Yesterday we had our state Primary Elections here in Texas.  As I server as an election judge for my precinct, I am very involved in the political process in my county.  I will also be serving as a county and possible state delegate to our conventions this year and my wife is serving as the alternates.  This primary elections was a mile stone for me,  because it was this very primary of four years ago that encouraged me to create this very site. 

During that primary, I learned what involvement in the political process meant and exactly what was at stake from a very personal point of view.  There was quite a bit of contention in the ‘O6 primary for our local government, so much so that it caused a schism between two major Republican women’s groups here in the county.  The race got pretty ugly at times and was very close indeed, yet it did turn out a lot of voters.  This year’s race was not so contentious, but none less critical for the issues that Texas faces.  I was very pleased yesterday to learn that we voted more than double the numbers that we did in this primary four years earlier.  Last night, sitting at one of the results parties and sipping on a Michelob Ultra, I was trying to figure out what was so different in this election versus the previous one.  Were the issues that different?  Not really.  Was there more contention between certain candidates this time?  No, actually I think there was less, or if it was the same it was more civil at least.  So, what had changed to bring over fifteen thousand people to the polls yesterday, when not even seven thousand had come before?

As I sat and talked to those around me, I began to realize that there has truly been an awakening in the past few years.  It has not just been in the movements like the TEA Party and 9/12 groups, but in everyday ordinary people, who are sick and tired of being told how to live their lives and how to spend their hard earned wealth.  I looked back to a comment made by one of the Democrat poll workers, while setting up the polling site yesterday.  She commented that she was a Democrat because she did not have enough money to be a Republican.  How odd, I thought, as I sat there through out the day watching person after person step through the door and wait in the long line for the Republican Party Primary, while the Democrat election clerk was able to cross stitch for a lack of traffic.  These people were not wealthy.  They came in to vote with the grease on their hands of a mechanic, the dirt under their nails of a farmer, the old worn boots of a ranch hand, the medical smock of a night shift nurse and the uniforms of police officers and firefighters.  The did not arrive in limousines or step out of a Lexus.  They came in all manner of vehicles from multiple different manufactures.  Many drove work trucks or small compact cars, some had SUV’s and mini-vans.  These were not wealthy bankers or captains of industry. They were everyday average people.  They were you and me.  They were the parents I meet at the soccer fields or pass by while shopping for groceries.  They were the kids that deliver my pizza and the crossing guard at my children’s school.  They were the heart of America and they were fed up.

By then end of the day, the Republican Primary at our polling site had out voted the Democrat one by 292 votes to a mere 38.  The results were more staggering county wide.  Over 14,000 Republican votes showed up at the polls yesterday, to a mere 1,200 Democrats.  The results state wide where not as drastic, but 2,082,965 Republicans voted compared to 974,454.  This is a still a significant deficit.  This is a message.  This is an awakening.

While I honor movement like the TEA Party and 9/12 Project, I have recently become very concerned with their actions and potentially their motives.  More and more it seems that they are becoming less of a protest movement aimed at stifling the extremes of government waste and championing states rights.  Some of their actions in recent days look more like a PAC than a genuine movement based on pure ideology.  During these elections in this state, these groups have come out in direct support of certain candidates while demeaning others.  Maybe it is just me, but when I first became involved with the TEA Party movement right at a year ago, I envisioned it as one not bound or beholden to any candidates.  I envisioned this movement as one that championed a conservative philosophy only, espousing the values and principles of our founding fathers and not turning into a political campaign arm for any candidate.  While I acknowledge the importance of such involvement in the election process, I always though that a movement such as the TEA Party would be a challenge to EVERY candidate, sort of a litmus test or measuring standard that they would have to meet.  I am just not sure that the spirit of the movement is still what it was at it’s inception.  I hope I am wrong and that this was just a little hiccup during a critical election, but I am concerned that if we do not focus our efforts as one united front against the oppression that we face from a heavy handed government, then wave of outrage that was felt when these movement were born, will break upon the steps of Congress like waves upon a rocky shore, leaving no lasting perceptible impact.

Conservatives from all walks of life showed up at the polls yesterday in this county and others like it across this state.  Now, we must unite them together in and face the challenges that we have ahead.  If we turn against one another now, over petty differences of opinion or slight variations in philosophy, and lose sight of the bigger picture.  We will have no chance of reversing this dangerous, destructive course that has been set for us by a distant, overbearing government.  We must set aside our smaller differences, for a time in the future when we have the luxury to argue amongst ourselves and focus on the main goal, taking our government back, one election at a time.

Victory Institute Action Alert

January 9, 2009

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In September, Navy SEALs captured Ahmed Hashim Abed – a most-wanted al Qaeda leader – during a nighttime raid. Abed is the suspected mastermind of a 2004 ambush that brutally murdered four Blackwater security contractors – including a former SEAL – in Fallujah, Iraq. The contractors were burned, mutilated, and suspended from a bridge. According to the terrorist himself and conflicting statements from another sailor, these SEALs might have hit Abed in the stomach.

