The Virginia contractor takes out a tape measure and does some measuring, then works some figures with a pencil. “Well”, he says, “I figure it will run about $900- $400 for materials, $400 for my crew and $100 profit for me.”

The Tennessee contractor also does some measuring and figuring, then says, “I can do this job for $700- $300 for materials, $300 for my crew, and $100 profit for me”.

The Illinois contractor doesn’t measure or figure, but leans over to the White House official and whispers, “$2,700.”

The official, incredulous, whispers back, “You didn’t even measure like the other guys! How did you come up with such a high figure?”

The Illinois contractor whispers back, “$1000 for me, $1000 for you, and we hire that guy from Tennessee to fix the fence.”

“Done!” replies the government official.

NOW YOU KNOW HOW WE GOT INTO THIS MESS WITH OUR ECONOMY!!!

You can bet that in a year when an Ohio plumber became more famous than the Dalai Lama, a hockey mom from Alaska came within a heartbeat of the White House, gas hit $4 a gallon, and rich automakers begged Congress for $25 billion, Dave Barry might have a few words to say.

Click here to read…

Just voted… now we just wait and see how the long evening plays out.

Ethan tagging along in the voting booth... is he reaching for Obama!?!?

Ethan catches the quick pass for his 2nd touchdown of the game

Ethan running around the end…

Gas was $2.98 and I saved an additional $.20 per gallon with my Price Chopper card.

I wept… tears of joy.

Will I be able to provide for my family in the coming year? Will my business continue to thrive in the struggling economy? Is it time to shut off the HD package on the DirecTV account, and the unlimited text messaging on the iPhone? I don’t know the answers to these questions.

Yeah… there’s question, and there’s worry. But here’s the reality of it all… we aren’t really in control of what happens.

25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life“ ?

Matthew 6:25-27

Great interview with WALL•E writer – director Andrew Stanton.

Stanton: They tell you that as a storyteller, it’s vital to just stick with and be honest with your values system. The last thing I want to do is go to a movie and feel like I’m being preached to or being told how to be, and I think it’s more honest—and you’re going to have more effect—to be truthful with the values of your characters, working off of your own values. That was the case with WALL•E. The greatest commandment is to love one another, and to me, that’s the ultimate purpose of living. So that was the perfect goal for the loneliest robot on earth, to learn the greatest commandment, to learn to love.

I cannot wait to see this movie!

The average U.S. citizen completely ignores the regularity with which the automobile kills him, maims him, embroils him with the law and provides mobile shelter for rakes intent on seducing his daughters. He takes it into his garage as fondly as an Arab leading a prize mare into his tent. He woos it with Simoniz, Prestone, Ethyl and rich lubricants — and goes broke trading it in on something flashier an hour after he has made the last payment on the old one.

By last week, this peculiar state of mind had not only sucked thousands of American oil wells dry, stripped the rubber groves of Malaya, produced the world’s most inhuman industry and its most recalcitrant labor union, but had filled U.S. streets with so many automobiles that it was almost impossible to drive one. In some big cities, vast traffic jams never really got untangled from dawn to midnight; the bray of horns, the stink of exhaust fumes, and the crunch of crumpling metal eddied up from them as insistently as the vaporous roar of Niagara.

 (via kottke, via david)

Musician Steven Curtis Chapman’s daughter killed in accident

“I was trying to give my little girls a bath and rushing and hurrying through it,” Chapman told The Press in an interview last fall. “And I got convicted over how much I rush through moments trying to get to the next one, and God telling me to stop and take the moments as he gives then, and see what he’s trying to teach me.”