The old man sat in his gas station on a cold Christmas Eve. He hadn't been anywhere in years since his wife had passed away. He had no decorations, no tree, no lights. It was just another day to him. He didn't hate Christmas, just couldn't find a reason to celebrate. There were no children in his life. His wife had gone. He was sitting there looking at the snow that had been falling for the last hour and wondering what it was all about when the door opened and a homeless man stepped through. Instead of throwing the man out, George, Old George as he was known by his customers, told the man to come and sit by the space heater and warm up.
"Thank you, but I don't mean to intrude," said the stranger. "I see you're busy. I'll just go."
"Not without something hot in your belly," George turned and opened a wide mouth Thermos and handed it to the stranger. "It ain't much, but it's hot and tasty. Stew. Made it myself. When you're done there's coffee and it's fresh."
Just at that moment he heard the "ding" of the driveway bell. "Excuse me be right back," George said.
There in the driveway was an old 53 Chevy. Steam was rolling out of the front. The driver was panicked. "Mister, can you help me!" said the driver with a deep Spanish accent. "My wife is with child and my car is broken."
George opened the hood. It was bad. The block looked cracked from the cold; the car was dead. "You ain't going in this thing," George said as he turned away.
"But mister. please help...." The door of the office closed behind George as he went in. George went to the office wall and got the keys to his old truck, and went back outside. He walked around the building and opened the garage, started the truck and drove it around to where the couple was waiting. "Here, take my truck," he said. "She ain't the best thing you ever looked at, but she runs real good." George helped put the woman in the truck and watched as it sped off into the night. George turned and walked back inside the office. "Glad I gave 'em the truck. Their tires were shot too. That ol' truck has brand new........" George thought he was talking to the stranger, but the man had gone. The thermos was on the desk, empty with a used coffee cup beside it. "Well, at least he got something in his belly," George thought.
George went back outside to see if the old Chevy would start. It cranked slowly, but it started. He pulled it into the garage where the truck had been. He thought he would tinker with it for something to do. Christmas Eve meant no customers. He discovered the block hadn't cracked; it was just the bottom hose on the radiator. "Well, shoot, I can fix this," he said to himself. So he put a new one on. "Those tires ain't gonna get 'em through the winter either." He took the snow treads off of his wife's old Lincoln. They were like new and he wasn't going to drive the car.
As he was working he heard shots being fired. He ran outside and beside a police car an officer lay on the cold ground. Bleeding from the left shoulder, the officer moaned, "Help me." George helped the officer inside as he remembered the training he had received in the Army as a medic. He knew the wound needed attention. "Pressure to stop the bleeding," he thought. The uniform company had been there that morning and had left clean shop towels.
He used those and duct tape to bind the wound. "Hey, they say duct tape can fix anythin'," he said, trying to make the policeman feel at ease. "Something for pain," George thought. All he had was the pills he used for his back. "These ought to work." He put some water in a cup and gave the policeman the pills. "You hang in there. I'm going to get you an ambulance." The phone was dead. "Maybe I can get one of your buddies on that there talk box out in your car." He went out only to find that a bullet had gone into the dashboard destroying the two-way radio. He went back in to find the policeman sitting up.
"Thanks," said the officer. "You could have left me there. The guy that shot me is still in the area." George sat down beside him. "I would never leave an injured man in the Army and I ain't gonna leave you." George pulled back the bandage to check for bleeding. "Looks worse than what it is. Bullet passed right through 'ya. Good thing it missed the important stuff though. I think with time yer gonna be right as rain." George got up and poured a cup of coffee. "How do you take it?" he asked.
"None for me," said the officer. "Oh, yer gonna drink this. Best in the city. Too bad I ain't got no donuts."
The officer laughed and winced at the same time. The front door of the office flew open. In burst a young man with a gun. "Give me all your cash! Do it now!" the young man yelled. His hand was shaking and George could tell that he had never done anything like this before.
