Johnny Cash 1932-2003

Today is Johnny Cash's birthday...he would have been 78. He died in 2003 less than four months after his wife, June Carter Cash, whom he loved tremendously. It has been said he died of a broken heart from missing her so much.

I grew up listening to Johnny Cash on my dad's record albums and his reel-to-reel tape machine on Sundays after church. I knew every song and knew, instantly, that Johnny Cash sound. His songs were so pure and spoke to everyone. No country singer, in my opinion, has ever touched the landscape of America like he did. Not Garth Brooks, not Tobi Keith, not Reba. No one did so much over his career.

If you haven't seen the movie "Walk the Line", it is more than worth the price to rent. I saw a call to wear black today to honor Johnny Cash...I, for my part...am just listening to his music.

Enough Already NBC!!!!

Has anyone else noticed the ridiculous amount of coverage given this Winter Olympics to one of the most mundane sports in existence? That sport being...curling! Yes, the extremely competitive and grueling sport that is a winter version of shuffleboard without the really old people. I am not saying it is not a difficult thing to do, sliding a round rock down the ice to hit a target, all the while "sweeping" the ice to help control it, but C'mon Man!! Enough is enough!

There has been more prime-time space on NBC and MSNBC given to curling than to any other individual sport...at least it appears so to my untrained eye. Want to watch a hockey game that does not include the U.S.A, Canada or Russia and has no medal implications? Fat chance! Ice dancing has also had its fair share of coverage but not near the same as curling.

Last night I turned on the Olympics, hoping to see something good even though the skiing and bobsledding events are done...only to be presented with the finals of women's curling! I am even from a part of the country that has curling arenas and I still know nothing about the "sport", nor do I want to. Please IOC, don't let NBC cover the Olympics again. They tend to screw up every sporting event they cover.

"Separation of Church & State" NOT in Constitution

There have been a few comments on my Facebook page about a posting I placed of a blog I had done back in October, which addressed prayer in schools being absent. I thought I would do a little research on the separation of church and state.

I have always claimed that the true meaning behind that phrase was that no church would be made the "Church of America". Turns out, I was right. In addition to that, it also was originally meant to keep the State out of Church business, not the Church out of State business. America has always been a Christian nation. In fact the Supreme Court in 1892 gave what is known as the Trinity Decision. In that decision the Supreme Court declared, "this is a Christian nation." John Quincy Adams said, "The highest glory of the American Revolution was, it connected in one indissoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity." That is one of our Founding Fathers, folks! Can't be made any clearer. According to the website "All About History", at the time of the Constitutions writing, America was 90-95% "practicing" Christian. The common number tossed around these days is about 85% are Christian (not necessarily practicing). So why is it, then, that anything in society that lets Christianity out of the churches gets squashed? No Ten Commandments on government property, no displays of the Nativity, no allowing a Christian holiday to be celebrated its true way...(Christmas, Easter).
We are letting the minority of Americans twist the meaning of the Constitution in a way that is far off the meaning of the Founding Fathers. Sounds to me like a lot of Christians in that majority number of 85% are denying Christ. It is unfortunate that in society today we are so bent on removing God from our daily lives. Wonder why your life isn't going just how you want it to or why the world seems to be going to hell in a hand basket...ask God!!

For a very good article on the REAL meaning behind the phrase "separation of church and state", follow this link to All About History: http://www.allabouthistory.org/separation-of-church-and-state.htm

Ever Been Hit by the Karma Bus?

Why is it that people can never leave well enough alone and then wonder why they end up getting run over by the Karma Bus? You warn a person..."don't do 'A', it will bring nothing good in the future", and that person ignores you and doesn't just do "A", they do "B", and "C" too. Does that person not deserve, then, to get run over by the Karma Bus when the other person, or life in general, does "D"? If all life's lessons must be learned by getting run over by that Bus...it is going to be a rough life.

Read...THINK...Respond

It has happened again! I comment on a friends posting on Facebook and shortly thereafter get return comments, either from that person or another, that is either quite harsh or completely inaccurate. Yesterday I commented on a friend's joining a group calling Glenn Beck an idiot. I responded with a comparison to James Carville. Someone else attacks me as endorsing Glenn Beck and parroting the hatred spewed by the Conservative side of life. There were two, maybe three bullet statements between myself and the original poster and NOWHERE in there was an endorsement of Glenn Beck. In fact, I have a hard time not thinking he is an idiot myself!!!

