Your weekly collection of positive tips, hints, and advice offered with humor, inspiration, and other goodies for anyone who is inclined to read. Guidance, mentoring, inspiration, English lessons, editing, proofreading services for entrepreneurs and online marketers.
Publisher: Mary Wilkey
Volume 9 — Issue 37 — December 15, 2009
Published every Tuesday
Greetings, one and all!
Two regular features, A Healthier You and the weekly English lesson, will return next issue. This is your last issue before Christmas, so I've included a few extra things that I hope you'll enjoy.
So I'll let you get right to reading, and I pray that you and your family have the best Christmas ever, remembering just whose birthday we're celebrating! God bless us and the U.S.A.!
--------------------------
In
Remembrance of
September 11, 2001
------------------------------------
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If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
—2 Chronicles 7:14
Contents:
Feature Article
Test Your Bible Knowledge
Today's Chuckle
Special for Christmas
Guest Article
Inspiration
Etcetera
Revealing quote ... think about it!
"My friends, we live in the greatest nation
in the history of the world. I hope you'll join with me as we try to change it."
—Barack Obama
Just in Case You Didn't Know
SNOPES—The biggest urban legend of them all
For the past few years snopes.com has positioned itself, or others have labeled it, as the "tell-all final word" on any comment, claim, and email. But for several years people tried to find out who exactly was behind snopes.com.
Only recently did Wikipedia get to the bottom of it—kinda makes you wonder what they were hiding. Well, finally we know. It is run by a husband and wife team—that's right, no big office of investigators and researchers, no team of lawyers. It's just a mom-and-pop operation that began as a hobby.
David and Barbara Mikkelson in the San Fernando Valley of California started the website about 13 years ago, and they have no formal background or experience in investigative research. After a few years, Snopes gained popularity, with many believing it to be unbiased and neutral, but over the past couple of years people started asking questions as to who was behind it and what were their motives?
The reason for the questions—or skepticisms—is a result of snopes.com claiming to have the bottom line facts to certain questions or issues when, in fact, they have been proven wrong. Also, there were criticisms that the Mikkelsons were not really investigating and getting to the "true" bottom of various issues.
A few months ago, when my State Farm agent, Bud Gregg in Mandeville, hoisted a political sign referencing Barack Obama and made a big splash across the Internet, "supposedly" the Mikkelsons claimed to have researched this issue before posting their findings on snopes.com. In their statement, they claimed that the corporate office of State Farm pressured Gregg into taking down the sign, when, in fact, nothing of the sort ever took place.
I personally contacted David Mikkelson (and he replied back to me), thinking he would want to get to the bottom of this, and I gave him Bud Gregg's contact phone numbers—and Bud was going to give him phone numbers to the big execs at State Farm in Illinois, who would have been willing to speak with him about it. He never called Bud.
In fact, I learned from Bud Gregg no one from snopes.com ever contacted anyone with State Farm. Yet, snopes.com issued a statement as the "final factual word" on the issue as if they had done all their homework and gotten to the bottom of things!
Then it has been learned the Mikkelsons are very Democratic (party) and extremely liberal. As we all now know from this presidential election, liberals have a purpose driven agenda to discredit anything that appears to be conservative. There has been much criticism lately over the Internet, with people pointing out the Mikkelsons' liberalism revealing itself in their website findings.
So, I say this now to everyone who goes to snopes.com to get what they think to be the bottom line facts ... proceed with caution. Take what it says at face value and nothing more. Use it only to lead you to their references, where you can link to and read the sources for yourself. Remember, you can always Google a subject and do the research yourself. It now seems apparent that that's all the Mikkelsons do.
After all, I can personally vouch from my own experience for their not fully looking into things. http://tinyurl.com/cm36g2
I have found this to be true also! Many videos of Obama I tried to verify on Snopes, and they said they were false... Then they gave their liberal slant! I have suspected some problems with Snopes for some time now, but I have only caught them in half-truths. If there is any subjectivity they do an immediate full left rudder.
