This One Cracked Me Up!

A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in California when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him.

The driver, a young man in a suit, Gucci shoes, sunglasses and a tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, 'If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?'

Bud looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, 'Sure , Why not?'

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular BLUETOOTH cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra high-resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany ...

Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, he receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, 'You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.'

'That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,' says Bud.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then the Bud says to the young man, 'Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?'

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, 'Okay, why not?'

'You're a Congressman for the U.S.Government', says Bud.

'Wow! That's correct,' says the yuppie, 'but how did you guess that?'

'No guessing required.' answered the cowboy.

'You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about cows...this is a herd of sheep.

Now, give me back my dog.  (h.t. Johny Y)

Comments

[John Yeazel]

Glad you liked it- isn't it the truth though? Most of the people in Washington have no clue about what is important to regular Church goers who have a brain, who faithfully take care of and support their families and are even willing to stick out their necks for people who end up spitting in their faces because they are not "relevant." Things do not change much throughout history so do not expect much difference in the years to come.

[John Yeazel]

An image permanently plastered in my consciousness is from the movie Legends of the Fall where Anthony Hopkins comes running out of his house when he sees some government officials riding up after recently undergoing a stroke (so his face was all contorted and he could barely walk) with his middle finger in the air and shouting "(profanity) the government." You have got to watch the movie just for that one scene- he had a history of problems with the government throughout his life and even as an old man he continued breathing down their necks. That's how I want to die still breathing down the necks of my enemies and those who made my life much more difficult than it should have been.

[Lloyd]

That's pretty funny!

This morning, on a talk show that I listen to, they were talking about government created jobs of years ago.

One group of workers would sweep the dirt to the other side of the road. And, then the other group of workers would sweep it back.

It just makes much more sense helping the small business owners, rather than creating more government jobs.

In fact, the Wall Street Journal estimates that only twelve cents to the dollar of the O'bamas' stimulus plan will actually stimulate the economy this year.

I remember, when Bush was in office for two days, the media was already going after him. The media will probably give O'bama a year. But, I am holding him to his promises. (Ironically, it is better if O'bama doesn't do what he promised, or it will get even worse!)

I am wearing my hat, in the kingdom of man, when saying this!

[John Yeazel]

Lloyd,

I am going to dissent from you a bit here- I would rather have the Democrats then the republicans dealing with economic issues. The Clinton admin. did a better than average job with the economy. Greenspan was very impressed with Clinton in regards to economic issues. The problem with the republicans is that they are very rigid in their economic thinking. You cannot do that because econ. is a very inexact science. With international economics playing a greater role in our economy economic models are far and few between. It is a very complex issue and rigid thinking usually does more harm than good.

Now in regards to foreign and national security policy I will take the republicans any day of the week. I think republicans are much more principled and decisive also. So, we could argue this until the cows come home but I just wanted to throw that out there.

[wayne]

This would also go for Australian federal parliamentarians. They are bananas',they go in green,turn yellow and the truth is always bent to suit them

[wayne]

The politicians will be out in force here in Australia these coming weeks. The north of the country has floods ,and down in the southeast where I live we have bush fires ranging in 48 locations across the two most populous states-Victoria and New South Wales
Bush fires are a constant part of Australian summers,but it brings on special significance when your son is a volunteer firefighter.

[Paul]

John,

With all due respect brother, the Democrats and the Republicans are two sides of the same coin, They are both big spenders and the Bush admin spent just as much as the current democrats want to spend. Both parties are big government. And as for Clinton, Greenspan was part of the problem, there is no provision for a central bank in the constitution, the Federal Reserve is not a government institution, they are printing money out of thin are causing inflation. We need to spend less and preserve civil liberties. The Republicans (neocons) love war, which is what costs the tax payer too much! Awesome joke by the way,

Soli Deo Gloria

[Lloyd]

Paul:

I agree with you. The government is printing money, which is adding to inflation. We do also need to spend less.

Small businesses drive our economy, not big government spending programs.

The way the government is speding money, it is going to leave our children with a huge nightmare.

I believe that neither party is telling us just how bad things really are.

[Paul]

Couldn't agree with you more.

[John Y]

Paul,

I would agree in theory with what you said. My remarks did not really make clear what I was trying to say. The reality of politics makes both Republicans and Democrats act contrary to their theoretical beliefs in order to survive in the political realm.

Economically, I think you are coming from an Austrian economic point of view. If the Fed prints money responsibly they can do it in a way that will not raise inflation- at least in theory. Greenspan's biggest mistake was that he did not monitor the Mortgage financial markets adequately and the move towards deregulation in the industry allowed for loans to be made that normally would not be made. Also, they were not backed by any type of insurance so loses ensued.

If the government spending does not create the jobs and revenue (in GDP growth) they say it will then the tax burden will be huge on the future generation. If it works like they say it will then it won't. Government is too big but in a fallen world when people do not live out their moral convictions government has to step in to maintain order. The more people are able to live out their moral convictions the less government is needed. In this post-Christian world we live in people turn to government rather than God to solve their problems.

[Paul]

I am with you that people look to government to solve their problems, but it seems that the more government intervenes the more trouble it causes. You're right, people should not depend on the government to bail them out, it just feeds into our fallen natures and breeds laziness and the nanny/welfare state. The government is then looked upon as the savior instead of people working, taking care of themselves and their families and living their lives for Christ and preaching the Gospel in their communities.

You are correct that I take an Austrian point of view. It seems to be the only view that is solid and that many of its proponents have predicted much of what's happened in the market.

As for the mortgage fiasco, I think I can speak to that a bit. I was a sub-prime mortgage underwriter for 7 years. And it wasn't the there wasn't enough regulation, but too much. Have you heard of the Community Reinvestment Act? You can google it. It pretty much forced us lenders to make loans to people with bad credit, to people who were in the country illegally by only accepting the Matricula Card as proof of I.D. If we did not comply, they (the government) would be all over us. So it was the governments over involvement that helped orchestrate this mess. That's not to say that the brokers, lenders and borrowers are not at fault as well. But as I stated before, this type of Leviathan government feeds into the sinful nature of people. The government is solely there to protect us from enemies, enforce the laws of the constitution and stay out of the way. Let the free market be the free market.

I appreciate the dialogue brother!

[Marv]

Actually, it looks to me as if the government knows more about herding sheep than we give 'em credit for.

[Keith]

Love it! Thanks for my noon-time laugh.