Mountain Views News          Saturday, October 11, 2014

B4

OPINION

Mountain Views-News Saturday, October 11, 2014 


Mountain 
Views

News

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR

Susan Henderson

CITY EDITOR

Dean Lee 

EAST VALLEY EDITOR

Joan Schmidt

BUSINESS EDITOR

LaQuetta Shamblee

PRODUCTION

Richard Garcia

SALES

Patricia Colonello

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WEBMASTER

John Aveny 

CONTRIBUTORS

CoCo Lasalle

Chris Leclerc

Bob Eklund

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills 

Dr. Tina Paul

Rich Johnson

Merri Jill Finstrom

Lori Koop

Rev. James Snyder

Tina Paul

Mary Carney

Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Greg Welborn

Renee Quenell

Ben Show

Sean Kayden

Marc Garlett

IF EVERYTHING GOES RIGHT 
SOMETHING’S WRONG

RICH Johnson


REPARTEE 2014

By Dr. James L. Snyder

 It was a week when everything went just the way I had planned. It is hard 
to express your feelings when something like this happens because it rarely 
happens.

 The infamous To-Do-List from the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage was 
completed to her ecstatic satisfaction. That never happens. In fact, I finished it 
in time to have a little of “Me Time.” I sat on the back porch with a steaming 
hot cup of coffee and enjoyed an evening with nothing to do. I am not sure how long I sat there, but my 
coffee was just as hot as it was on my first sip. I do not know how my wife does those things. I have never 
enjoyed a cup of coffee more.

 I had an appointment across town and in traveling across town I never hit one red light. I think that 
should go into the Guinness book of records. It has never happened to me before and I was reveling in 
the deepest kind of satisfaction I have ever known. I got to my destination 20 minutes early. I love early.

 After paying all my bills for the week and balancing my checkbook, I had $100 left over. What in the 
world, do you do with $100 left over after paying all your bills? It did not take long to come up with a 
solution. I decided to take my wife out for supper on Friday night at her favorite restaurant. It was a 
glorious night on the town and the service at the restaurant was superb. Never have I enjoyed a more 
wonderful time on the town. The steak was done to a perfect T, just the way I like it. The waitress kept 
my coffee cup filled to the brim.

 All through our meal, neither cell phones rang nor did we receive a text from anybody. Now seriously, 
how often does that happen? I checked several times to make sure my phone was still on. I sat back and 
decided to enjoy our anonymity. It is good to just chill together.

 As we came near the end of our delectable evening repast, I was about to mention to my wife what a 
tremendous week we were having and then...

 Then, I woke up. It was all just a dream. A good dream, but a dream nevertheless.

 Why is it dreams never come true? Why is it that my dream life is so much superior to my actual life? 
No wonder as a person gets older they want to spend more time sleeping. I think I am just about there.

 For a brief moment, I experienced what a perfect week would look like, even if it was just in my 
dreams.

 A perfect week is not when everything goes our way, because, if everything goes right then you know 
something is wrong. Call it pessimism if you will or maybe just a dash of reality.

 It is when things go wrong that I begin to understand what life is all about. I begin to understand that 
nothing is perfect. And, if nothing is perfect, then neither am I. I like that. The only perfect person at our 
residence is my wife, and I have her word on that and she never lies to me.

 Demanding perfection is a rather foolish thing. If I demand perfection from someone, they in turn 
are going to demand perfection from me. That is more stress than I care to live with, especially at my age.

 After over four decades of marital bliss, I have made an astounding discovery that has made my life 
so much more pleasurable. It took me a long time to come to this, but I sure am glad I have.

 For many years, I was hard on myself trying to be perfect in everything I did. Then, I got married and 
all of that went away. It was a struggle at first, but I came to one astounding conclusion that has changed 
my life and brought me to a point of chilling out for the rest of my life.

 In our home only one person needs to be perfect. That one person is not me. What a blessing it is to 
realize that you are not perfect and you do not have to live up to that standard of perfection. I can be 
goofy, make mistakes and act silly and nobody cares. All those years of trying to be perfect were wasted.

 Now I have come to the place where I have acceded to the fact that my wife is perfect. I gladly anoint 
her as Queen Perfection in our humble Castle. All of the burden now rests upon her. She does not need 
to worry; I am there to support her in that aura of perfection.

 The nice thing about all of this is, she does not need much help from me. It is almost like I am retired 
for the rest of my life with nothing else to do. The burden of perfection does not rest upon my shoulder.

 Oh yes, the checkbook. After looking at it while awake, I discovered I was $100 overdrawn.

 Solomon understood this when he wrote, “All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the 
Lord weigheth the spirits,” (Proverbs 16:2).