Truthorfiction.com is a far a better source for verification, in my opinion. This couple (the Mikkelsons) are is in the tank for Obama. There are many things they have listed on their site as a hoax, and yet you can go to Youtube yourself and find the video of Obama actually saying these things. So you see, you cannot and should not ... trust snopes.com ever for anything that is remotely political! I don't even trust them to tell me if email chains are hoaxes anymore. So goes modern journalism. There are cropping up numerous sites and blogs that openly challenging Snopes's findings, opinions, and outright claims.
A few conservative speakers on Myspace told me about Snopes a few months ago, and I took it upon myself to do a little research to find out if it was true. Well, I found out for myself that it is true. Anyway, you might consider thinking twice before relying on snopes.com for fact checking and do your friends the courtesy of tipping them off to their political slant. Many people still think that snopes.com is neutral, and they can be trusted as factual. We need to make sure everyone is aware that that is a hoax in itself.
Knowledge is power, and knowledge shared is power multiplied.
—Bob Noyce
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Feature Article
The was in the best email I've received this year. [The week following this issue I found the very same article printed in "War Cry," the publication of The Salvation Army, where it was titled, "The Night Angels Came to the Big Wheel."]
In September 1960, I woke up one morning with six hungry babies and just 75 cents in my pocket.
Their father was gone.
The boys ranged from three months to seven years; their sister was two.
Their Dad had never been much more than a presence they feared.
Whenever they heard his tires crunch on the gravel driveway, they would scramble to hide under their beds.
He did manage to leave $15 a week to buy groceries.
Now that he had decided to leave, there would be no more beatings, but no food either.
If there was a welfare system in effect in southern Indiana at that time, I certainly knew nothing about it.
I scrubbed the kids until they looked brand new and then put on my best homemade dress, loaded them into the rusty old 51 Chevy and drove off to find a job.
The seven of us went to every factory, store and restaurant in our small town.
No luck.
The kids stayed crammed into the car and tried to be quiet while I tried to convince who ever would listen that I was willing to learn or do anything. I had to have a job.
Still no luck. The last place we went to, just a few miles out of town, was an old Root Beer Barrel drive-in that had been converted to a truck stop.
It was called the Big Wheel.
An old lady called Granny owned the place, and she peeked out of the window from time to time at all those kids.
She needed someone on the graveyard shift, eleven at night until seven in the morning.
She paid 65 cents an hour, and I could start that night.
I raced home and called the teenager down the street who baby-sat for people. I bargained with her to come and sleep on my sofa for a dollar a night. She could arrive with her pajamas on, and the kids would already be asleep. This seemed like a good arrangement to her, so we made a deal.
That night when the little ones and I knelt to say our prayers, we all thanked God for finding Mommy a job. And so I started at the Big Wheel.
When I got home in the mornings, I woke the baby-sitter up and sent her home with one dollar of my tip money—fully half of what I averaged every night.
As the weeks went by, heating bills added a strain to my meager wage.
The tires on the old Chevy had the consistency of penny balloons and began to leak. I had to fill them with air on the way to work and again every morning before I could go home.
One bleak fall morning, I dragged myself to the car to go home and found four tires in the back seat. New tires!
There was no note, no nothing, just those beautiful brand new tires.
Had angels taken up residence in Indiana? I wondered.
I made a deal with the local service station.
In exchange for his mounting the new tires, I would clean up his office. I remember it took me a lot longer to scrub his floor than it did for him to do the tires.
I was now working six nights instead of five, and it still wasn't enough.
Christmas was coming, and I knew there would be no money for toys for the kids. I found a can of red paint and started repairing and painting some old toys. Then I hid them in the basement so there would be something for Santa to deliver on Christmas morning.
Clothes were a worry, too. I was sewing patches on top of patches on the boys pants, and soon they would be too far gone to repair.
On Christmas Eve the usual customers were drinking coffee in the Big Wheel. There were the truckers, Les, Frank, and Jim, and a state trooper named Joe.
A few musicians were hanging around after a gig at the Legion and were dropping nickels in the pinball machine.
The regulars all just sat around and talked through the wee hours of the morning and then left to get home before the sun came up.
When it was time for me to go home at seven o'clock on Christmas morning, to my amazement, my old battered Chevy was filled full to the top with boxes of all shapes and sizes.
I quickly opened the driver's side door, crawled inside, and kneeled in the front facing the back seat.