The objective of Operation Neptune’s Fury is to exonerate the SEALs, who should be honored as heroes, not tried as criminals.

The charged SEALs are:

• SO2 Matthew McCabe, 24, of Perrysburg, Ohio
• SO1 Julio Huertas, 28, of Blue Island, Ill.
• SO2 Jonathon Keefe, 25, of Yorktown, Va.

All are from SEAL Team Ten in Little Creek, Va.

The Navy has just over 2,000 SEALs, and it takes years of training to become one. These men are some of the most elite warriors in the world. They accomplished their mission, yet could face discharge because the man responsible for the Fallujah ambush could have received a fat lip?

"How long before America’s front-line troops begin to wonder if the country really has their backs?" asked Lt. Col. Ralph Peters in a New York Post op-ed.

Unfortunately, they already are. As a SEAL officer told me in an interview, "SEALs are tired of having to watch their back – not only from the enemy – but also from our own leadership." These warriors clearly need our help. This is a battle that they cannot win.
Take Action!
Let the SEALs know that the United States does have their backs. Admiral Eric Olson is the Commanding Officer of Special Operations Command; he is a SEAL himself and has the authority to stop the trials. Politely inform him that the charges against the SEALs must be dropped. These elite warriors have went above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to securing our freedom, and deserve to be treated as heroes rather than tried as criminals.

Remember, what you communicate could either help or hurt these men’s careers.

1. Call Admiral Eric Olson at               (813) 826.5100         (813) 826.5100
2. Or Fax (813) 825.5109
3. Or Email: olsone@socom.mil
4. Then Forward this to as many people as possible

Sign up to receive Victory Institute Action Alerts here.

Donate to the SEALs’ Legal Defense Fund

I encourage all of you who can do this to express your opinion and your support for these men in honor of the sacrifices they make in the name of our safety and protection.  In my opinion, these men are heroes and Abed is lucky to still draw breath.  His fate has been far more kind than the fate of the men that he captured, tortured, murdered and then hung their desecrated bodies on display for the entire world to see.  Enough is enough.

Wow, where to start.  This has been an interesting year for me and my family.  In one single year I have become more involved in politics than I ever have been and later the same year almost entirely detached from it.  Our lives have gone through many changes this year and the roller coaster ride we have been on is nowhere near over.  I started this year much as I had many such years before, far better than some in the past.  I was the Director of Information Technology for the same environmental laboratory in Fort Worth, TX that I had been for the past few years.  My wife was working in the oil and gas industry and my kids were busy with all their activities.  I was actively posting on the site, watching the news with a passion, listening to nothing but talk radio on my commute and more active in the political landscape than I had ever been.  On January 20th, 2009 I helped reconstitute the Parker County Young Republicans a local political action group that had been inactive in our community for far too long.   I watched in February as the new administration began laying the ground work for the policy changes promise by the newly elected President and anxiously tried to discern the future of our nation.

I had not been affected much by the housing crisis that struck the nation in late 2008 and Texas was weathering the faltering economy very well indeed.  All that changed in for us in March.  Texas had been in a natural gas boom for the past few years, but as more serious talk of Cap and Trade laws began to percolate to the surface in Washington, the industry that my wife worked in began to hesitate.  Unsure of their future and fearing the crippling taxes that these new laws would bring, the major players in the natural gas industry began scaling back their expansion and growth.  Coupled with the collapse of Bear Stearns, a major creditor to this industry, a serious blow was dealt to the boom that had been feeding the Texas economy for the past few years.  Massive layoffs in all areas of the industry followed and my wife was caught up in them.  She lost her job early in March and we lost a good deal more than half of our household income.  We did not worry, though.  We had a good amount of money put back and my salary could sustain us, al be it not as comfortably as we had grown accustomed to.  As so many other American families were forced to do, we cut out unnecessary spending and tightened our belts quite a bit.

It was about this time that I began getting involved in the TEA Party movements.  I helped organize the first event in our community and I soon realized I had good reason to be so concerned.  It seemed there was no rest for the weary and I found out very quickly that our Federal government does not mind kicking you when you are down any more than any other pimp that expects his money the moment he demands it.  Upon filing our taxes that year, we discovered that my wife had earned just a tad bit too much money in the last two months of 2008.  This had unfortunately pushed us into an entirely different bracket than what we were before.  I also discovered that the Federal government was not content to just tax those last two months, nor even that last quarter, at the increased rate.  It seemed that since my wife was a contractor by definition, they thought it completely fair to tax her entire income at this new rate.  It essentially doubled the tax burden that we had calculated for the final quarter of 2008 and we had no where near enough to cover it, especially with only a single income now coming into our home.  We were screwed.  Because my wife had worked a few extra weekends and been a tad more successful in the last two months of 2008, we were slammed with an increased tax burden that claimed just under 40% of her annual income.  Seriously?  Forty frakking percent?  Yes, I believe that I am Taxed Enough Already.