"That's the guy that shot me!" exclaimed the officer.
"Son, why are you doing this?" asked George. "You need to put the cannon away. Somebody else might get hurt."
The young man was confused. "Shut up old man, or I'll shoot you, too. Now give me the cash!" The cop was reaching for his gun. "Put that thing away," George said to the cop. "We got one too many in here now."
He turned his attention to the young man. "Son, it's Christmas Eve If you need the money, well then, here. It ain't much but it's all I got. Now put that pee shooter away." George pulled $150 out of his pocket and handed it to the young man, reaching for the barrel of the gun at the same time.
The young man released his grip on the gun, fell to his knees and began to cry. "I'm not very good at this am I? All I wanted was to buy something for my wife and son," he went on. "I've lost my job. My rent is due. My car got repossessed last week..."
George handed the gun to the cop. "Son, we all get in a bit of squeeze now and then. The road gets hard sometimes, but we make it through the best we can." He got the young man to his feet, and sat him down on a chair across from the cop. "Sometimes we do stupid things." George handed the young man a cup of coffee. "Being stupid is one of the things that makes us human. Comin' in here with a gun ain't the answer. Now sit there and get warm and we'll sort this thing out."
The young man had stopped crying. He looked over to the cop. "Sorry I shot you. It just went off. I'm sorry officer."
"Shut up and drink your coffee." the cop said. George could hear the sounds of sirens outside.
A police car and an ambulance skidded to a halt. Two cops came through the door, guns drawn. "Chuck! You ok?" one of the cops asked the wounded officer. "Not bad for a guy who took a bullet. How did you find me?" "GPS locator in the car. Best thing since sliced bread. Who did this?" the other cop asked as he approached the young man. Chuck answered him, "I don't know. The guy ran off into the dark. Just dropped his gun and ran."
George and the young man both looked puzzled at each other. "That guy work here?," the wounded cop continued. "Yep," George said. "Just hired him this morning. Boy lost his job." The paramedics came in and loaded Chuck onto the stretcher. The young man leaned over the wounded cop and whispered, "Why?"
Chuck just said, "Merry Christmas boy. And you too, George, and thanks for everything." "Well, looks like you got one doozy of a break there. That ought to solve some of your problems." George went into the back room and came out with a box. He pulled out a ring box. "Here you go. Something for the little woman. I don't think Martha would mind. She said it would come in handy some day." The young man looked inside to see the biggest diamond ring he ever saw. "I can't take this," said the young man. "It means something to you."
"And now it means something to you," replied George. "I got my memories. That's all I need."
George reached into the box again. An airplane, a car and a truck appeared next. They were toys that the oil company had left for him to sell. "Here's something for that little man of yours." The young man began to cry again as he handed back the $150 that the old man had handed him earlier. "And what are you supposed to buy Christmas dinner with? You keep that too," George said. "Now git home to your family."
The young man turned with tears streaming down his face. "I'll be here in the morning for work, if that job offer is still good."
"Nope. I'm closed Christmas day," George said. "See ya the day after."
George turned around to find that the stranger had returned. "Where'd you come from? I thought you left?" "I have been here. I have always been here," said the stranger. "You say you don't celebrate Christmas. Why?"
"Well, after my wife passed away I just couldn't see what all the bother was. Puttin' up a tree and all seemed a waste of a good pine tree. Bakin' cookies like I used to with Martha just wasn't the same by myself and besides I was getting a little chubby."
The stranger put his hand on George's shoulder. "But you do celebrate the holiday, George. You gave me food and drink and warmed me when I was cold and hungry. The woman with child will bear a son and he will become a great doctor. The policeman you helped will go on to save 19 people from being killed by terrorists. The young man who tried to rob you will make you a rich man and not take any for himself. That is the spirit of the season and you keep it as good as any man." George was taken aback by all this stranger had said.
