of these public figures has, naturally, provoked a great deal of sadness. But what it has magnified to me is how little time they and the rest of us have to accomplish whatever it is that God put us here to do.

I've been thinking of and talking to God about this for a number of months, ever since I discovered that an old boyfriend died last year of colon cancer. He was 57.

When we broke up, I was the bad guy.

I hadn’t seen him in many years, so after I read his public obituary which named his employer, I took a chance and wrote to them just to see if they would give me a sense of his work life. It was like hitting the jackpot. They sent me a very personal obit with much more info than the public one. These people loved him and are grieving very much for him.

My old love had retired from a very accomplished Cold War era USAF career and ended up as a math teacher and an accountant for an organization that helps teenagers and young adults get their GEDs. Some of his students were prisoners.

Like Krauthammer, he played the hand he was dealt and played it well. The two men made other people’s lives better and did it in less than seven decades using the personal gifts that God gave them.

I am in awe of this.

In Genesis, we read about Adam and his pre-flood descendants who lived hundreds of years, many close to 1000. We live 100 and change at best and what do we do with it? Even Spade and Bourdain used a portion of their very few years to bring a certain amount of enjoyment to others. That they became rich doing so is irrelevant, unless one remembers that the ability to get wealth is a blessing from God.

And so what are observers to take from this? It’s this: that each of us has some gift from God that we are to exercise to His purposes. It might not be a public purpose of which millions or even hundreds of people are aware. It might be a task known only to Him, but each of us “instinctively” knows what it is. We may have to plow through the circumstances of a broken body – or a broken heart – but the key word is through.

This is simple. And hard. But this is what I believe that God wants from each one of us.

UPDATE: Charles Krauthammer passed away on June 21.

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June's Bills (Pinned until Goal Reached; Scroll down for recent posts)

UPDATED: Thank you for keeping the hounds at bay!

UPDATED: 6/11/2018 at 9:00 AM PT -- $1300.  200 to go.

ORIGINAL: I'm a slow learner, too, in some areas.

As I've said before, I try not to get jealous of those who have their efforts -- have the thing that they love doing -- fully funded seemingly at the snap of a finger and have their cups running over to boot. Thousands and, sometimes, millions of dollars.

Psalm 37.

For me, this month is the same as every month: good, loyal readers and donors -- and falling short.

Usually when I do this, I ask for the minimum to keep me housed and to keep services from being discontinued. But I'm going to do something different this time: I'm going to ask for it all. So here it is.

Needed:

Rent: $238 (June)
Electric Bill: $150 (June)
Car Insurance: $80 (June)
Food and Coffee: $150 (for the rest of this month)
Phone Service (which I don't have): we'll see.

Minimum: $1,500. That's what I need. Thanks.

Every Tuesday and Saturday, I blog at the award-winning DaTechGuyBlog. Latest post: Starbucks Handles its Business … Poorly.

When you hit the Tip Jar, it helps pays for: A Roof Over My Head, Food, Gasoline, Car Insurance, the writing of My Next Book(s), and Utilities--especially Internet and COFFEE! Yes, coffee is a utility.

What Respect Means to Don Lemon

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*****
It’s amazing how many ways that we human beings find to usurp the position of God.

In response to the report that black unemployment is the lowest it has ever been since the metric began to be measured, CNN reporter Don Lemon said this:

There’s no question today’s job report is good news, including the news that we’re as closest we’ve ever been to full employment in the black community. But what’s full employment without full respect?

Of course, I’m reminded of the hit song by Aretha Franklin, but even she didn’t tell her man what R-E-S-P-E-C-T meant to her. He had to “find out” which makes me suspect that the goalposts got

John Cazale (1935-1978) as Fredo Corleone

moved often.

I’m also reminded of The Godfather, Part II in which the dumb-as-a-brick Fredo Corleone demands respect after his brother confronts him for his betrayal. (Did anyone else notice that, except for Michael, Vito Corleone's children were morons? It was just like King David and his children: all stupid except for Solomon.)

This is what Lemon gets wrong: he believes that the "black community" deserves (gah! I hate that word) respect from those outside the group just for existing.

God is the only one who is due respect for who and what He is, and for that alone.

Everyone else is due respect for who they are combined with 1) the things they do/have done, and/or 2) for some authority acquired by them from an external source.

No human being or group of human being is due respect for who they are and for that quality alone.

And, without getting into the specifics of the respect which Lemon thinks is due to the "black community," you can bet that there are some moving goalposts for that, as well. It's the perfect application of Leftist thought.

This is the essence of pride or, as I’ve coined it, Carcass Worship.

It’s insidious.

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Why I Was Hesitant to Blog About Obama When He Was President

As conservative activist Candace Owens is finding out right now, it’s a dangerous thing to provide personal information – even to a friend. Though I have been blogging for some time under the nom de guerre 'baldilocks,' I’ve never concealed my real name. But, even when I have revealed personal stuff, I took some comfort in the fact that each member of the American side of my family has a different last name than I do. Even considering that, I did ask Mom’s permission before posting this story.

It’s a matter I consider over and over again whenever I talk about personal matters – much more so than when I first started blogging. There’s a specific reason for this.

Yesterday, President Trump say that he would pardon conservative writer and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza. That made me happy and it made me think about the fact that I’m slightly acquainted with Dinesh because I was slated to appear in his documentary 2016: Obama’s America.


