A teacher asked her 3rd grade class how many of them were Obama fans.. Not really knowing what a Obama fan was, but wanting to be liked by the teacher, all the kids raised their hands except for Little Johnny. The teacher asked Little Johnny why he decided to be different... again.. Little Johnny said, 'Because I'm not a Obama fan.'
The teacher said, 'Why aren't you an Obama fan?' Little Johnny said, 'Because I'm a Republican.' The teacher asked why was he a Republican.. Little Johnny answered, 'Well, my Mom's a Republican and my Dad's a Republican, so I'm a Republican.'
The teacher asks, 'If your Mom was a moron and your Dad was an idiot, what would that make you?'
With a big smile, Little Johnny replied, 'That would make me an Obama fan.'
I always liked Little Johnny
"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." –John Galt
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
The gift of music
I am very Musically inclined.. Not that I can sing or play an instrument. I have just, for some reason, assigned popular songs to periods, moments, or people in my life. I have a large CD collection and a large numbers of Itunes Downloads. Although I have downloaded several "Albums" and multiple "Singles" from I tunes I really still prefer having a physical CD in my hands or collection.
These songs I have mentally assigned to the aforementioned instances sometimes are deliberate, but many times they aren't. I am unsure if this is unique to me or if allot of people have a tendency to do it. What it has done is given my children an appreciation for music much broader than their peers. My 12 year old daughter knows who Buddy Holly is and mentioned him one day in Social Studies during a discussion of 50's music. All of my children know for instance that the song "The Day the Music Died" by Don McLean (they know the song and artist) is about the airplane crash that killed Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Richie Valens. In fact all of them hated the remake of the song by Madonna. My 16 year old daughter plays two musical instruments with skill. She came home one day excited to show me that she could play the Cello part to "Eleanor Rigby" by the Beatles.
Each of my children have at least one song that is "their" song, my Wife of course has multiple songs because we have been "together" for 31 years now (married for 25). When ever these songs play, I can remember vividly the first time I heard them or the instance they were 'assigned' in my mind.
Isn't music a wonderful gift...
These songs I have mentally assigned to the aforementioned instances sometimes are deliberate, but many times they aren't. I am unsure if this is unique to me or if allot of people have a tendency to do it. What it has done is given my children an appreciation for music much broader than their peers. My 12 year old daughter knows who Buddy Holly is and mentioned him one day in Social Studies during a discussion of 50's music. All of my children know for instance that the song "The Day the Music Died" by Don McLean (they know the song and artist) is about the airplane crash that killed Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Richie Valens. In fact all of them hated the remake of the song by Madonna. My 16 year old daughter plays two musical instruments with skill. She came home one day excited to show me that she could play the Cello part to "Eleanor Rigby" by the Beatles.
Each of my children have at least one song that is "their" song, my Wife of course has multiple songs because we have been "together" for 31 years now (married for 25). When ever these songs play, I can remember vividly the first time I heard them or the instance they were 'assigned' in my mind.
Isn't music a wonderful gift...
Borrowed from Rich Galen
I regularly get a "Internet Newsletter" entitled "Mullings" via email that I have on occaision shared with friends and family. It is written by Rich Galen, former Press Secretary to Newt Gingrich when Newt was Speaker of the House. This is his Thanksgiving Edition...
This is a rewrite of the Thanksgiving MULLINGS first published in 2002.
Please take a moment on Thanksgiving to say a Prayer of Thanks for those brave Americans in uniform, but also the civilians, who are serving in far off places, away from their families, protecting us, projecting America's values while we enjoy our Thanksgiving dinners safe from fear, and from want, and protecting our freedoms of worship and of speech.
In 2003, I wrote the Thanksgiving column from Camp Victory just outside of Baghdad. Please take a look back at the Iraq Travelogue by clicking here: "Good Morning Mesopotamia"
Rich
It was the day before Thanksgiving and I was giving the Mullmobile it's quarterly treat: A professional car wash. At Andy's Car Wash in Alexandria, you drop your car off, then go inside to pay. A woman and a little girl - about three-and-a-half - were paying ahead of me.
It was a cold day, so the little girl was bundled up in the way little girls are on a cold late-Autumn day.
Ignoring the advice of The Lad, ("Dad, just because you CAN talk to everybody in the world, doesn't mean you HAVE to talk to everybody in the world.") I asked the woman what little girl's name was.
"Destiny," she said, beaming. "She's my baby."
In the way of precocious little girls, Destiny asked me where my car was. I told her it was right behind her mom's.
Destiny looked up and me and asked me if my car was going to be a shiny as her mommy's.