We struggled on throughout the rest of the year and even managed a small, inexpensive vacation to Colorado because some friends of ours were kind enough to loan us their condo in Pagosa Springs free of charge, so it only cost us gas and food to take a really nice vacation with the kids.  However, upon arriving back home and returning to work, I knew things were not well.  A couple of weeks after my return I noticed people walking through my department, examining my hardware and asking questions about our internal systems.  I knew right away who these people were.  They were ‘the Bobs’.  After the second set came through and began asking pointed technical questions that were certainly not the business of any normal visitors touring our lab, I confronted my boss only to have my suspicions confirmed.  After nearly four years of service and dedication to the lab in question, countless late nights and weekends, while never receiving a raise in salary and having benefits constantly reduced as a key manager for the ‘good of the company’, it seemed that my job was being shopped out without so much as a kind word to me.   Not just my job, but my entire department.  In a brilliant stroke of idiocy, forced understandably upon them by the worsening economy, my company had decided to outsource its technology services.  Now this might be all well and good for a company our size that was a bakery or manufacturing plant, but seeing as how their entire business model consists of the acquisitions, collection, analysis and delivery of data in a timely manner to their customers, this was an insane choice.  Not to mention that our entire company operated on an complex hybrid database system that was heavily customized and modified, primarily by me, over the last few years of usage.  Should this system fail or go down, our entire operation ground to a halt.  A lesson thought to have been learned the hard way in early 2006 when such a crash almost put our laboratory out of business, yet apparently it was not.  The hammer fell in September of this last year.  After spending more than two weeks trying to train and prepare the technology outsourcing company to deal with our complicated infrastructure, a process that was supposed to have taken three days, I worked my last day.  I lost my job on September 20th, 2009, thirty-five years to the day that I was born.  After four years, I was ushered out with two weeks of severance and a ‘Sorry.  Good luck’.  It was not the best of birthday presents.  I later learned that more than a third of their workforce followed close behind me.

The next two months were hard as we had absolutely no major income coming into our home.  I had started refereeing soccer for our local association early in the fall and took to doing onsite computer service and repair for businesses in the local area, while both my wife and I frantically looked for work.  I volunteered to ref every game they would throw at me, but between it and the occasional service work I was doing it was not enough.  We began tearing through our savings very quickly.  When we had been hit with the enormous tax news five months earlier, we had decided that since there absolutely no way to cover our tax burden that we should hold on to the money that we had, just in case we had to live on it.  In hind sight, it was a wise choice.  We used it to pay off and ahead what we could and did our best to live on what I was bringing in, finally having to go on unemployment benefits for just over a month.

Finally in November we caught a glimpse of light as the company whose software I had supported for the past three years at my laboratory, decided that it would have been a shame to let my knowledge and experience with their product go to waste.  I was hired as a contractor for them in the last few weeks of November.  You can bet I was giving thanks at Thanksgiving.  It started out slowly, working only a few hours a week as they ramped up my position.  It felt nice to work for a company that was actually excited to have you on board and not leaving you with a sense that you were simply lucky to have a job.  Since they essentially created this position for me, it took a few weeks to get up to speed, but I am now pulling almost full time hours each week, with more and more on the horizon. 

The trials were not entirely over as we lost a vehicle right after I got my job.  My wife’s car just stopped running one day.  She would start and run so long as you kept feeding her gas, but the second she went to idle… dead as a post.  With only me working, and most of that being from home, we decided we could live with one vehicle and let it sit in the drive for then next few weeks.  Around this time, my wife started getting some good prospects on jobs again.  It seemed as the threat of Cap and Trade began to wane under stout resistance from the public and in the face of the Climategate discoveries, some of the oil and gas companies were cautiously looking to resume their exploration of the Barnett Shale fields, so we were once again hopeful.  On the Friday before Christmas my wife returned from dropping our children off at school with tears filling her eyes as she entered the house.  On the way back from school, the entire electrical system in my truck had failed.  Nothing worked.  By the time I got out to inspect it, the truck was dead as could be.  What now?  I was not sure how much more of this I could take.  I returned that afternoon from picking up my vehicle and the early Christmas present from my parents in the form of a new alternator for my truck, to once again find my wife in tears.  I could not imagine what had happened in the short time I had been gone, but I was fairly sure that I could easily be the last straw my sanity could take.  When I asked what was wrong she simple looked at me and said, “I got the job.  I start tomorrow.” 

Christmas was still a tight one around here, there was no where near as much under the tree as their has been in the past, but to the immense pride of a parent and credit to my children, their lists were quite small themselves this year.  They knew and in knowing they did not ask for much at all.  Thanks to the help of our families, both hers and mine, we were able to give them a decent Christmas after all.  My oldest son even got his wish for a White Christmas, something I cannot recall in at least twenty-five years in where I live.  Not one such as we had this year, complete with snowball fights, snowmen, snow ice cream and all the trappings of real winter wonderland.  At least for three days, that is.  Snow just does not last long here in Texas.