Reaching back, I pulled off the lid of the top box.
Inside was whole case of little blue jeans, sizes 2-10!
I looked inside another box: It was full of shirts to go with the jeans.
Then I peeked inside some of the other boxes. There was candy and nuts and bananas and bags of groceries. There was an enormous ham for baking, and canned vegetables and potatoes.
There was pudding and Jell-O and cookies, pie filling, and flour. There was whole bag of laundry supplies and cleaning items.
And there were five toy trucks and one beautiful little doll.
As I drove back through empty streets as the sun slowly rose on the most amazing Christmas Day of my life, I was sobbing with gratitude.
And I will never forget the joy on the faces of my little ones that precious morning.
Yes, there were angels in Indiana that long-ago December. And they all hung out at the Big Wheel truck stop.
THE POWER OF PRAYER. I believe that God gives only three answers to prayer: "Yes!" — "Not yet" and — "I have something better in mind."
God still sits on the throne, and the devil is a liar.
You may be going through a tough time right now, but God is getting ready to bless you in a way that you cannot imagine.
Fill in the blank: " [Abimelech] called hastily unto the young man his armourbearer, and said unto him, Draw thy sword, and slay me, that men say not of me, A ______ slew him."
1 — slave
2 — Babylonian
3 — woman
4 — child
Scroll down for the answer.
How big is Wal-Mart?
This should boggle your mind. There's a very important message at the end ... don't miss it!
1 — Americans spend $36Mil at Wal-Mart every hour of every day.
2 — This works out to $20,928 profit every minute!
3 — Wal-Mart will sell more from January 1 to St. Patrick's Day (March 17th) than Target sells all year ...
4 — Wal-Mart is bigger than Home Depot + Kroger + Target + Sears + Costco + K-Mart combined.
5 — Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million people and is the largest private employer.
6 — Wal-Mart is the largest company in the history of the world.
7 — Wal-Mart now sells more food than Kroger & Safeway combined, and keep in mind they did this in only 15 years.
8 — During this same period, 31 Supermarket chains sought bankruptcy (including Winn-Dixie).
9 — Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other store in the world.
10 — Wal-Mart has approx 3,900 stores in the USA of which 1,906 are Super Centers; this is 1,000 more than it had 5 years ago.
11 — This year 7.2 billion different purchasing experiences will occur at a Wal-Mart store. (Earth's population is approximately 6.5 billion.)
12 — 90% of all Americans live within 15 miles of a Wal-Mart.
So ... why don't we just let Wal-Mart run the whole
darned Government?
"Personal relationships are the fertile soil
from which all advancement, all success, all achievement in real life grows."
—Ben Stein
Today's Chuckle
How do these people survive?
Recently, at McDonald's, I saw on the menu that you could have an order of 6, 9, or 12 Chicken McNuggets.
I asked for a half dozen nuggets.
"We don't have a half dozen nuggets," said the pretty young blonde teenager at the counter.
"You don't?" I replied.
"We only have six, nine, or twelve," was her reply.
"So I can't order a half dozen nuggets, but I can order six?"
"That's right."
So I shook my head and ordered six McNuggets.
(Unbelievable but, sadly, true ...)
I was checking out at the local Woolworth's with just a few items, and the lady behind me put her things on the belt close to mine. I picked up one of those dividers that they keep by the cash register and placed it between our things, so they wouldn't get mixed.
After the girl had scanned all of my items, she picked up the divider, looking it all over for the bar code, so she could scan it. Not finding the bar code, she said to me, "Do you know how much this is?"
I said to her "I've changed my mind; I don't think I'll buy that today."
She said okay, and I paid her for the things and left.
She had no clue as to what had just happened.
A woman at work was seen putting a credit card into her floppy drive and pulling it out very quickly. When I inquired as to what she was doing, she said she was shopping on the Internet, and they kept asking for a credit card number, so she was using the ATM "thingy." (Keep shuddering!)
I recently saw a distraught young lady weeping beside her car. "Do you need some help?" I asked.
She replied, "I knew I should have replaced the battery to this remote door unlocker. Now I can't get into my car. Do you think they (pointing to a distant convenience store) would have a battery to fit this?"