 Everything does not have to go right for me to rejoice in the goodness of the Lord.

 

Rev. James L. Snyder is pastor of the Family of God Fellowship, PO Box 831313, Ocala, FL 34483. He lives 
with his wife, Martha, in Silver Springs Shores. Call him at 1-866-552-2543 or e-mail jamessnyder2@att.
net or website www.jamessnyderministries.com.

 If you know me you know I love the clever use of the 
language. Give me a Marx Brothers movie over the Three 
Stooges anytime. 

 Repartee is a wonderful use of the language. Webster tells 
us repartee means “a quick and witty reply”. Who amongst 
us hasn’t wished, from time to time, that we had the perfect 
“quick and witty” retort to someone else’s not so quick and 
witty line? Sometimes two clever wordsmiths will joust 
metaphorically with words and we have the rest of our lives to enjoy the match. 

 Friends George Bernard Shaw and friend Winston Churchill had a go at 
it: Playwright Shaw invited Mr. Churchill to the premiere of his stage play, 
Pygmalion with the following wire: “Am reserving two tickets for you for my 
premiere. Come and bring a friend – if you have one.” To which Mr. Churchill 
responded: “Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend 
second – if there is one.”

 Writers William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway squared off once with 
Faulkner commenting on Hemingway: “He has never been known to use a word 
that might send a reader to the dictionary”. To which Hemingway responded 
about Faulkner: “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from 
big words?”

 Among cards, letters and telegrams received by Groucho on his 71st birthday 
came this cable he received from his good friend Irving Berlin: “The world 
would not be in such a snarl had Marx been Groucho instead of Karl”.

 Everyone must remember brilliant British actor Sir John Gielgud. His repartee 
in the film “Arthur” is legendary. He was once invited by friend Carol Channing 
to an event which he turned down due to a viral infection. Gielgud penned a 
note to Channing: “Sorry, love, cannot attend. Gielgud doesn’t fielgud.”

 William Howard Taft was, at 350 pounds, the fattest of all the U. S. presidents. 
One day he received a telegram from his friend, Elihu Root, the then Secretary of 
War: “Heard you were sick.” The corpulent Taft replied he had been sick but was 
feeling so much better that he went on a 25 mile horseback ride at an elevation 
of 5,000 feet. The next day Taft received a second telegram from Secretary Root: 
“How is the horse?”

 Back to Winston Churchill. On his 75th birthday Mr. Churchill was asked by a 
reporter: “Do you have any fear of death?” Mr. Churchill replied: I am ready to 
meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is 
another matter.”

 In the 1920s, Babe Ruth was not only the greatest home run hitter in baseball, 
he was the highest paid. In 1927 he made a staggering $70,000 (teammate Lou 
Gehrig made $8,000). After a phenomenal season in 1931 (373 batting average, 
46 home runs, 163 RBIs) Ruth was guaranteed $80,000 for 1932. A reporter 
pointed out to Ruth that he made $5,000 more than President Hoover to which 
Ruth replied: “Maybe so, but I had a better year than he did.” 

 By the way, calculating Babe Ruth’s $80,000 salary in today’s dollars comes 
out to roughly $1.3 Million. 21 of the Dodgers made more money this year than 
Ruth’s $1.3 million. 7 of the Dodgers: Greinke, Gonzalex, Kemp, Crawford, 
Kershaw, Ramirez and Ethier made more than 10 times what Ruth made in 
1932.

 Oh well, there’s always next year!!

 

 LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN 

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GREG Welborn

EDITOR’S NOTE: Howard Hayes Won’t Be Seeing It for the next few weeks. 
However, I am sure when he gets back he’ll be seeing plenty! Good Luck Howard, 
hurry back! SH”


Ebola Should Be Off Limits!! 

The Ebola virus is serious enough and deadly enough that I would 
have thought it off limits to even the lowest politician’s cynical efforts 
to get elected. Certainly it was a topic which I was going to avoid as 
a topic of political commentary. As Senator Vandenberg once said, 
“there are times when politics must be put aside and the country 
united in effort toward a common cause”. It appears Liberals do 
not recognize those limits and will stop at nothing to try to retain 
control of the Senate, and so they have dipped below the bottom of 
that barrel of political slime to accuse Republicans of bringing this 
Ebola plague to our shores. As much as I would like to avoid it, truth must be spoken to this 
lie and shame cast upon those who would seek partisan advantage when national unity is 
required.

 One of the most contested Senate races pits Arkansas’ incumbent Democrat, Mark Pryor, 
against Republican challenger, Tom Cotton. It is in such races where the rubber meets the 
road, where the national Democrats are choosing to place their ad money and craft their 
message – an outrageous message they hope will turn the race. This is where the Democrats 
ran an ad blaming Republicans for Ebola’s appearance on our shores.

