G B Mooney Author
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Ponderisms
One day, long ago, my son asked, “Who was the first person to eat an egg that dropped out of a chicken’s butt?”
A few years later he asked, “How do they make Teflon stick to pots and pans?”
This questioning became routine. I would reply, “I’ll have to ponder that.”
This has evolved into a Ponderism file.
A new simple ponderism is- If Federal Express and UPS merged would the new company be called FedUp? .
This replaced- Would you ship anything fragile with a company whose name is pronounced OOPS? Making up new Ponderisms became a game in our family.
This following is a for real, disturbing Ponderism:
During the summer of 1991 my neighbor Bob sat down on our patio and said, “You’re going to love our next president. He was the most corrupt governor ever elected in Arkansas.”
Bob was a former Air Force Colonel/ Wing Commander during WWII and flew 30+ B17 missions over Germany. He was also a retired, successful, high end real estate sales business owner, and self proclaimed Arkansas rice farmer. In the neighborhood he was known as “the walking encyclopedia”.
He knew more about natural medicine than any doctor I’ve ever known. I’d had a sinus infection for years that had not been cured by many doctors who prescribed many drugs. Bob gave me a bunch of vitamins and other minerals. A few weeks later I blew a lot of green jello out of my nose and was cured! Still am!
What I’m trying to establish is that Bob was very intelligent.
When he made his presidential prediction I started to laugh. I’d never heard of William Jefferson Clinton.
Bob stormed off and came back with some “newspapers”, the equivalent of our present Political Blogs. The newspapers were full of stories, with pictures of important looking people shaking hands with a young Clinton. The headlines proclaimed that Clinton had agreed to terms and would be the next president.
I said that I didn’t recognize the people shaking hands with the future pres, and that the paper stories could be political crap.
Bob stormed off again. The next day he returned with sheets of paper scotched taped together. The paper was a copy of the roster of the US branch of The Council on Foreign Relations. David Rockefeller was identified as the founder of the US branch of the CFR. A statement, reportedly from his biography, promoting a one world government, was included.
Bob had brought along his papers and spent an hour pointing out the people in the photos and pointing to their names on the roster. The roster identified top leaders from industry, education, finance, banking, investment houses, transportation, media, entertainment, the arts, government, military etc, who were members of the CFR. Many of the government people I recognized as being in the Federal government no matter which party was in power, I was impressed but skeptical.
I noticed that President George H W Bush was shown at the top of the roster and that Clinton was shown as the Democratic nominee for the 1992 election.
I asked, “What’s Bush have to say about this? Did he agree?”
Bob showed me another article in one of the papers that, paraphrased, reported, “Bush’s boys will be taken care of and one of them could run after Clinton’s term.”
I laughed out loud. Bob shook his head and went home.
During the 1992 presidential campaign I observed that Bush didn’t seem to be enthusiastic. Others noticed also. There was an incident during a debate when Bush was observed looking at his watch. He said he was just seeing how much time was left in the debate. Many wrote that he didn’t seem to be running hard.
Bush lost. Amazingly Jeb and W both were in high visibility business positions and both became governors of major states. The rest is history.
After Clinton was elected Bob often reminded me of his prediction. He died before W and Jeb became governors and before W became president so I escaped further ridicule.
I still have the scotched taped roster he gave me. Many of the people on the roster are still in high positions in the federal government.
This experience caused a major, serious Ponderism:
Who really selects presidential candidates? Do the big shots that do the selecting care who wins or do they control all the candidates?
I know for the past several presidential elections I have held my nose while voting.
Will we ever be blessed and have another Jefferson or Adams arrive to help us recover?