Why? Because I am a mirror image of a president.

I started this blog 2003. Then, in 2004, an Illinois state senator named Barack H. Obama gave the Democrat National Convention keynote address. I had never heard of him before that, so I did a little reading and discovered something amazing: his father was Kenyan – of the Luo tribe -- and his mother was American.

What was so amazing about that?

That is my exact same ethnic make-up and, before he came along, I had never met anyone else who had that same parentage. But that “coincidence” barely scratched the surface of those to follow.

• I was born in August of 1961.
• My biological father is Kenyan and of the Luo tribe; my mother is American.
• My parents met when both were attending the same American college.
• My parents divorced when I was very young; afterward, my father returned to Kenya.
• For half of my childhood, I was raised by older relatives of my mother.
• My mother suffered from ovarian cancer.
• My maternal grandmother died in 2008.
• One of my "half" sisters is nine years younger than I am. She is married to a man of a different race than she.
• I am left-handed.

Barack Obama and I have all these things in common.

And then there are all the disparities.

• I am a woman.
• I am a conservative.
• I was raised by my great-aunt and great-uncle in the first half of my childhood. President Obama was raised by his grandparents in the last half of his minor years.
• Barack Obama’s mother, and, therefore, his grandmother, were white. My maternal grandmother was “one-drop-rule” black. (In reality, Grandma had a white appearance, but both of her parents had some black ancestry.)
• My mother survived ovarian cancer; Former President Obama’s mother did not.
• My mother, biological father, and “step” father are all living; his have all passed away.

One might call some of these symmetric disparities.

And then there was the discovery that my biological father -- Philip Ochieng-- and Barack Obama Sr. had been friends. This was something that was all over the news in 2008 and, therefore, Dinesh flew to Kenya to interview my father for a segment in Obama’s America. And it’s the reason that Dinesh reached out to me and asked me to appear as well.

My part was filmed but ended up on the cutting room floor. Dinesh said that test audiences were confused about who I was.

Honestly? I was relieved.

Why? Because I knew that Barack Obama was perfectly capable of taking down anyone he or his handlers deemed threatening. I wasn’t worried about myself, but I do have a large family on two continents that I love.

The persecution and prosecution of Dinesh D’Souza confirmed my conclusion and there are several other examples of the former president’s vindictiveness, including his weaponization of the IRS against conservative not-for-profit groups

Many who knew about the Obama parallel suggested that I write a book about it, but I resisted that notion and I’m glad I did. I find the whole thing a tad boring now – it was hard enough to get motivated to compose this post. I’m over myself … mostly.

But Dinesh's impending pardon and the slow reveal that the Obama Administration probably okayed the spying operation on the Trump candidacy reminded me of my fear.

Besides, when he got elected, I figured that my job was done and that I had failed. But I also had this in mind:
 
“You’ll see.” (I'm old enough to remember being called racist -- against white people -- for surmising that, if Barack Obama became president, America wouldn't elect another black president for 100 years. Ah, the good old days!)

And we did see. We all saw what Barack Obama tried to do to this country and we are still seeing it.

Am I afraid now? No, but the new administration has little to do with my lack of fear.

I am much further along in my relationship with Christ and I have experienced things which I would have never thought I could handle without losing my mind, including the loss of nearly all material possessions and homelessness. I found out that the promises outlined in Psalm 91 are valid.

When one hangs his/her being out into the public anything can happen to your body, your personal belongings and your reputation. But if you ask for God's protection, your soul is unreachable and you have nothing to fear.

If there's anything for which I am grateful to Barack Obama, it's that. 
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My May 2018 Post Digest From Da Tech Guy Blog

Fundraiser still going.

Kanye Has Them Shaking in Their Boots-- Linked by Instapundit

And this is what makes long-time Trump supporter Kanye West different from the rest of us who refuse to toe the Democrat line. His hip-hop-composed platform was already built. All he had to do is climb up and begin to speak.

Special Needs Placard Not Needed

To liberals/leftists, black people are a crippled class that can never be made whole just as long as they can never be made not-black. What’s this notion called?

Dirty Windows

I would not want to see eyes like that looking back at me – especially not from my pillow or my mirror.

Starbucks Handles Its Business ... PoorlyWhen Your Enemy Tells You What He Will Do, Believe Him

Ms. Pelosi demonstrates a dim vestige of cunning, but we call all figure out what will happen if the Democrats regain the House, the Senate or both.

Inside the Gates: the Enemy

The CIA and all of the other intelligence agencies exist to Keep the Gates. Gathering them all under the DNI banner made that easier.

We Averted Our Eyes

I and many of my oldest and closest friends are also old enough to remember when open allegiance to communism was a huge disqualifier for any intelligence service position, much less DCI.

Good Candidate For Mercy

President Trump should commute this man’s sentence and, perhaps, keep him on a list of potential pardons.

CNN Sure Can Pick 'Em

We all know that this guy’s ideological forebears would have called the man a NAZI even if they did know that he was wearing the uniform of the US military. That’s what actually happened 48 years ago – and even 13 years ago.

Every Tuesday and Saturday, I blog at the award-winning DaTechGuyBlog. 

When you hit the Tip Jar, it helps pays for: A Roof Over My Head, Food, Gasoline, Car Insurance, the writing of My Next Book(s), and Utilities--especially Internet and COFFEE! Yes, coffee is a utility.