It’s Thanksgiving. What are you thankful for??

It’s Thanksgiving.  Time to think about all of the cool things that we have to be grateful for.  Some of the things that I am grateful for, in no particular order.

I’m grateful for my family (including the new additions in South America), my good friends and especially my beautiful and charming new wife.  Monica is an awesome wife and partner.  She has completely changed my life for the better.  My life is awesome, and it gets better every day.

I am grateful for the leaders in Washington DC that are not craven whores.  There are a few people of principle there – very few.  They are there because they think that they have skills that the nation can make use of – not because they want to amass power.  These are people for whom public service is a sacrifice – men like our President, Dick Cheney and  Donald Rumsfeld, who perform difficult jobs at pay rates much below what they could command in the business world.  Of course, these people are hated by the press and untrusted by those who go to Washington to spend their lives sucking at the public teat, forgetting the people that they are allegedly there to represent.  There will be fewer of them in January.  They will be missed.  They are the reason that you don’t have to care about in which direction Mecca lies today….

I am grateful for the internal combustion engine.  I help produce the products that fuel these labor-saving wonders – providing me with a rewarding career and a pretty good income.  I can drive to Alabama to see my daughter in a day, if I want to.  My little sailboat can use an engine to get in and out of its slip and also to get home if the wind decides to stop.  We’ve got cars, trucks, lawn mowers and airplanes that use these engines to improve our lives.  Thank you, Nicolaus Otto,  for coming up with the idea for the four-cycle engine back in the 1860’s.  The engines in new cars today are simply improvements on your terrific idea.  Be careful – silly people are trying to kill the internal combustion engine for no good reason – falsely claiming “global warming” as an excuse.  That car in your driveway is real – it improves your life.  The people that don’t want you to have it are not interested in helping you, that’s for sure.  Don’t let them take it away from you.

I’m grateful for the internet.  It was invented by the military as a way to set up a computer network that could survive a catastrophe.  An enemy attack could wipe out a part of the country, but the ‘net would survive.  I can get news and information, shop wisely for almost anything and learn all sorts of cool stuff.  I met my wife on the internet.  I don’t watch TV any more, but I’m on the internet almost every day.

.

I am grateful for engineers.  They build things.  They come up with designs for products and processes that make our lives possible.  You couldn’t build a car, a house or even a radio without an engineer being involved.  They don’t have glamorous jobs or make tons of money, but they help make possible the conveniences of modern life that we depend on.  Thanks, guys.

I could go on for hours, but the final thing tonight that I wanted to mention was that I am truly thankful for the US military forces.  These young people – all volunteers- are doing the real work necessary to keep our nation free.  My daugthter is one of them, and I’m damn proud of her and what she does.   These are our best and our brightest, and our nation is continually in their debt.  We can sleep peacefully because they are out there keeping us safe from the forces of evil that wish us harm and want to put an end to the freedom that we enjoy as Americans.  Thanks to you guys.

We are truly blessed to be living here in this country.  We have advantages the other people in the world only dream of.  I should try to remember how good things are for me (and likely you, too) more often.

Greg