Ancestry.com proves Obama and Buffett CousinsPosted by Administrator on December 15th, 2009

When Warren Buffett was promoting Obama for the presidency, neither of them could have imagined that they were actually related.

That’s right. Reuters released a report today saying that Ancestry.com has found that President Obama and super-investor Warren Buffett are cousins… er, seventh cousins three times removed. Apparently, waaaaay back, their family trees meet at a 17th-century Frenchman named Mareen Duvall. The discovery was made by accident on Ancestry.com by researchers doing work on Obama’s roots. It is just another cool example of how Ancestry.com’s tools can help us learn unexpected things about our family histories.

Ironically, these same researchers found that Obama is also related to Dick Cheney. But something tells me they won’t be having a family reunion anytime soon.



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Keep Your Mind on What Matters During the HolidaysPosted by Administrator on November 30th, 2009

With Black Friday looming last week, I spent a significant amount of time surfing through ads, trying to find the very best deals on the presents I would get for my kids and my lovely wife. This inevitably led to scheming about how I would outsmart or outmuscle the early morning crowds to secure the perfect gift. Along the way, I found myself catching glimpses of the things I wanted, too, and hoping that my wife would pick the right one. Before long, I couldn’t even focus on Thanksgiving. I had bigger fish to fry, bigger deals to reel in. Yeah, yeah, being grateful is good and all, but, if I planned things out well enough, I could come home Friday morning with a bounty of the best presents. I would be a hero come Christmas morning, I mused. 

I’ll admit it here and now: I got sucked into all the things about Christmas that don’t matter. And it was ruining my holidays.

Luckily, my wife brought me back down to earth after Thanksgiving dinner in her forthright way. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I was getting caught up in all of this so I could be the best gift-giver around. It had become a form of self-aggrandizement. Also, I was slipping in a few items that I really wanted- and maybe my kids would like them, too. Somehow, I had turned what was supposed to be an act of Christian love and appreciation into an act of selfishness. Funny how we do that sometimes.

So I rethought all my grand gift-giving plans. Like Scrooge and Charlie Bailey before me, I reconsidered what the true meaning of Christmas is. And I made a big attitude adjustment. I would not let the retailers dictate my holiday cheer. Rather, I would make my actions reflective of the Man we celebrate at Christmas. I thought about a neighbor of mine who has been unemployed for several months now and recently lost his car. I thought about others in similar situations. I thought about my wife and what would truly make her happy. And I resolved to do something- something real- to help these people and to somehow lift their burdens.

This is my new mission for the holidays. Anyone can buy a video game. But it takes real Christian love to give a real gift.



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Teaching Kids Values is Parents’ JobPosted by Administrator on November 9th, 2009

The other day I read an article about parents up in arms about the increasing amount of trashy material on TV. They griped about why this commission or that board isn’t doing something about this. I read another article about a community torn about how to teach sex ed. Still other articles talked about the actions of community organizers to curb gang violence. As serious as these topics are, I had to laugh. 

 
Why would I laugh at such a thing? Because somewhere along the line, our society got it into our heads that someone else was in charge of our kids’ moral development. We thought that it was just another thing we could outsource in our busy lives. "I’m doing all I can," we like to tell ourselves. "Darn that TV for showing my kid how to swear, cheat, and kill people."
 
I want to say it bluntly so there will be no mistake: parents are in charge of instilling values. It is not the job of a board, a teacher, a commission, the police department, the armed forces, or any other external organization. Studies have found repeatedly that children who receive consistent training in values are much more likely to adhere to and return to those values as they go through life. 
 
Take me, for instance. I grew up East LA- not exactly Mayberry. In fact, gangs, drugs, promiscuity, and violence were rampant. And I do not use the word ‘rampant’ lightly. These things really were everywhere. It would have been easy for my parents to excuse themselves and say, "What can I do against influences like these?" It would have been easy for them to blame the schools or the media if we went bad.
 
But they stuck with it. They taught us right from wrong. When we did go wrong, they straightened us out really quick. 
 
The result: not one of us ever took drugs or participated in gang activity. In fact, we all went on to get college degrees at top tier universities and have upstanding families of our own.
 
How did this happen? I can tell you it had nothing to do with what was on TV or what we saw at school. It was because of the tireless work of our parents. 
 
It’s time we rethought our tendency to look for the media or government for moral guidance. The bottom line is, they are motivated by ratings and votes… period. It’s time we took responsibility for raising our kids squarely back into our hands.


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