"Hmmm, I don't know. Do you have an alarm, too?" I asked.
"No, just this remote thingy," she answered, handing it and the car keys to me. As I took the key and manually unlocked the door, I replied, "Why don't you drive over there and check about the batteries. It's a long walk ..."
PLEASE just lie down before you hurt yourself!
Several years ago, we had an intern, who was none too swift. One day she was typing and turned to a secretary and said, "I'm almost out of typing paper. What do I do?"
"Just use paper from the photocopier," the secretary told her. With that, the intern took her last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier, and proceeded to make five "blank" copies.
Brunette, by the way!
A mother calls 911 very worried, asking the dispatcher if she needed to take her kid to the emergency room; the kid had eaten some ants. The dispatcher tells her to give the kid some Benadryl, and he should be fine. The mother says, "I just gave him some ant killer ..."
Dispatcher: "Rush him in to emergency!"
Life is tough. It's even tougher if you're stupid!
Sadly, it's incurable ...
A Soldier Died Today
He was getting old and paunchy
And his hair was falling fast,
And he sat around the Legion,
Telling stories of the past.
Of a war that he once fought in
And the deeds that he had done,
In his exploits with his buddies;
They were heroes, every one.
And 'tho sometimes to his neighbors
His tales became a joke,
All his buddies listened quietly
For they knew where of he spoke.
But we'll hear his tales no longer,
For ol' Bob has passed away,
And the world's a little poorer
For a Soldier died today.
He won't be mourned by many,
Just his children and his wife.
For he lived an ordinary,
Very quiet sort of life.
He held a job and raised a family,
Going quietly on his way;
And the world won't note his passing,
'Tho a Soldier died today.
When politicians leave this earth,
Their bodies lie in state,
While thousands note their passing,
And proclaim that they were great.
Papers tell of their life stories
From the time that they were young
But the passing of a Soldier
Goes unnoticed, and unsung.
Is the greatest contribution
To the welfare of our land,
Some jerk who breaks his promise
And cons his fellow man?
Or the ordinary fellow
Who in times of war and strife,
Goes off to serve his country
And offers up his life?
The politician's stipend
And the style in which he lives,
Are often disproportionate,
To the service that he gives.
While the ordinary Soldier,
Who offered up his all,
Is paid off with a medal
And perhaps a pension, small.
It's so easy to forget them,
For it is so many times
That our Bobs and Jims and Johnnys,
Went to battle, but we know,
It is not the politicians
With their compromise and ploys,
Who won for us the freedom
That our country now enjoys.
Should you find yourself in danger,
With your enemies at hand,
Would you really want some cop-out,
With his ever waffling stand?
Or would you want a Soldier—
His home, his country, his kin,
Just a common Soldier,
Who would fight until the end.
He was just a common Soldier,
And his ranks are growing thin,
But his presence should remind us
We may need his like again.
For when countries are in conflict,
We find the Soldier's part
Is to clean up all the troubles
That the politicians start.
If we cannot do him honor
While he's here to hear the praise,
Then at least let's give him homage
At the ending of his days.
Perhaps just a simple headline
In the paper that might say:
"OUR COUNTRY IS IN MOURNING.
A SOLDIER DIED TODAY."
Special for Christmas
[This from an unknown author]
There is one Christmas Carol that has always baffled me.
What in the world do leaping lords, French hens,
swimming swans, and especially the partridge who won't come out of the pear tree have to do with Christmas?
This week I found out.
From 1558 until 1829, Roman Catholics in England were not permitted to practice their faith openly. Someone during that era wrote this carol as a catechism song for young Catholics.
It has two levels of meaning: the surface meaning, plus a hidden meaning known only to members of their church. Each element in the carol has a code word for a religious reality which the children could remember.
—The partridge in a pear tree was Jesus The Christ.
—Two turtle doves were the Old and New Testaments.
—Three French hens stood for faith, hope and love.
—The four calling birds were the four gospels of Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John.
—The five golden rings recalled the Torah or Law, the
first five books of the Old Testament.
—The six geese a-laying stood for the six days of creation.
—The seven swans a-swimming represented the sevenfold gifts
of the Holy Spirit—Prophecy, Serving, Teaching, Exhortation,
Contribution, Leadership, and Mercy.
