The Garrett Ashley Mullet Show

Two exchanges yesterday between United States Senators and representatives from powerful federal agencies highlight succinctly the distrust many Americans feel toward their government, especially over the past two years. First, Senator Ted Cruz from Texas questioned Jill Sanborn , Executive Assistant Director for the National Security Branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Asked repeatedly...

The appointment with the midwife yesterday confirmed our suspicions that Lauren is in early labor. She is of course uncomfortable and exceedingly ready to conclude this pregnancy and meet our son Andrew face to face. And holding him in her arms, she will be able to rest in a way she has been unable to for weeks and months now. That all sounds very good to me also. I too will rest easier once Andre...

Four out of five Americans recently reported in a poll conducted by the Trafalgar Group and Convention of States Action that they believe the U.S. is in "a state of decay," Not the Bee reports. And check out this viral song by Canadian Christian artist Matt Brevner titled 'More of Us' released the day before Ontario went back into lockdown. Next, consider this segment from Kim Iversen at The Hill...

Laying down some basic, formative truths to serve as the foundation for sound thinking, we need to come to terms with where we come from, who we are, and where we are going. First comes the premise that there is a God, and we are not Him. Genesis tells us He is the Creator who made the heavens and the earth and everything in them in six days and rested on the seventh. Then there is the fact that G...

January 6, 2021 - a day that will live in infamy. Yet it was not a terrorist attack, Senator Cruz . And claiming that it was even briefly represented a lapse of good judgment on your part. Whether we describe the disruption of Congress with the entry of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. as a mostly peaceful protest, a riot, or a terrorist attack makes a great deal of difference. During a Senate hear...

For my son Solomon's 12th birthday, he asked to see the newest Spider-man movie in theaters. So on December 30th, my four older boys and I went to see it, and we need to talk about that.  Spoiler alert: I will be exploring some major plot components from the beginning of the film to the end. Go out and watch this movie before listening to me talk about it.  That said, if you don't plan t...

Today's homework - check out this refreshing commentary from Elon Musk on the declining birthrate and what the science tells us about what to expect in the coming years and decades. The short version is that overpopulation is not the thing we should be most concerned about. If anything, demographic implosion is the real danger. People are just not having enough children. By the way, for all those...

As famed science fiction author Frank Herbert wrote in his epic series 'Dune,' "fear is the mind-killer." In other words, fear makes you stupid. COVID panic has for two years made a great many of us very stupid. And a select few among us have found our niche in playing off the fear of the rest. But it is well past time to say enough, and reclaim our wits.  Being overweight greatly increases y...

On the first day of the New Year, I finished copying notes from 2021 from Lauren's and my Ink+Volt personal organizers into a Word document on my computer. The finished document contains 11,008-words and is 29-pages long. Gleaning the big takeaways may yet take a few more days at least, but for now I am trying to break everything into major categories. Family, church, work, friendships, podcasting...

Picking up where we left off in our last episode, the remaining 30 titles I finished in 2021 were as follows: Our Oriental Heritage by Will Durant    That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis    The Revolt of the Elites and The Betrayal of Democracy by Christopher Lasch    Lead by Paul David Tripp    The Civil War as a Theological Crisis by Mark A. Noll  &nbs...

This year, I set my Goodreads 2021 Reading Challenge to 55 books. With just two days left to the year, I am three titles short and do not think I will have the bandwidth to meet my goal. Yet for all that, I got closer to my goal than I perhaps would have without setting the goal.  For that matter, 95% is still an A in most grade scales. So an A for effort will have to suffice, and 52 titles s...

As 2021 draws to a close, my wife and I continue our annual tradition. Listing the major events of the past year, we strive to understand our lives better so as to be more intentional in the coming year. Another pregnancy, all our children growing older, homeschooling, striving to achieve and maintain the right work-life balance; going places, cultivating relationships, and investing ourselves; bu...