 The Pryor-for-Senate ad says: “Tom Cotton voted against preparing America for 
pandemics like Ebola. Congressman Cotton voted to cut billions from our nation’s medical 
disaster and emergency programs.” When called on it, all Democrats can offer is that votes 
against the stimulus, or votes for the sequester, represented votes against the Centers for 
Disease Control (the CDC). But to make this argument, Democrats have to rely once again 
on that old accounting gimmick of classifying a vote against a planned increase as a vote to 
decrease funding. In the temporal world, such a mathematical argument proves only that 
someone is desperately in need of remedial education in math. In the moral world it proves 
someone lacks a functioning moral compass.

 The budget of the United States has been so inflated under President Obama that $500 
billion deficits under George Bush have grown to multiple $1 trillion deficits. There is no 
economist (liberal or conservative) that will tell you these deficits are sustainable. Voting to 
reduce these deficits to – dare I say – more manageable levels was, and is, a highly moral act; 
to place multiple trillion dollar burdens on our kids and grandkids is indefensible practically 
or morally.

 With specific regard to the CDC, the agency’s budget (including its subsidiary, the Toxic 
Substances and Disease Registry) was $10.7 billion in 2014 and averaged $10.8 billion during 
all of the Obama years. The agency’s budget during the last years of Bush’s presidency was 
$8.7 billion. How’s that a decrease exactly?

 As a secondary, but no less important issue, Congressmen and Senators – not to mention 
the tax payers – have every right to ask how an agency’s budget is being spent. Nobody is 
required to write blank checks, and holding federal agencies to some standard of financial 
accountability is very much the job of Congress and every member thereof. So how is the 
money being spent?

 The CDC’s budget is supplemented by access to additional funding from the Public 
Health Fund, of which an additional $2 billion a year is available without strings. Any 
perceived deficit in funding for critical tasks (like Ebola programs) could have been drawn 
down by the CDC’s management. Instead, the Public Health Fund has given money to 
lobbying firms in D.C., and “invested” in dance fitness, massage therapy, pet neutering, 
urban gardening, and a variety of other purportedly health-enhancing programs 
according to The Wall Street Journal. If this administration, and the Liberals in the Senate 
seeking to keep their jobs and perks, were so concerned with funding the CDC’s critical 
tasks, why didn’t they exercise the necessary oversight to make sure taxpayer money was 
used appropriately for those tasks?

 Beyond budgetary lies, Americans also have every right to ask what steps this 
administration has actually taken to prevent Ebola in the U.S. That’s not a question the 
Obama team really wants to answer. For at least two weeks that I can document there have 
been calls to restrict flights from the West Africa Ebola hot zone to the U.S. There have 
been additional calls for the administration to direct the CDC to develop a set of standard 
procedures for first responders and local hospitals to follow when/if presented with a 
potential Ebola patient.

 There are 6,000 people per week who come from the hot zone into the United States. 
Seems like a high number, but it simply reflects the incredible amount of investment which 
is being made in Africa right now - $48 billion worth by some credible economic estimates, 
which of course represents a significant number of people with a vested interest in keeping 
open those travel lanes. As of this writing, we still do not have travel bans or restrictions.

 The administration would tell us that “procedures” are being put in place, but we also 
have a right to question the efficacy of those procedures. Something as simple as making a 
call to a couple of hospitals, or police or fire departments, will tell you that there are still no 
policies emanating from D.C. or the CDC in Atlanta. CNN’s Jake Tapper reported the other 
day talking with a specialist in infectious diseases who said that fire and police personnel 
still don’t know what to do with somebody who has Ebola-like symptoms. They don’t know 
what to do with their vehicle, or to their house or apartment. Hospitals don’t have standard 
procedures to deal with the potentiality either. The painful truth is there are no recognized 
standard procedures in place.

 It bears repeating, as I opened this article, that Ebola is serious enough and deadly enough 
that politics should be put aside. This is not another “crisis which shouldn’t be wasted”. We 
should unite as a country to prevent Ebola, and to fight it where we can’t prevent it. This is 
not the time for any politician to use the crisis to scare voters into casting a ballot one way or 
the other. In fact, to do so should be enough to disqualify that politician from ever holding 
any elected office again. So shame on you, Mark Pryor, for running that vile ad, and shame 
on you, Senate Democrats, for funding it. 

The author: Gregory J. Welborn is a freelance writer and has spoken to several civic and 
religious organizations on cultural and moral issues. He lives in the Los Angeles area with 
his wife and 3 children and is active in the community. He can be reached at gregwelborn2@
gma/5l.com


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