"And how do you know all this?" asked the old man. "Trust me, George. I have the inside track on this sort of thing. And when your days are done you will be with Martha again." The stranger moved toward the door. "If you will excuse me, George, I have to go now. I have to go home where there is a big celebration planned."
George watched as the old leather jacket and the torn pants that the stranger was wearing turned into a white robe. A golden light began to fill the room. "You see, George... it's my birthday. Merry Christmas." George fell to his knees and replied, "Happy Birthday, Lord."
Monday, December 24, 2007
The Gas Station
A Green Light for Stupidity
WaPo reported Like countless other communities, this west German town lived for years with a miserable traffic problem. Each day, thousands of cars and big trucks barreled along the two-lane main street, forcing pedestrians and cyclists to scamper for their lives. The usual remedies -- from safety crossings to speed traps -- did no good. So the citizens of Bohmte decided to take a big risk. Since September, they've been tearing up the sidewalks, removing curbs and erasing street markers as part of a radical plan to abandon nearly all traffic regulations and force people to rely on common sense and courtesy instead.... The assumption is that drivers are accustomed to owning the road and rarely pay attention to speed limits or caution signs anyway. Removing traffic lights and erasing lane markers, the thinking goes, will cause drivers to get nervous and slow down. "Generally speaking, what we want is for people to be confused," said Willi Ladner, a deputy mayor in Bohmte. "When they're confused, they'll be more alert and drive more carefully."
You are insane.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Department of sartorial intimidation
Roger Kimball writes on PjamasMedia The Italian footoball team Inter Milan has a stylish uniform, white jerseys with a bold red cross. Well, I think it is stylish. Baris Kaska, a Turkish lawyer, doesn’t like it. Indeed, according to the London Times, Mr. Kaska has initiated legal action against the team, alleging that the “Crusader-style” uniforms are “offensive to Muslim sensibilities.” Yes, really.
Baris Kaska, a lawyer in Izmir who specialises in European law, said that he had lodged a complaint in a local court against Inter Milan, which last month played the Istanbul team Fenerbahce in a Champions League match at the San Siro stadium in Milan. The Inter players wore a new strip - a white shirt with a giant red cross on it - marking the club’s centenary.I used to think these “offensive-to-Muslim-sensibilities” stories were half comical—I saw that they had an edge, but really, I thought, they were local eruptions of politically correct nonsense: a nuisance, no more. I have corrected that opinion.
Mr Kaska said he was not only seeking damages but was also appealing to Uefa to annul the match, which Inter won 3-0. “That cross only brings one thing to mind - the symbol of the Templar Knights,” he said. “It made me think immediately of the bloody days of the past. While I was watching the game I felt profound grief in my soul.” Mr Kaska told the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia that the cross symbolised “Western racist superiority over Islam”.
When you have a faith as weak as Islam you can't stand to see it compared with anything else.A English school teacher in Sudan allows her students to name a Teddy bear “Muhammad” and she is jailed for “insulting the prophet.” Maclean’s magazine publishes a chapter from Mark Steyn’s best-selling book America Alone and a London lawyer files a “human rights” complaint in Canada against Mr. Steyn and the magazine for fostering “contempt and hatred” of Canadian Muslims. Everyone knows what happened when a Danish newspaper published some satirical cartoons of Muhammad. A very long list of such incidents could be compiled. Now a Turkish lawyer arrogates to himself the power to tell an Italian football team what they can wear. And Turkey wants to join the EU? Think about that.
As quickly as the rest of Europe is being Islamized, Turkey may soon be the most secular part.Muslims have mastered the Western system of litigation and forged a powerful weapon out of it. When will they manage to adopt the Western system of free speech and respect for individual freedom?
When Hell freezes.When will they learn that the luxury being offensive and offended is part of what it means to be a grown up?
When pigs fly.While we wait for an answer, I suggest that every Western sports team adopt a uniform that features a large cross as a sign of solidarity.