By the grace of God, we start a new year having survived a very difficult one.  It will take us some time to recover having fallen from a combined income well in excess of $150,000 to one of a couple of hundred bucks a week when worked every soccer game that I could possibly get my hands on, but just knowing it is coming is a gigantic burden lifted from my shoulders.  I now work for a wonderful software development company out of North Carolina as the regional Sales and Implementation Engineer.  I love my work  and my wife is back doing what she enjoys as well.  We are about to start a new soccer season where I will coach my new U6 Wildcats, hopefully to another winning season and cheer on my daughters U9 team and my oldest son’s U12 Select team.  Life is decent and getting better by the day. 

Time I get back to one of the things that gave me so much joy and entertainment.  More posts to follow.

There seems to finally be a light at the end of the tunnel. It appears that I have found a job, and not a moment too soon.  I have failed miserably to keep this site updated over the past month or so, yet I have not given up on it at all.  My focus has simply not been on the turmoil of the political landscape while the threats were closer at hand.  Hopefully, I will begin to post more often now that I have some relief on the way.

As to other events, our soccer season is nearly at a close.  I have to say that I am very disappointed this year to see it end so quickly.  I have a wonderful group of boys on my team and cannot wait until the Spring season starts.  I have seen them grow so much in this short period of time and I am excited to think what we can accomplish next go round.  My daughter’s team is continuing to improve this season, but they still have a long way to go.  She has been amazing and it has been a real treat to see how easily she stepped into the keeper position and made it her own.  I have to continue working with her through the off-season.  She has her brother’s natural talent between the pipes, but she still has to develop it.  Our oldest has had quite the challenge this year, having only played his third out of eight scheduled games this past Sunday.  They keep canceling his games due to rain and wet field conditions.  It has been frustrating.  Top that off with him getting taken out by a clearly illegal charge on Sunday and you can see his frustration.  I have to say, I have never seen as reckless of officiating as I did from the Arlington officials on Sunday.  Our keepers were charged three separate times, all well within their box and all reckless shoulder charges when they attempted to play the ball.  The one that took my son out would have surely drawn a red card in most leagues, instead the forward was allowed to play the ball after dropping the keeper in mid-air and the score was allowed to stand.  No foul, no card, no nothing.  Nice.  Had it just been that one play, I would have chalked it up to the center simply missing the hit during play.  However, since they had already awarded a penalty shot to the opposing team for the first charge where an opposing forward impacted him while he was playing the ball well within his box and did not call a second shoulder charge on a keeper mid-air to the backup keeper that had to play when my son went down, I was supremely pissed.  As a certified UEFA/NTSA official myself, I understand that you should let the boys play soccer.  However, there are rules in place to protect the keeper from harm while playing the ball in his box.  As dangerous a position as keeper is, to expect one to engage a charging opponent with no protection from the officials is insane.  The rules governing keeper contact are designed to prevent exactly what was allowed to happen during our game on Sunday.  If a forward can simply take the keeper out with a dangerous charge while he is most vulnerable, such as when he is leaping into the air to stop a shot, what is to stop them from doing so and scoring, without regard to the safety of other players?  Nothing.  That is why the game forbids the sort of dangerous play that the center allowed to occur this weekend.  If it happened in our association, the center would be up for an A & D hearing before he knew what hit him.

Anyway, enough soccer talk.  My goal is to actually post something political tomorrow.  We will see how that goes. Until then…

It has been far too long since my last post. I apologize for my delinquency in maintaining the site, but things have just not been so great the past few weeks. I really had lost the desire to post or the will to even keep up on current issues. All of my energy has been focused on returning myself to the world of the gainfully employed and on getting another project off the ground that is related to the website. I have not had much success with the former, but the latter is progressing steadily.

I have also been quite busy in the evenings with soccer. I now have three children involved in the sport and I am more involved that I have ever been. My oldest son is playing in a competitive U12 Select league in Fort Worth and learning far more than I could ever teach him by having the depth of knowledge available in a competitive club. He has been getting to work with older keepers and is really focusing on more advanced techniques. He has begrudgingly earned the nickname ‘Air Bender’ from one of our rival teams in our indoor league, because she commented that he can jump in the air and bend in almost impossible ways to make stops. He was proud of that.

My daughter has decided to play again this year and finally landed on a good U9 recreational team. She even got to play her first games as a keeper over the past few weeks. She had begged to be put in the box and I was concerned as to how she would do, lacking the height advantage of her older brother. I was pleasantly surprised. Three games back, during a frustrating game against one of the best teams in her division, it seemed that the other team had our main keeper off balance. Our head coach decided to put my daughter in the game and see how she handled it. It was a pretty big gamble, since we had only just started working her in the box in practice, but it paid off. She even surprised me with a level of aggressiveness that I had not expected. She seemed fearless in the box… Too much so at one point as the only goal she let by her that half was caused because she came out way too far and ended up out of position. She was caught in front of her defense and the other team broke it past all of them. She learns quickly though. The rest of the game she started to manage her full backs, shouting positioning and coverages to them and then letting them do their jobs. She never left the goal open like that again. You could tell she had been watching her older brother. (Who is now proudly working with her on the skills and techniques that he is picking up.)

