The Wedding Day

This is the big wedding day. Jeff and Cyndi will be married tonight at 7:00. Then next weekend our son and his son, our grandson, will be here for a weekend visit. Our grandson, Jerod, is in the coast guard and this is his second leave. He spent his first leave with his mom and sister in Texas.

The following weekend, my good friend, Karan, and her fiance, Bob, will be married and a minister friend of his and I will perform that ceremony too. It will be held at our church with a dinner following the ceremony at the church. I must be beginning to be thought of as "Marrying Margie". This photo is of Bob and Karan.

But at least the pace has slackened. Next week is nice and quiet.

Wedding Rehearsal

I Went out to the campgrounds this morning where we are holding the wedding tomorrow evening and helped decorate for the Halloween party reception following the wedding. We worked until two thirds of the way through the afternoon then I came home and rested awhile before going back at 5:30 for the rehearsal. Bob got too cold. I hope he doesn't get sick over this.

Following the rehearsal we went to a local steak house for a wonderful steak rehearsal dinner. Bob and I were the first to leave. It is now 9:30 and Bob just went to bed. I will take my bath after doing this blog and join him. We may have a big day tomorrow if we do the rehearsal again. Certainly the party following the wedding will be a big deal. But the place looked wonderful when we finished decorating.

These are such neat kids. They are very loving and considerate of me too. They hoped the idea of a Halloween party following the wedding would not offend me. I told them it was Their wedding...not mine and they could have it the way they wanted it. They were very sweet about it.

This picture is of Cyndi with Jeff's daughter with her. The other picture is of the area where they will be married .

Is This true?

Here is some reading that is not manufactured by some political affiliate, so don’t think you’re going to read a sales pitch from some lying friend who was asked about a life-long friend of a friend who knew this person before they decided to try and run this country. This is not a letter from an Uncle who happened to know someone and went to church with somebody whose opinion is being passed around the internet like we are not smart enough to figure out the BS. This is just good common sense writing that we all need to think about.

EVERY CITIZEN NEEDS TO READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT WHAT THIS JOURNALIST HAS SCRIPTED IN THIS MESSAGE. READ IT AND THEN REALLY THINK ABOUT OUR CURRENT POLITICAL DEBACLE.

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 49 years.

545 PEOPLE
By Charlie Reese

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.

You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.

You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices--545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted--by present facts--of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.

If the Marines are in IRAQ, it's because they want them in IRAQ .

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.

There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.

They, and they alone, have the power.

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.

We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!

Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.

What you do with this article now that you have read it is up to you, though you appear to have several choices.

1. You can send this to everyone in your address book, and hope they do something about it.

2. You can agree to vote against everyone that is currently in office, knowing that the process will take several years.

3. You can decide to run for office yourself and agree to do the job properly.

4. Lastly, you can sit back and do nothing, or re-elect the current bunch.

Rainy Day Wednesday

Well, it started raining at 7:15 this morning and hasn't stopped yet and it's 1:45 now. I hope it won't rain for the wedding I'm doing Saturday or for the rehearsal on Friday evening. It's not supposed to.. but this is Kansas.

I went to Independence this morning to get my hair done and to meet my friend, Juanita, for breakfast. She is doing pretty well although she has lost 15 pounds.

When I got home I spent this rainy day catching up my scrapbook. I had twenty pictures from my class reunion to put in the book. That leaves me space for November and December before I finish up this year.

Also, I will have several more months of scrapbooking to do for my daughter and her new home. We stopped out there yesterday afternoon when we got home from Bartlesville and they had not done too much more. She will be sending me the 14th week's pictures this weekend.

Executive Bonuses

Out of our $700,000,000 bailout money for big business, there is 40 billion dollars set aside for bonus money for the executives that brought us to this point.

My question and evidently the unasked question in congress, is WHY? These men brought us to this point in history and have already reaped millions and millions of dollars in compensation and salary for bringing down the economy. What on earth is appropriate compensation?

For me, "appropriate" means they should receive no bonus money and massively reduced salaries for as long as the US government and us taxpayers have ownership. Why should taxpayers get the short end of the stick both coming and going? If that means these people move on, let it be. This discussion on executive compensation is underway in London and across Europe and Congress would be smart to coordinate efforts across borders. The only person in congress questioning the compensation issue is Dennis Kucinich. Why is that? We're not distant observers here any longer. We're now owners, so let's start acting like it.

Why I Have No Use for John McCain

I am a registered Republican who would have voted for John McCain in 2000 if he had received the nomination.I felt bad for him when Karl Rove set those callers on him the night before the primary election there telling voters he had had a black child with a prostitute. That was a lie and it was too late to refute it. But that was also before I did my homework.

John McCain was tortured in Vietnam. So we have to stop talking about his credibility. You can only ask Barack Obama questions about his credibility, and his patriotism, Bill Ayers, and whether Obama has a personal problem with the American flag.