Frustrated with censorship, I deleted my Facebook account November 25, 2020. Yesterday, I returned.  The whole business bothers me. In an effort to sort through why, this episode is dedicated to unpacking the whole messy situation. Facebook is so Meta now. And where the Metaverse is concerned, we need informed opinions rather than emotional outbursts and tired platitudes. The practical realit...

Lauren now "great with child," as they say, Christmas feels a bit different in our household this year.  Few of our countrymen are having children these days. And very few indeed are having more than two if they can help it. My wife and I thereby find ourselves receiving the gift of commentary from time to time. Much of the feedback from broader society is congratulatory, albeit puzzled and b...

December 18, 1997 an episode of Seinfeld aired titled "The Strike" in which George Costanza's father Frank celebrates a made-up holiday called Festivus to protest Christmas and all its attendant pressures and consumerism.  Fast forward 24-years, and I find myself encountering people at work hedging their bets when varying their holiday greetings and well-wishing. "Merry Christmas" no longer s...

December 20, 2021 Sukhayl Niyazov published a piece for Public Discourse titled 'Is Marxism Self-Defeating or Self-Fulfilling?' In it, Niyazov explores the historicist tendency of presuming that currently observed conditions have always been so and always will be so.  A kind of confirmation bias will have us finding proofs in our view of both the past and the future based on our limited, fini...

My wife and daughter attended a birthday party yesterday afternoon into the evening. That left my sons and I home. To celebrate, we moved four bookshelves upstairs from the room formerly known as the library to my office. And from the office, we moved two desks and attendant computers downstairs. And to unwind at the end of it all, I ordered pizza and we watched Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten...

"This is a No." With that short four-word sentence, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin has announced he cannot in good conscience vote for President Joe Biden's "Build Back Better" legislation.  Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is responding by essentially triple-dog-daring Manchin to forget his scruples and change his mind. ABC News panelists are audibly aghast.  How will we endure this "t...

During what should have been a cordial, light-hearted exchange between "Charlamagne Tha God" and the Vice President on Comedy Central, Kamala Harris well and truly lost her temper.  Asked during the interview who the real president of the United States is - whether Joe Manchin or Joe Biden - Harris let loose an angry and stammering volley of obvious statements before changing the subject to a...

You better not pout. You better not shout. You better not cry. I'm telling you why: Saint Nicholas is coming to town! Legends about the historical Saint Nicholas arguably have more in common with Bruce Willis in the movie Die Hard than Tim Allen in The Santa Clause. Check out the Wikipedia entry if for nothing else than gazing on the featured image of an icon by Jaroslav Čermák . Redeemer of young...

December 13, 2021 - Kaivan Shroff wrote for WBUR, Boston's NPR news station, 'Men like me benefit from safe abortion access.' In his piece, Shroff explains rather candidly that at 28-years-old, he is not yet ready to be a father. But he is happy to keep having sex with women he's not married to. Reading between the lines of his commentary, one could surmise that Mr. Schroff is already a father. Bu...

Not the Bee reports on Kay Gabriel, faculty member at New York University, explaining that the transgender revolution is actually about instituting communism. Far from frustrated, I find the honesty refreshing. For years folks like myself have been met with glazed eyes as we tried to connect the dots between critical theory, gender theory, and cultural Marxism as a way of gradually bringing about...

Gas prices are up 58% from last year. Meat prices are up 13%. Congress is passing, and President Biden is signing, spending bills with price tags in the trillions. Inflation is eroding our wealth, and there is no free lunch. But in conjunction with these realities I want to turn your attention to the parable of the prodigal son. He too was short-sighted. Asking his father for his share of the inhe...

Once upon a time... Twice Told Tales for Teens , by Poojaa Makhijani - Publisher's Weekly, October 15, 2021 'Disney’s Snow White Remake Will Update Classic Story With A ‘Stronger’ Narrative, Lead Actress Says' , by Amanda Harding - The Daily Wire, December 13, 2021

What is Christmas all about? You're on, Linus van Pelt.