My youngest has been waiting for this season for a long time. He just started his first year of U6 developmental and is having a blast. I have to admit that I am as well. It has been a long time since I helped coach a U6 team and it was quite a large adjustment from coaching my U12 boys last year. I consider it a good practice when we can all stay focused long enough to learn one or two skills. If I can manage to keep the ice cream truck away, then we usually do just fine. I swear that guy preys on soccer practices… He was even diving through the parking lot at the game fields the other day. You know how quickly you can lose the attention of nine five year olds when they hear the music of an ice cream truck? Pretty damn fast, I can assure you. I have been really surprised by our success. We still have a tendency to degenerate in to a mass huddle on the soccer field, but other than our first game we have at least managed to get the ball moving in the right direction most of the time. I even noticed in our last game on Tuesday, that we are starting to learn our positions and actually stay in them a good deal of the time. Impressive for it just being our third game. We have actually won all of our games so far, although we don’t really keep track at this age, and it has been because of one little hispanic firecracker that we have on our team. This kid is amazing. He has scored 80% of our goals and kept more than a few from going in. He seems to be everywhere at once and has amazing control and shot accuracy for a five year old. The main thing though is to see how much fun these little guys are having when they are out there running around kicking and screaming. Makes it all worth the effort.

Me? Well, I am coaching the U6 team, assistant coaching my daughter’s U12 team and now I also referee for our association. I am living, breathing and bleeding soccer right now. Well, not so much bleeding as applying generous amounts of analgesic cream to sore muscles. Let me tell you, eight year old girls have far more energy, agility and stamina than I do. However, I do hope that this will help me to get in better shape. It certainly feels like it is after running around chasing plays for a couple of hours a day at least twice a week. My calf muscles are killing me, but it is all good.

Anyway, I completed my election judge training today and during the discussion about how important elections are, I started thinking about how lax I had been with the site. I will be remedying that immediately. Since I have the time, I will try to return to posting at least one article a day over critical current events. I have a wealth of material to work with lately and I only fear it will get much, much worse with the way this administration is pushing dangerous agendas upon the American people.

I tend to keep this site away from most religious matters, other than that of religious freedoms and the fact that I believe this a nation to be founded on Christian principles. However, sometimes there are issues that cannot be avoided. I am by creed a Lutheran. More specifically I am a member of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (LCMS) and not a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA). Yet, I find myself deeply disturbed by recent developments in our sister church.

To understand a little about this, requires a bit of a history lesson. The Lutheran Church and the Protestant movement in general were founded after the actions of Martin Luther in 16th century. Luther challenged the authority of the Roman Catholic Church to grant forgiveness through the power of indulgences. These indulgences were sold to offset sins committed by the buyers. They could even be sold ahead of time as sort of a sin credit. Much like the farce that we see today in the movement towards carbon credits, these indulgences allowed people to assuage their guilt for committing sins by paying the Church the appropriate amount. Luther was appalled by this practice and felt that only the word of God as written in the Bible had such authority. In the document know as “The 95 Theses”, Luther condemned the actions of the Church and claimed forgiveness was a gift from God, to be obtained not by works and deeds, but by His grace alone through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ. Luther posted “The 95 Theses” on the door of All Saint’s on October 31, 1517 and started one of the most influential shifts in religion since the death of Christ, the Protestant Reformation. Out of the Reformation arose many of the modern religions we recognize today: Baptist, Episcopalian, Methodist and, of course, Lutheran to name just a few. The teachings of these Protestant religions held the word of God as the ultimate authority and fought against the abuses of earthly power that had been rampant in the Catholic Church. This went to the point of open warfare at times as the Roman Catholic Church tried to maintain or reassert its control over the rebellious splinters forming as the Reformations religions. Ultimately, the Church was unable to maintain control and was severely damaged by the unstoppable movement that Luther had founded.

Today, these religions still hold that the word of God is the ultimate authority. They still teach that salvation comes not from our own will, intent or deeds, but as a divine grace awarded those who believe in the Son of God. They still hold that no Church or man can assume authority contrary to the word of God as given to us in the Bible, nor may they countermand His word. Therefore, the action taken recently by the ELCA causes me great concern.