I second the motion.
Elect me and oil prices instantly drop, says Hillary
NY Daily News reported Hillary Clinton predicted Saturday that just electing her President will cut the price of oil.
Just electing her will not completely destroy the economy, just start it on its slide.When the world hears her commitment at her inauguration about ending American dependence on foreign fuel, Clinton says, oil-pumping countries will lower prices to stifle America's incentive to develop alternative energy.
They will just laugh, and send more jihadis."I predict to you, the oil-producing countries will drop the price of oil," Clinton said, speaking at the Manchester YWCA. "They will once again assume, once the cost pressure is off, Americans and our political process will recede."
They will charge whatever the market will bear.Clinton argued that former President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s actually started moving in the right direction toward energy independence, but his successor, Ronald Reagan, "dismantled" that work.
So that was the purpose of stag-flation and the "misery indes". And Hilary wants to take us back to those days, and long gas lines.
U.S. illegal immigrants 'self deport' as woes mount
Reuters reported Mexican illegal immigrant Lindi sat down with her husband Marco Antonio in the weeks before Christmas to decide when to go back to Mexico. She has spent three years working as a hairdresser in and around Phoenix, but now she figures it is time to go back to her hometown of Aguascalientes in central Mexico. "The situation has got so tough that there don't seem to be many options left for us," Lindi, who asked for her last name not to be used, told Reuters.
Wonderfl. It works. To those who said you can't deport all of these illegal workers, you don't have to. Just enforce existing law and they will deport themselves. Then you can set up a secure system of documentation and readmit them in a controlled fashion.The couple are among a growing number of illegal immigrants across the United States who are starting to pack their bags and move on as a crackdown on undocumented immigrants widens and the U.S. economy slows, turning a traditional Christmas trek home into a one-way trip.
Have a safe trip.
Fred Thompson Christmas Ad
Fred Thompson had the best Christmas Ad of all of the candidates
Hat Tip CQ
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
New Fred Thompson Video
It is not an official video from his campaign, and I wish he was this energetic, but this is a bit humorous.
Hat tip Kim Priestap
Top cleric says women without veils must die
AKI - Adnkronos international reported A top Muslim cleric in Iran, Hojatolislam Gholam Reza Hassani said on Wednesday that women in Iran who do not wear the hijab or Muslim headscarf, should die.
The death prnalty for not wearing a head scarf?????"Women who do not respect the hijab and their husbands deserve to die," said Hassani, who leads Friday prayers in the city of Urumieh, in Iranian Azerbaijan.
Maybe they respect it and want to keep it safe, so they leave it at home."I do not understand how these women who do not respect the hijab, 28 years after the birth of the Islamic Republic, are still alive," he said.
I don't understand why the people have put up with this sort of abuse for 28 years."These women and their husbands and their fathers must die," said Hassani, who is the representative of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei in eastern Azerbaijan.
So now they are not only going to kill the women who don't wear a head scarf, but also their husbands and their fathers?????
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Cheat Neutral is an satirical bid to highlight its view of carbon offsetting as an "inadequate" and "misguided" response to climate change by offering people the chance to offset their infidelity by paying random strangers to remain faithful. Users can freely sign up to become a Cheatneutral "project", meaning they agree to remain single or monogamous in order to neutralize the cheating of somebody else. Or they can offset their own cheating by sponsoring a "project" with a one-time $2.21 payment.
Hat tip PC World
Huckabee’s Christmas ad
Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League, thinks Huckabee’s Christmas ad was too religious
Get a life, Bill
Monday, December 17, 2007
Look inside Hillary's mouth
Yahoo! News reported Standing atop a stage in a livestock auction barn, Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton likened the experience to her quest to woo undecided voters in the closing days before Iowa's pivotal caucuses. "I've been to cattle barns before and sales before, in Arkansas, but I've never felt like I was the one that was being bid on," Clinton told a crowd in western Iowa. "I know you're going to inspect me. You can look inside my mouth if you want.