John McCain came home from Vietnam to find that his wife, Carol, had been involved in a horrible auto accident that nearly cost her her life and her leg. They salvaged her leg with surgery that left it badly disfigured and with a bad limp. She also gained quite a bit of weight during her convalescence. At first John McCain said it didn't matter. He didn't look so good either at that time but that changed a few weeks later when he resumed the party life he had left behind when he went to Vietnam. Carol still loves him and says he just wasn't used to being in his forties. He agreed when he married the millionairess, Cindy, that he would take care of her needs for the rest of her life.

But don't ask John McCain anything about it because John McCain is a hero. (Actually, he caved and made videos confessing to war crimes). That makes him a POW but not necessarily a hero. Even though now we find out that our "hero" was still living with his wife when he started dating his mistress. It gets even better: McCain was still legally married to his first wife when he got a marriage license for his second wife. I guess adultery and bigamy aren't such a big deal anymore with "family values" leaders like Ohio's Phil Burress who are now supporting McCain. And in any case, they were youthful indiscretions - McCain was only in his 40s at the time. In political reinvention terms, that's practically puberty.

An examination of court documents tells a different story. McCain did not sue his wife for divorce until Feb. 19, 1980, and he wrote in his court petition that he and his wife, Carol, had "cohabited" until Jan. 7 of that year -- or for the first nine months of his relationship with Cindy Hensley.

Although McCain suggested in his autobiography that months passed between his divorce and remarriage, the divorce was granted April 2, 1980, and he wed Cindy Hensley in a private ceremony five weeks later. McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to his first wife.

In all seriousness,imagine if Barack Obama had two marriages at the same time. Imagine had Barack Obama lied about living with his first wife while having a mistress on the side. Imagine that all this happened while Obama had promised to speak out vocally about how gay people are a threat to marriage. We'd never hear the end of it from the Republicans and the media.

But John McCain gets a pass. He's a "hero".

Also, he's quick to brand Obama because of the Ayers affair but doesn't mention his own illegal alliance with Charles Keating in the 80's. Keating went to jail over the S & L scandal but John McCain only got a slap on the wrist. He's a "hero". However, his wife,Cindy, made a pile of money over that deal.

Quotes From The New York Times Article On McCain's Health

"If elected, Senator John McCain of Arizona, 72, the Republican nominee, would be the oldest man to be sworn in to a first term as president and the first cancer survivor to win the office. The scars on his puffy left cheek are cosmetic reminders of the extensive surgery he underwent in 2000 to remove a malignant melanoma.

Last May, his campaign and his doctors released nearly 1,200 pages of medical information, far more than the three other nominees. But the documents were released in a restricted way that leaves questions, even confusion, about his cancer.

A critical question concerns inconsistencies in medical opinions about the severity of his melanoma; if the classification of his melanoma is more severe, it would increase the statistical likelihood of death from a recurrence of the cancer. [...]

By not allowing reporters to interview him or his doctors extensively about his entire medical history, he has made it impossible to get a complete picture of his diagnoses and treatment."

Colin Powell

I was impressed that Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama today. I thought he was a little evasive about the reasoning behind his part in the Iraq war but maybe in some time to come he will be able to rectify that.

It is my understanding that the Bush administration used Colin Powell's good reputation to get their war going and then didn't even call him in for consultation after making him Secretary of State. He was "out of the loop" all together. It serves the Republicans right. Now they will see the damage their actions have caused as Obama has Powell on his side now.

From Koz:

Among the key points Powell made against McCain's campaign:

* On the Ayers smears: He thoroughly repudiated McCain's "Obama associates with terrorists" smear job.
* On the religion smears: He not only affirmed the fact that Barack Obama is Christian, but he also rejected the idea that it would be a problem if he weren't, defending religious freedom in passionate terms.
* On the "anti-American" smears: He even targeted Michele Bachmann's divisive rant claiming that there are "anti-American" Members of Congress
* On McCain's judgment and readiness: He destroyed the notion that McCain has either the judgment or policy acumen to serve as president, citing McCain's selection of Sarah Palin and his unsteady response to the economic crisis
* On Republican extremism: He slammed the GOP's rightward tilt, specifically noting that it would be unacceptable to nominate two more hard-right justices to the Supreme Court

Powell didn't just decimate the McCain campaign rationale, however. Powell also offered up an endorsement of Barack Obama in the strongest possible terms, saying that Obama would be an "exceptional president" and that he had the capacity to be "transformational."

Furthermore, The New York Times will break new ground on the health of the presidential candidates and their running mates in a major expose set to be published in Monday's print edition.

Lawrence Altman -- the veteran Times reporter, George Polk Award winner, and one of the few medical doctors working as a full-time journalist -- has spent weeks working with the campaigns and medical professionals on the piece, sources say.

Much of the speculation centers on new questions about the status of John McCain's cancer raised by the story. The Washington Post reported last week that a growing number of doctors believe that McCain's melanoma is "more advanced than his physicians concluded and that the chance of recurrence is consequently higher."

Watch this video: It'll scare you to death!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=243gXtXtEwc