In a direct departure from scripture, the ELCA has embraced the homosexual lifestyle and has decreed that it will allow homosexual clergy to lead its congregations. This is an extremely disturbing turn of events, since the act of homosexuality is specifically condemned by God everywhere it is mentioned in scripture. I can fully understand allowing members who were homosexuals, since you cannot judge the heart of a man and those members may be sincerely repentant of their sins. However, to allow sexually active, openly homosexual members into the clergy itself is clearly against the scripture. I once walked away from a church who allowed an unrepentant, adulterous pastor who had a chemical dependency problem to remain behind the pulpit and he was a heterosexual. No one who displays such unrepentant sinful behavior, deserves to lead others in the word of God. I have never claimed to be a man free from sin. The truth is far from it, but that is why I do not pretend to lead others in God’s word. I ask for forgiveness and the strength no to sin again, but know that I am one of the flock, not one of the shepherds. I can assure you that the Missouri Synod Lutheran’s will not follow the lead of our misguided sister church, for if they do, they would lose members left and right.

Homosexuality is a difficult subject to discuss for some and I am sure that this article will get me flamed almost immediately. However, just as someone who is gay has every right to believe that there is nothing wrong with it, I have every right to find it abhorrent, a sin and an affront to God based upon my beliefs. Somehow in this nation, it has become acceptable for one person’s deeply held belief to be acceptable and another’s just as deeply held belief to be suppressed. While I understand that some of this is an inevitable result of a multi-cultural, multi-national, multi-religion society, how is it that it is increasingly the majority who is oppressed in favor of the minority? I do not agree with homosexuality, because it is condemned by my faith. I have that right. I do not believe in murder, adultery, theft, idolatry, dishonesty and I cherish the sanctity of life for the exact same reasons. I have that right. I am under no obligation to surrender my principles and be forced to accept the lifestyle or actions of others that I feel are immoral or sinful. Those who do not wish to live by the precepts of my religion can go and do so in peace. However, they have no right to force my religion to adapt to or accept their choices when it stands in direct contravention to them.

I thought there were to be no laws in this nation governing religion or the free exercise thereof? That is unfortunately not how things work today. We have seen the Courts force churches to allow homosexual members and require they conduct homosexual marriages and now we see our Congress considering making it a hate crime to preach the sins of homosexuality from the pulpit. I don’t think so. You may go and believe whatever you want however you wish, but you afford me that same right. Why can homosexual protesters stand across the street from my work and protest for their rights, demanding that others accept them, but when others show to counter protest they are immediately and without questions condemned for their beliefs. I have no problem that there is a gay bar across the street from our lab, what I have a problem with is being told that I have to accept their lifestyle choices and be tolerant of them. No I do not. I will accept that they can do what they will and I will feel pity for them and their choices, but I will not accept that their lifestyle is normal because my religion says it is not. To do so would be to surrender a piece of myself, simply to assuage the guilt of someone else or to avoid offending them. I will not judge what is in their hearts nor condemn them, for that is not my place. However, I can judge their actions to be against what I believe and that most certainly is my right.

I do condemn the choice of the ELCA as their actions are directly against the word of God and do not follow Christian teachings at all. I welcome all ELCA members who feel betrayed by their church to remember their brethren in the LCMS and know that we will not walk the path of the world and accept such things. Come and join us.

I have been extremely busy the first few days of this week and it seems that it will continue for a while. With projects at work, personal projects I am trying to get off the ground and political events I am trying to keep up with, I have been running around like crazy the past few weeks.

Soccer season is starting again and I am sad to say that I will no longer be coaching my U12 Boys team. My son has been my keeper for that team for quite some time now and had he played recreational again this year, I would have gladly coached them again. However, he will not be playing recreational soccer, but moving up to competitive via a Select league in Fort Worth. I have to brag a bit on him, because with his mother still being out of work, there was no way I could afford a Select league this year. I had told him that he could try out for Select, but that we simply could not afford to let him play at this time. He understood, but wanted to give it a shot anyway, just so he could see what it was like. Immediately after the tryout, the coach for the team approached me and asked when he could start. I explained the situation to him and told him that I wished things were different, but maybe next year we could try again. Apparently, that was not acceptable to him. The team offered to scholarship my son and take care of all costs other than the uniform and league registration fees, taking the cost for the year from a couple of thousand dollars down to a couple of hundred. The coach was so impressed with his ability that he told us not to let finances be an obstacle at all; they would work with us to make sure he could play. I told my son that he should be very proud of himself. He has worked hard on his skills and is very dedicated to improving himself. I told him that this was a reflection of that and something he should appreciate and have pride in.

That however is not the end of my coaching career, but actually just another beginning. I have all three children in soccer this year and I have picked up my youngest son’s U6 Boys team. This will be different. It will take some adjustment moving back to U6 from U12 and I will have to go back to the basics with the young players. I think it will be a blast though and cannot wait to start practice. My daughter landed on a good team with a friend of hers and can hardly contain herself with excitement over the fact that their colors are pink.

