The best sermons are lived not preached

Thanks to John C.

1. Today, I interviewed my grandmother for part of a research paper I'm working on for my Psychology class. When I asked her to define success in her own words, she said, "Success is when you look back at your life and the memories make you smile."

2. Today, I asked my mentor - a very successful businessman in his 70's- what his top 3 tips are for success. He smiled and said, "Read something no one else is reading, think something no one else is thinking, and do something no one else is doing."

3. Today, after a 72-hour shift at the fire station, a woman ran up to me at the grocery store and gave me a hug. When I tensed up, she realized I didn't recognize her. She let go with tears of joy in her eyes and the most sincere smile and said, "On 9-11-2001, you carried me out of the World Trade Center."

4. Today, after I watched my dog get run over by a car, I sat on the side of the road holding him and crying. And just before he died, he licked the tears off my face.

5. Today at 7AM, I woke up feeling ill, but decided I needed the money, so I went into work. At 3PM I got laid off. On my drive home I got a flat tire. When I went into the trunk for the spare, it was flat too. A man in a BMW pulled over, gave me a ride, we chatted, and then he offered me a job. I start tomorrow.

6. Today, as my father, three brothers, and two sisters stood around my mother's hospital bed, my mother uttered her last coherent words before she died. She simply said, "I feel so loved right now. We should have gotten together like this more often."

7. Today, I kissed my dad on the forehead as he passed away in a small hospital bed. About 5 seconds after he passed, I realized it was the first time I had given him a kiss since I was a little boy.

8. Today, in the cutest voice, my 8-year-old daughter asked me to start recycling. I chuckled and asked, "Why?" She replied, "So you can help me save the planet." I chuckled again and asked, "And why do you want to save the planet?" Because that's where I keep all my stuff," she said.

9. Today, when I witnessed a 27-year-old breast cancer patient laughing hysterically at her 2-year-old daughter's antics, I suddenly realized that I need to stop complaining about my life and start celebrating it again.

10. Today, a boy in a wheelchair saw me desperately struggling on crutches with my broken leg and offered to carry my backpack and books for me. He helped me all the way across campus to my class and as he was leaving he said, "I hope you feel better soon."

11. Today, I was feeling down because the results of a biopsy came back malignant. When I got home, I opened an e-mail that said, "Thinking of you today. If you need me, I'm a phone call away." It was from a high school friend I hadn't seen in 10 years.

12. Today, I was traveling in Kenya and I met a refugee from Zimbabwe. He said he hadn't eaten anything in over 3 days and looked extremely skinny and unhealthy. Then my friend offered him the rest of the sandwich he was eating. The first thing the man said was, "We can share it."

The best sermons are lived, not preached

GREAT TRUTHS

By Terry Orr

(Sharing another email from Nancy – Thanks)

1. In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress. ~ John Adams

 

2. If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed. ~ Mark Twain

 

3. Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself. ~ Mark Twain

 

4. I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. ~Winston Churchill

 

5. A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. ~ George Bernard Shaw

 

6. A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. ~ G. Gordon Liddy

 

7. Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. ~James Bovard, Civil Libertarian (1994)

 

8. Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.     ~ Douglas Case, Classmate of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University.

 

9. Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. ~ P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian

10. Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. ~ Frederic Bastiat, French economist (1801-1850)

 

11. Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. 

If it keeps moving, regulate it.

And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

~Ronald Reagan (1986)

 

12. I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. ~ Will Rogers

 

13. If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free! ~ P. J. O'Rourke

 

14. In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other. ~Voltaire (1764)

 

15. Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you! ~ Pericles (430 B.C.)

 

16. No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.  ~ Mark Twain (1866)

 

17. Talk is cheap, except when Congress does it. ~ Anonymous

 

18. The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other. ~ Ronald Reagan

 

19. The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. ~ Winston Churchill

 

20. The only difference between a taxman and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. ~ Mark Twain

 

21. The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. ~ Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)

 

22. There is no distinctly Native American criminal class, save Congress. ~ Mark Twain

 

23. What this country needs are more unemployed politicians. ~Edward Langley, Artist (1928-1995)

 

24. A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.  ~ Thomas Jefferson

 

25. We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. ~ Aesop

 

FIVE BEST SENTENCES

 

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity, by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

 

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

 

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

 

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

 

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work, because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation!

 

Can you think of a reason for not sharing this?

Neither could I.