I said I hoped so, and I asked her, in that patronizing way that grownups talk to children, how shiny her mommy's car was going to be.
She thought about this, staring off toward the seafood store across the street with that look of deep concentration little girls assume when contemplating great concepts. Then she looked back up at me and said, "Rainbow Shiny."
The magnificence of that phrase took my breath away.
The problem with looking at the world through middle-aged eyes is we can no longer see things as being "Rainbow shiny." Even on those rare occasions where we see things as beautiful as a rainbow, we know from long - and often harsh - experience that rainbows are, like fame and glory, fleeting.
But for Destiny, everything in her world is decorated with the brilliant hues and gentle shadings contained within the infinite colors of her world's rainbow. Her entire future is decorated with vivid thoughts and sparkly dreams.
On Thanksgiving, we should try - just for a few minutes - to look at our world though Destiny's eyes: Look at our world as being "Rainbow Shiny."
Even though we know it won't last, we should enjoy Thanksgiving for this one day while we look around the table eating the wonderfully familiar meal, telling the well-told stories, to the same precious people, remembering fondly, if sadly, any who may be missing from this year's gathering of friends and family.
As her mom was strapping her into her child seat, I caught Destiny's eye and pointed to her mom's clean car and, smiling and nodding, I blew her a kiss.
Destiny, in that way little girls do, hid her eyes and giggled.
This is another kiss to Destiny: Thank you for reminding a grown-up that if we look at our world with the simple trust of child we, too, can see it as "Rainbow Shiny."
That little girl is destiny's child. All children are.
Happy Thanksgiving.
This is a rewrite of the Thanksgiving MULLINGS first published in 2002.
Please take a moment on Thanksgiving to say a Prayer of Thanks for those brave Americans in uniform, but also the civilians, who are serving in far off places, away from their families, protecting us, projecting America's values while we enjoy our Thanksgiving dinners safe from fear, and from want, and protecting our freedoms of worship and of speech.
In 2003, I wrote the Thanksgiving column from Camp Victory just outside of Baghdad. Please take a look back at the Iraq Travelogue by clicking here: "Good Morning Mesopotamia"
Rich
Friday, November 20, 2009
The Best Sounds in the world
1. I love you Daddy/Mommy
2. Hello Handsome/Beautiful
3. Your Plane is now boarding
4. Your significant other saying "I Do"
5. The First cry of your child
6. The Sigh of a loved one whose head is on your shoulder
6. Cowboy boots on a wooden walkway
7. A high school band's drum corp, on a Friday night
8. Football Cleats on asphalt, on a Friday night
9. Crackling of wood in a fire
10. Wrapping paper on a Christmas Morning
11. Bacon Cooking
12. The chirping of birds through an open window on a Summer morning
13. The wind in the trees on a cool afternoon
14. Children playing outside on a summer afternoon
15. A baby's laughter
16. The sound of an infant sucking it's lip/finger
17. Your significant other's heartbeat in the middle of the night
18. the laughter of your children or spouse..
2. Hello Handsome/Beautiful
3. Your Plane is now boarding
4. Your significant other saying "I Do"
5. The First cry of your child
6. The Sigh of a loved one whose head is on your shoulder
6. Cowboy boots on a wooden walkway
7. A high school band's drum corp, on a Friday night
8. Football Cleats on asphalt, on a Friday night
9. Crackling of wood in a fire
10. Wrapping paper on a Christmas Morning
11. Bacon Cooking
12. The chirping of birds through an open window on a Summer morning
13. The wind in the trees on a cool afternoon
14. Children playing outside on a summer afternoon
15. A baby's laughter
16. The sound of an infant sucking it's lip/finger
17. Your significant other's heartbeat in the middle of the night
18. the laughter of your children or spouse..
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
The Ant and the Grasshopper
Originally by Jim Quinn. It is a window into our world..
OLD VERSION: The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!
MODERN VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.
CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a
video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.
CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a
video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.'
ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house
Where the news stations film the group singing, 'We shall overcome.'
Rev. Jeremiah Wright then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.'
ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house
Where the news stations film the group singing, 'We shall overcome.'
Rev. Jeremiah Wright then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.
Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with
Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back
of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back
of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ants food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ants food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident
and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders
who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2010.
and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders
who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2010.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Life Imitates Art
"On Barrack Obama and the Democrat Congress-- "Life Imitates art... Unfortunately lately it is imitating two of the most frightening books of the 20th century.. Atlas Shrugged and 1984"
This is one of my quotes... I didn't realize at the time how prescient I was.