I have also started something interesting; referee school. I am taking the Class 9 NTSA Referee course which will allow me to ref up to U14 Recreational as the Center and U14 Select as an assistant. I am kind of excited about this opportunity. It will give me a better understanding of the game as seen from a different angle and I feel that it will make me a better coach. It will also allow me the opportunity to see various different levels and styles of play on a regular basis. Not to mention I think it will be fun and they pay pretty well per game. What could be better than doing something that you enjoy, getting paid for it and learning how to be a better coach all at the same time?

We also start school on Monday and we are in the normal end of summer rush to get the last few school supplies and schedules squared away, while getting in a few more fun days before the kids return back to the routine. It is also the first year that we will have all three children in school. This will be different for sure. My youngest is excited as can be to finally get to go to school, but I am kind of sad. It means he is officially no longer a baby. This year will be fun for them though, as it is the only year that all three of them will be in the same school. The oldest two are very excited about getting to show him around and teach him all the things he needs to know. Monday will be an interesting day.

I hope to get back to posting some insightful and informative political discourse over the next few days, but I am swamped with everything going on so we will have to see. Until then, keep a close eye on the changing healthcare landscape. This is still the major issue of the foreseeable future and seems to be rocking back and forth with one steady, underlying current: the American people are forcefully resisting no matter what the Federal government does. The majority of Democrats seem to be slightly disoriented and on fairly unsteady and shifting ground, while the Republicans and some Democrats in Congress are clearly getting the message from their constituents and gearing up for a long fight in September. This is going to get interesting.

I have added an new section to the site.  In the top left hand corner you will find the Image Gallery button.  It is still a work in progress, but this page will contain any sets of images that I post up for articles such as the TEA Party events and other images that I have taken in general.

I have posted up the pictures from the July 4th, TEA Party in Weatherford and a few of my personal favorites for you to browse through.  I hope you enjoy.  There will be many more to come.

Weatherford 4th of July – TEA Party

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Personal Favorites

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Hopefully, I will be getting the chance to photograph more of a political race as it starts to heat up here at home.  A friend of mine is challenging Representative Kay Granger for her seat in Congress representing District 12 here in Texas.  His name is Mike Brassovan and he is a strong Christian conservative, who firmly believes in limited government and personal freedoms.  I encourage any of you locals to watch for this race closely and get to know Mike as a person and a candidate.  This man is no politician.  Unlike those we have come to expect to run, he has not made a career out of politics, but has worked hard provide a good life for his family and build a successful private business.  He is one of us.  He is a Christian, a husband, a father, an engineer and a businessman.  He is not a politician.  Just the kind of man we need representing us in Washington.

After discussing things a bit more last night, we decided to head home this morning. Still not knowing what the situation was with our cards and unable to contact the bank again until Monday morning to follow up on the issue, our options are fairly limited. Without viable credit cards, we must make the trip back home in a single day without a layover anywhere. Most hotels will not reserve a room without first being able to validate the cost on a credit card, no matter how much cash you are carrying.

Thus begins this morning’s trip, the vehicle is packed and we say goodbye to the wonderful town of Pagosa Springs a tad bit earlier than we had planned to do. We head out down US 84 bound for Roswell, NM then over to Abilene, TX were we will stop and dine at Famous Dave’s, a bar-b-que joint that my daughter has been dying to go to ever since we told her about the place two years ago. (This tiny petite little girl can almost put away a full rack of ribs on her own.)

The drive led us out the main part of the mountains right away. We crossed over several small ranges of hills, but could only see the mountains off in the ever increasing distance to the sides. You could readily see the change from the various greens of the tall pines to the more sparse vegetation of cedar, sage and scrub brush. All too quickly we had left the beauty of the San Juan forests behind and began our descent into the rough rocky terrain of New Mexico. While some of the mountains in the northern part of that state offer their own majesty and beauty with their layered cuts displaying the wildly ranging colors of the earth, the rocky outcroppings and jagged ridge lines just did not compare to the lush green landscape we had just left. Once we arrived at Santa Fe, the joy of vacationing had left us and been replaced by the chore of returning home.

I must say that the drive from Santa Fe to Roswell was one of the boring experiences I can recall in recent memory. You cross some of the most barren and desolate terrain available in this area, with nothing to see for miles around. It was one of the longest stretches of highway absent any signs of habitation that I have ever driven on. The route from Roswell, NM to Post, TX was not much better, though it seemed to be broken up by some small communities here and there. At one point, I topped a hill and could see the road stretch out in front of me for probably twenty miles in what seemed to be an impossible straight line. It was a struggle to stay conscious.

One interesting sight we did see coming down US 84 north of Snyder, TX was the vast plains dotted by thousands of wind turbines. It was almost dark when we approached Snyder and the flashing red lights caught our attention. There were hundreds of the dotting the landscape ahead and to the sides of us. As we approached, you could tell that for every red light you could see another two or three windmills existed that were not lit. We passed miles of wind farms, with these behemoth structures slowly turning in the West Texas breeze. It was a truly amazing sight to behold, how this barren land just barely able to support farming, had been turned into a way to generate inexpensive clean energy.