Now I am not saying that I may not be a lightning rod for my Liberal friends. After all, I do sometimes take a shot that I know will get some people jumping. But why is it that often times Liberals cannot see the forest for the trees? They focus on one small piece that they can attack on and miss everything around it. The get stuck on stupid sometimes and cannot get past it.

Prime example: I made a simple post on my page stating that military members needed to be very careful about what and how they made comments regarding the possible changing of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in the military. Suddenly I was being attacked about the policy itself and my non-support of gays and everything else other than that I was providing a simple public service announcement to my fellow military friends.

I end with this simple request, especially of my Liberal friends (if I still have any after this)...read the entire post/writing and make an intelligent response. Emotional responses tend to be filled with anger/hatred and are not as intelligent as you normally may be.

And as my favorite Liberal friend said: "I love poking the bear...just as much as the bear loves poking me..." Keep smiling folks and we can keep having some very spirited conversations while I keep poking that bear.

After One Year...How is That Stimulus Working for Ya?

So at the one year anniversary of the Obama Stimulus Package...he claims that the $862 billion package is an unequivocal success. I beg to differ. I tried to refinance my house which has two mortgages on it, both with Citimortgage. Citi Bank got a $35 billion chunk of help from Uncle Sugar. When I asked the guy where that money was since they weren't giving any out in loans...he patiently told me that he would give me a lesson that they normally do not talk about. Though the bank had gotten $35 billion from the government, they had lost over $43 billion in California alone...guess where that help went to. He also walked through my request with me. With the new rules bestowed on the banks by the Feds, combining my two mortgages would have been detrimental to my financial situation. Not only would my two mortgages when combined into one (usually that creates one lower payment) not create much lowering in my payment, the mortgage insurance I would now be FORCED to have...would make my payment much higher than my two payments were currently. Yep...that stimulus helped me a bunch!!!

Check out the real beneficiaries of the Stimulus:

- $300,000 for a GPS-equipped helicopter to hunt for radioactive rabbit droppings at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state.
- $30 million for a spring training baseball complex for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies.
- $11 million for Microsoft to build a bridge connecting its two headquarter campuses in Redmond, Wash., which are separated by a highway.
- $430,000 to repair a bridge in Iowa County, Wis., that carries 10 or fewer cars per day.
- $800,000 for the John Murtha Airport in Johnstown, Pa., serving about 20 passengers per day, to build a backup runway.
- $219,000 for Syracuse University to study the sex lives of freshmen women.
- $2.3 million for the U.S. Forest Service to rear large numbers of arthropods, including the Asian longhorned beetle, the nun moth and the woolly adelgid.
- $3.4 million for a 13-foot tunnel for turtles and other wildlife attempting to cross U.S. 27 in Lake Jackson, Fla.
- $1.15 million to install a guardrail for a persistently dry lake bed in Guymon, Okla.
- $9.38 million to renovate a century-old train depot in Lancaster County, Pa., that has not been used for three decades.
- $2.5 million in stimulus checks sent to the deceased.
- $6 million for a snow-making facility in Duluth, Minn.
- $173,834 to weatherize eight pickup trucks in Madison County, Ill.
- $20,000 for a fish sperm freezer at the Gavins Point National Fish Hatchery in South Dakota.

So...how is that stimulus package working out for ya?

I Can Post to You, But I Don't Want to Hear What You Say!

I am going to take advantage of my blog to make my "controversial comments" and then post to my FB page where people who WANT to read them can, and others can ignore them. It seems that some folks on the more liberal side of life don't like it when I post conservative viewpoints on Facebook because it then populates their homepage and they are "forced" to read my views and it infuriates them. However, when I get their blathering about gay-marriage, abortion rights, etc., I am to smile and put up with their postings without making a comment.

The most recent offense by the liberal side of Facebook...the recent posting...on MY page...of friends who have chosen to support "1-Million Strong for Same-Sex Marriage Throughout the United States". This crap hit my page today with the unbelievably disrespectful rendition of MY US Flag you see with this posting. I have served this flag proudly for over 23 years, gone to war to protect it...and now I see it disrespected in such a way. Homosexuals want...no DEMAND that they get what they consider their rights. How can you take a group seriously who has no respect for the country that gives them their freedom to express these demands?