Ask a Sergeant Major

By Terry Orr

(Sharing email from Bruce – Thank you)

Leave it to a Sergeant Major to tell it like it is! That's why every visiting Flag officer to any unit will usually speak to the Sergeant Major and get his views on the unit, before talking to the ass kissers. It's the DUTY of every Sergeant Major to tell it like it is. Sergeants Major do NOT need to kiss any asses and cannot go any higher in rank. The Sergeant Major is the highest ranking enlisted man in any unit they serve.

Sergeants Major have ONLY one job: "To advise the Commander on ALL matters that pertain to THE ENLISTED PERSONNEL in the unit", and they will ALWAYS tell it like it is, for that very reason!

From the Podium:

J. D. Pendry, Retired Sergeant Major, Army

This retired Army Sergeant Major has his stuff together.

"Jimmy Carter, you are the father of the Islamic Nazi movement. You threw the Shah under the bus, welcomed the Ayatollah home, and then lacked the spine to confront the terrorists when they took our embassy and our people hostage. You're the "runner-in-chief."

"Bill Clinton, you played ring around the Lewinsky while the terrorists were at war with us. You got us into a fight with them in Somalia and then you ran from it. Your weak-willed responses to the USS Cole and the First Trade Center Bombing and Our Embassy Bombings emboldened the killers. Each time you failed to respond adequately, they grew bolder, until 9/11/2001".

"John Kerry, dishonesty is your most prominent attribute. You lied about American Soldiers in Vietnam...Your military service, like your life, is more fiction than fact. You've accused our military of terrorizing women and children in Iraq...You called Iraq the wrong war, wrong place, wrong time, with the same words you used to describe Vietnam. You're a fake! You want to run from Iraq and abandon the Iraqis to murderers just as you did to the Vietnamese. Iraq, like Vietnam, is another war that you were for, before you were against it."

"The late John Murtha, said our military was broken. He said we can't win militarily in Iraq. He accused United States Marines of cold-blooded murder without proof and said we should redeploy to Okinawa. Okinawa? And the Democrats called him their military expert! Maybe he suffered a traumatic brain injury while he was off building his war hero resume? He was a sad, pitiable, corrupt, and washed up old fool, not a true Marine. He wouldn't amount to a good pimple on a real Marine's ass, a phony and a disgrace".

“Dick Durbin, you accused our Soldiers at Guantanamo of being Nazis, tenders of Soviet style gulags and as bad as the regime of Pol Pot, who murdered two million of his own people after your party abandoned Southeast Asia to the Communists. Then you wanted to abandon the Iraqis to the same fate. History was not a good teacher for you, was it? Lord help us! See Dick run!"

"Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Carl Levine, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Russ Feingold, Pat Leahy, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, the Hollywood Leftist morons, et al, to name a few ad nauseam: Every time you stand in front of television cameras and broadcast to the Islamic Nazis that we went to war because our former President lied, that the war is wrong and our Soldiers are torturers, that we should leave Iraq, you give the Islamic butchers - the same ones that tortured and mutilated American Soldiers - cause to think that we'll run away again, and all they have to do is hang on a little longer. Now Obama wants to start his own war and half of you idiots support him! "American news media, the New York Times particularly: Each time you publish stories about national defense secrets and our intelligence gathering methods, you become one united with the sub-human pieces of camel dung that torture and mutilate the bodies of American Soldiers. You can't strike up the courage to publish cartoons, but you can help Al Qaeda destroy my country. Actually, you are more dangerous to us than Al Qaeda. Think about that each time you face Mecca to admire your Pulitzer."

"You are America 's 'AXIS OF IDIOTS.' Your Collective Stupidity will destroy us. Self-serving politics and terrorist-abetting news scoops are more important to you than our national security or the lives of innocent civilians and Soldiers. It bothers you that defending ourselves gets in the way of your elitist sport of politics and your ignorant editorializing. There is as much blood on your hands as is on the hands of murdering terrorists. Don't ever doubt that. Your frolics will only serve to extend this war as they extended Vietnam. If you want our Soldiers home as you claim, knock off the crap and try supporting your country ahead of supporting your silly political aims and aiding our enemies".

"Yes, I'm questioning your patriotism. Your loyalty ends with self. I'm also questioning why you're stealing air that decent Americans could be breathing. You don't deserve the protection of our men and women in uniform. You need to run away from this war, this country. Leave the war to the people who have the will to see it through and the country to people who are willing to defend it."

"Our country has two enemies: Those who want to destroy us from the outside and those who attempt it from within."

J. D. Pendry - Sergeant Major, Army, Retired

A very savvy man! He has nailed it down pretty well. Too bad it won't do any good. There won't be 1 in 10 that receive this who will forward it. Please prove me wrong!

According to http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/jdpendry.asp - he did write this.