—The eight maids a-milking were the eight beatitudes.
—The nine ladies dancing, were the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit— Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self Control.
—The ten lords a-leaping were the ten commandments.
—The eleven pipers piping stood for the eleven faithful disciples.
—The twelve drummers drumming symbolized the twelve points
of belief in the Apostles' Creed.
So there is your history for today. This knowledge was shared with me, and I found it interesting and enlightening, and now we all know how that strange song became a Christmas Carol.
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Guest Article
Who is Obama, and What is Islam?
From Audacity of Hope: "I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction."
—Barack Obama
What is Islam?
Islam is not a religion, nor is it a cult. In its fullest form, it is a complete, total, 100% system of life.
Islam has religious, legal, political, economic, social, and military components. The religious component is a beard
for all of the other components. Islamization begins when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their religious privileges.
When politically correct, tolerant, and culturally diverse societies agree to Muslim demands for their religious privileges, some of the other components tend to creep in as well.
Here's how it works.
As long as the Muslim population remains around or under 2% in any given country, they will, for the most part, be regarded as a peace-loving minority, and not as a threat to other citizens. This is the case in:
United States — Muslim 0.6%
Australia — Muslim 1.5%
Canada — Muslim 1.9%
China — Muslim 1.8%
Italy — Muslim 1.5%
Norway — Muslim 1.8%
At 2% to 5%, they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups, often with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs.
This is happening in:
Denmark — Muslim 2%
Germany — Muslim 3.7%
United Kingdom — Muslim 2.7%
Spain — Muslim 4%
Thailand — Muslim 4.6%
From 5% on, they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population. For example, they will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims.
They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature halal on their shelves—along with threats for failure to comply.
This is occurring in:
France — Muslim 8%
Philippines — Muslim 5%
Sweden — Muslim 5%
Switzerland — Muslim 4.3%
The Netherlands — Muslim 5.5%
Trinidad & Tobago — Muslim 5.8%.
Unfortunately, peace is never achieved, as in these 100% states, the most radical Muslims intimidate and spew hatred, and satisfy their blood lust by killing less radical Muslims, for a variety of reasons.
"Before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; the tribe against the world, and all of us against the infidel."
—Leon Uris, "The Haj"
It is important to understand that in some countries, with well under 100% Muslim populations, such as France, the minority Muslim populations live in ghettos, within which they are 100% Muslim, and within which they live by Sharia Law. The national police do not even enter these ghettos. There are no national courts nor schools nor non-Muslim religious facilities. In such situations, Muslims do not integrate into the community at large.
The children attend madrasses. They learn only the Koran. To even associate with an infidel is a crime punishable with death. Therefore, in some areas of certain nations, Muslim Imams and extremists exercise more power than the national average would indicate.
Today's 1.5 billion Muslims make up 22% of the world's population. But their birth rates dwarf the birth rates of Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and Jews, and all other believers. Muslims will exceed 50% of the world's population by the end of this century.
Adapted from Dr. Peter Hammond's book:
"Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat"
A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he knows something.
—Wilson Mizner
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Answer to Bible trivia:
3 — woman
See Judges 9:54
Inspiration
A Word of Advice
If you choose to work, you will succeed;
if you don't, you will fail.
If you neglect your work, you will dislike it;
if you do it well, you will enjoy it.
If you join little cliques, you will be self satisfied;
if you make friends widely, you will be interesting.
If you like to gossip, you will be slandered;
if you mind your own business, you will be liked.
If you act like a boor, you will be despised;
if you act like a human being, you will be respected.
If you spurn wisdom, wise people will spurn you;
if you seek wisdom, they will seek you.
If you adopt a pose of boredom, you will be a bore;
if you show vitality, you will be alive.
If you spend your free time playing bridge,
you will be a good bridge player;
If you spend it in reading, discussing, and
thinking of things that matter, you will
be an educated person.
"Note: We are not liable for the use of any contributed information contained herein. We also claim no responsibility for the legality or accuracy of advertisements or articles submitted and reprinted by permission. It is the contributor's and/or advertiser's responsibility to abide by all pertinent jurisdictional laws and regulations pertaining to that person's business."
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