Unfortunately, I had made a mistake in my calculations for our journey home. In plotting our course, I had planned for us to hit Abilene, TX at about 9:00PM so that we could eat at the restaurant that my daughter had been dying to go to. However, I had forgotten to calculate that we lost an hour upon crossing the date line when entering Texas. We arrived at Abilene just after 10:00PM to find that Famous Dave’s had closed. I was really upset with myself, since the one thing she had wanted to do on this trip was have her ribs at the place her mom and I had raved so much about, but true to form, she just smiled at me and told me not to worry about it. She had not been feeling well and probably didn’t need to eat ribs today anyway. As we grabbed some fast food and headed home, I promised her that this next weekend I would drive her to Abilene just so she could get her ribs.

We arrived home about 1:00AM Monday morning and it never felt better to lay my head down on my own bed. I love Colorado and thoroughly enjoyed this trip. We had a blast and saw sights that we had never before had encountered. However, there is something about coming home that you just cannot replace. I am glad to be back and I cannot wait to go again.

It is now the third full day in this beautiful mountain paradise and my allergies have fully kicked in. It did not take long for the fresh mountain cedar to start kicking my butt and now it is in full swing. Oh well, every point of refuge has its price.

We awoke this morning a tad later than what we had planned, but what are vacations for if not resting? The day before we had decided to head out west to Durango and see what we could find. Before we got underway, we spotted a wildlife preserve sign and decided to head down US 84 and take a look. We should have saved ourselves the trip. What I was hoping for was a large open ranged area where you could drive through and encounter some of the native wildlife. What we found was essentially a zoo, with native wildlife set in sectioned areas that you could walk by or take a guided horse ride around. We all decided that we can go to a zoo any time that we choose. We elected to skip this particular attraction and head to Durango.

The drive over to Durango was not nearly as awe inspiring as the one over Wolf Creek Pass, but what lay ahead during this foray could not yet be imagined. We stopped at the Durango tourism center, where our plans for the day suddenly changed. We spotted another mine tour just north of Silverton and the kids decided that it would be the event for the afternoon. A quick meal at Del Taco and we were off north out of Durango on US 550. I knew we would have to head up into the mountains again, but I was unprepared for what we were driving into. As we began the climb up towards Silverton we were presented with beautiful folding valleys cut right between two enormous ranges. This was not just a simple climb up as we doglegged back and for the between the peaks. When we reached the top of Molas Pass, we stopped to take some photographs and drink in the beautiful sights.

We headed down into the small community of Silverton and out up to the Old Hundred Mine. We arrived with enough time before the next tour to allow the kids a chance to pan for some precious minerals and stones in the troughs outside. Finally, we donned our hardhats and raincoats and boarded the mine tram. The tram took us over a third of a mile into the mountain through the dark shaft entrance where 47° water seeped out of the rocks and showered us o the way. A strong draft blew the cold mine air towards the surface and it took a bit of time to adjust to the underground environment, especially since we were all in shorts and light summer ware. The tour was wonderful, complete with working mining jacks and operation rail equipment. It really gave you a sense of awe and respect for those men who risked life and limb to collect treasures out of these solid granite walls.

After the tour we headed down to one of the nearby mountain streams for a bit more rock hounding. We were not nearly as fortunate here as we had been near Creede. Most of the rocks were just solid granite pieces with no hint of the more volcanic formations that yielded the beautiful rocks from the day before. We finally decided to head to back to Durango and grab a bite to eat before heading back.

Our youngest had been asking for Chinese food for the better part of the past two days so we tried to find some in Durango. We succeeded in finding a wonderful Chinese restaurant in the 900 block of Main St in Durango. This place was delicious and they were not shy on their portions either. Much of it was served in the traditional Chinese family style, with different complimenting entrees for each person. I had not enjoyed a meal this much in quite some time, until it came time to pay.

Suddenly we had a problem. Our cards would not work. This had happened earlier in the day when we had tried to get gas, but I had assumed it was just a fluke or a communications issue and used the cash I had to pay for the fuel. Now I was getting worried. My wife used some of our remaining cash to pay for the meal, while I logged on to our account to see what was wrong. To my surprise I could find nothing wrong. Our cards were still active and funds were definitely available, but nothing would accept them. I let my wife drive back to the condo so that I could investigate this further. When I finally reached a live person at our bank, she agreed with me that there was nothing wrong with the cards or the account and that plenty of funds were available. She seemed as confused about the matter as we were, but it did nothing to change the fact that we appeared to now be stuck 800 miles away from home with only the cash we had on hand and that was not terribly much. She made once suggestion that we thought we would try so I headed to an ATM to test her theory. Fortunately, we could still withdraw money from our checking account. This was an enormous inconvenience but at least provided us an option that would allows us to return home.

Once we found an ATM, I was very relived to find that I could indeed withdraw cash without any problems. Finding some solace in this we returned to the condo and crashed for the evening, still unsure of what happened to cause this problem.