Eeeww!!! Would it obvious you are lying if we did?I hope by the end of my time with you I can make the case for my candidacy and to ask you to consider caucusing for me."
Al-Qaeda's No. 2 wants to hear from you
The Australian reported Al-Qaeda sympathisers have been asked to send in their questions for the terror network's second in command, which he will then answer in an online interview next month.
Weasel Zippers wants to ask I'll start things off, "do you think of Osama when making love to a goat?"....
My question is where are you and Osama hiding. We have a present to send you. A nice new cruise missle.
Can we monitor the Q&A and trace both ends?The plan was announced in a new video posted on the internet in which al-Qaeda's No.2, Ayman al-Zawahri, mocked today's British handover of security in southern Iraq to local forces as a sign that insurgents are gaining the upper hand.
Despite the fact that Al Qaeda is not within 100 miles, and the militias there are fighting each other, and both hate Al QaedaThe video, carried by Islamic websites, was issued as Britain handed over security to Iraqi forces in the last of four provinces it once patrolled, effectively marking the end of nearly five years of British control of southern Iraq. The websites invited readers to send in questions during the next month for Zawahri to answer in an "open interview".
Weasel Zippers wants to ask I'll start things off, "do you think of Osama when making love to a goat?"....
My question is where are you and Osama hiding. We have a present to send you. A nice new cruise missle.
Impeach Pelosi
OpEdNews reported Peace activist,
And general nutcase, seaking another 15 minutes of fameCindy Sheehan says that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi collaborated with the Bush administration in condoning torture because Pelosi knew about water boarding torture since 2002.
Was Pelosi even one of the ones informed that said interrogation should even be harsher?“Even before becoming Speaker of the House of Representative, she said that impeachment of Bush is out of question.” She should be impeached for knowing about torture which dehumanize us all, she added.
These nut cases want to use impeachment for anything they disagree with, even for something someone said many years ago.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
I have returned
I was without electricity from Sunday through Thursday because of the ice storm that hit Tulsa, and then I was briefly in the hospital. I am home now, and the power is back on.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
3 down but 50,000,000 saved
Michelle Malkin blogs These are what true religious martyrs look like telling the story of three Bible Publishers in Turkey who were murdered earlier this year
The same day I read in the British TimesOnline Demand for the Bible is soaring in China, at a time when meteoric economic growth is testing the country’s allegiance to Communist doctrine. Today the 50 millionth Bible will roll off the presses of China’s only authorized publisher, Amity Printing, amid public fanfare and celebration.
I pray for these three Turkish souls, but I rejoice at what is happening in China.
No More Mail For Any Wounded Soldier
Strategy Page reported The U.S. Army no longer accepts mail sent to "Any Wounded Soldier." In the United States, the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where most wounded soldiers are cared for, has long accepted letters or parcels addressed to "Any Wounded Soldier." No longer, mainly because of the huge amount of it.
What the heck??? They would accept it if there was not enough for everyone, but because they are getting too much, they won't accept it?????Over a million pieces a year, most of it during the holiday season, are sent just to the Walter Reed hospital.
I am happy that people are sending that much, but why stop because of the volume. If the other hospitals are not getting that much, send some to them, otherwise give the wounded soldiers whatever comes in. So what if they get hundreds of letters. Don't they have time to read them? Won't it make them feel good to know people care?Instead, the American Red Cross, and the Pitney Bowes Corporation, will accept such mail for the Christmas season, assign a name to it, and get it delivered. Such mail should be sent (and arrive no later than December 27th) to:
We Support You During Your Recovery!No packages, just cards and letters. But something can be arranged via http://www.usocares.org, http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/tooursoldiers, or http://www.redcross.org.
c/o American Red Cross
P.O. Box 419
Savage, MD 20763-0419
I am happy there is someone willing to handle packages.
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