If you are a "Boomer" or were born anytime in the 1960's. (I am considered to be at the tail end of the Baby Boomers I was born in '62) You will remember when television was much simpler. There were four basic kind of television shows. Detective/Police/Legal Dramas (Dragnet, Mannix, NYPD, Perry Mason), Sitcoms (Gilligans Island, Beverly Hill Billies), Doctor Dramas (Ben Casey, Dr. Kildare) and Westerns (Bonanza, Maverick, Gunsmoke, Wagontrain etc). One of the common themes of the Westerns on both TV and Motion Pictures was this scenario - Evil Big landowner trying to take over a geographic area, sometimes a valley. In order to
1. Sell the land to the coming rail rail road to make an obscene amount of money or
2. To keep the "Open Range" open for his Cattle so he can continue to make an obscene amount of money.
Now this Cattle/Land Baron used two methods to chase the poor small farmer/rancher off of their land,
1. Hire a group of thugs to harass them or
2. Get control of the local water source and shut off access of everyone down river/stream from the water.
OK you say... What has this got to do with anything other than you geezing? (reminiscing)
Well as I said in my quote, life is imitating art... The Central Valley of California accounts for 53% that states agricultural production, 13% of the US's agricultural production. As of yesterday, Gov. Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in the Valley.. Fires? Nope. Earthquake? Nope. Drought? Yes.. So, what has that got to do with anything? Well there have been many droughts in the Central Valley but this one is devastating. So devastating that the state of California has to purchase food to feed the Farmers in the Valley.. OK you say... And? Well the main reason this particular drought is so devastating is like in the Westerns I described someone has cut off access to the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. The Farmers may now only get 10% of the water they used to get. Who is this evil SOB? Where is John Wayne, Gary Cooper and Randolph Scott when you need them? Why hasn't the Media been castigating this SOB?
The evil SOB is....... The United States Federal Govt. The US Fish and Wildlife service specifically. Why would they do this? To protect the Delta Smelt, a small minnow like fish. Well at least you say, there isn't a group of thugs also... Nope, you would be incorrect, the Sierra Club and many Environmental groups are flooding the US Fish and Wildlife service with all types of "New" Endangered Species that need to be protected in some of our most fertile farming areas. At this rate, we will change from the worlds largest food exporter to a food importer.. Just like the farmers in the Central Valley of California.
This is one of my quotes... I didn't realize at the time how prescient I was.
If you are a "Boomer" or were born anytime in the 1960's. (I am considered to be at the tail end of the Baby Boomers I was born in '62) You will remember when television was much simpler. There were four basic kind of television shows. Detective/Police/Legal Dramas (Dragnet, Mannix, NYPD, Perry Mason), Sitcoms (Gilligans Island, Beverly Hill Billies), Doctor Dramas (Ben Casey, Dr. Kildare) and Westerns (Bonanza, Maverick, Gunsmoke, Wagontrain etc). One of the common themes of the Westerns on both TV and Motion Pictures was this scenario - Evil Big landowner trying to take over a geographic area, sometimes a valley. In order to
1. Sell the land to the coming rail rail road to make an obscene amount of money or
2. To keep the "Open Range" open for his Cattle so he can continue to make an obscene amount of money.
Now this Cattle/Land Baron used two methods to chase the poor small farmer/rancher off of their land,
1. Hire a group of thugs to harass them or
2. Get control of the local water source and shut off access of everyone down river/stream from the water.
OK you say... What has this got to do with anything other than you geezing? (reminiscing)
Well as I said in my quote, life is imitating art... The Central Valley of California accounts for 53% that states agricultural production, 13% of the US's agricultural production. As of yesterday, Gov. Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in the Valley.. Fires? Nope. Earthquake? Nope. Drought? Yes.. So, what has that got to do with anything? Well there have been many droughts in the Central Valley but this one is devastating. So devastating that the state of California has to purchase food to feed the Farmers in the Valley.. OK you say... And? Well the main reason this particular drought is so devastating is like in the Westerns I described someone has cut off access to the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. The Farmers may now only get 10% of the water they used to get. Who is this evil SOB? Where is John Wayne, Gary Cooper and Randolph Scott when you need them? Why hasn't the Media been castigating this SOB?
The evil SOB is....... The United States Federal Govt. The US Fish and Wildlife service specifically. Why would they do this? To protect the Delta Smelt, a small minnow like fish. Well at least you say, there isn't a group of thugs also... Nope, you would be incorrect, the Sierra Club and many Environmental groups are flooding the US Fish and Wildlife service with all types of "New" Endangered Species that need to be protected in some of our most fertile farming areas. At this rate, we will change from the worlds largest food exporter to a food importer.. Just like the farmers in the Central Valley of California.
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