Tebow, as I’m sure we’re all aware, is a Christian who tends to anger a lot of people because of his public exhibitions of his faith. Don’t get me wrong, I am a big Tim Tebow fan. He may not be the most athletic quarterback, and he has this funky left-handed delivery, but he loves the sport and he loves the Lord, not in that order. And the Left has constantly vilified him, ever since his days at the University of Florida when he would wear Bible verses on his eye-black. The Left hates Christianity, pure and simple, and they found a big target for their hatred in Tebow. Never mind the fact that he helped the Broncos win their last seven regular season games in 2011 … Broncos management bowed to public pressure and traded him to the Jets in the 2011 off-season. And even though he’s a better quarterback than Mark Sanchez, he was rarely used in 2012. Worse, it seemed as though the Jets never tried to weave him into their system, because the times he did play he seemed out of rhythm.

And then there’s Brendan Ayanbadejo. The former Baltimore Ravens linebacker says there are as many as four NFL players who are ready to come out of the closet. Ayanbadejo told NFL.com’s Greg Rosenthal that it would be a “monumental” day if the four players came out together.

The constant promotion by the Left of the gay lifestyle continues to amaze, shock, sadden, and anger me. This truly is a “tyranny of the minority.” According to studies, between 73 and 76% of the population of the United States claims to be practicing Christians. Another study suggests that only 1.7% of the population of the US is gay. So, why are we letting a small group of people (and their enablers) try and tell three-fourths of the nation not only to accept and embrace homosexuality, but also to promote it? This article on Newsbusters about an MSNBC anchor using her daughter as a shill for the gay lifestyle says all you need to know about the dangers of letting this go  on unchecked.

Why is it people in this country celebrate, encourage, and even promote the gay lifestyle while someone like Tim Tebow, who by all accounts is a pretty good guy, is vilified for his faith?

Jesus taught us in the New Testament to “turn the other cheek.” In other words, don’t be quick to retaliate against an attack. But (and this is my opinion only) I don’t think He meant to allow others to attack with impunity. Even He fought the money-changers in the temple. It’s one thing to be slow to anger, and to be thoughtful and considerate, but it’s another thing to let people walk all over you.

And I think that’s one of the problems with Tim Tebow. He goes merrily along, allowing others to attack and sully his name and keep him from playing the sport he loves, all the while seeming to ignore the attacks or shrug his shoulders and say, “Whaddya gonna do?” And the problem with Tim Tebow is that he reflects the attitudes of much of Christian America – don’t fight back, don’t bring yourself down to “their” level, etc.

I would like to think that even God would permit a person to defend themselves against an attack. And we are truly under attack from the anti-life Left.

It’s time to fight back.

This, and another training video parodying “Gilligan’s Island,” cost $60,000 to make.

That’s $60,000 of our tax money, up in smoke…for something like this.

And, as even the IRS is considering furloughing employees because of the stupidity that’s called “Sequestration” (which is only a 1.2% reduction in the rate of spending, not real, meaningful spending cuts), the government still finds time to spend money on “frivolous” training videos (according to U. S. Rep. Charles Boustany, R-Louisiana).

Are you mad yet? You should be. This is just one example of how the government – whose employees are supposed to work for you and me – waste our taxpayer dollars on a daily basis.

And yet, I was thinking last night – government is nothing more than a set of directions for how a nation is supposed to be run. Our Constitution is an instruction manual and a road map for how the United States of America is supposed to operate.

Yet, just like drivers who cannot read a road map to save their lives, we have people working in government who cannot fathom how this behemoth is supposed to behave. So, they do what most people do when they believe nobody’s looking – they behave childishly and immaturely. They party because the parents are out of town.

They spend our money because they think we’re stupid. And perhaps we are. More and more people show they have little to no interest in how government runs, just so long as they get their freebies and handouts from Uncle Sam. And guess how many of those folks put the current regime in office back in 2008?

Civics classes no longer teach the mechanism of government, or what it takes to be a responsible citizen of the USA. They teach leftist talking points and belittle American greatness, at a time when we, as people, need to be great.

The first and best way to do that is to pay attention. Learn what the people who work in government are doing to you. Find out how this mechanism works, and then find ways to put it right again. And the first way to do that is to get rid of the 537 people at the top. Vote them out in 2014, and again in 2016. Urge your state to open a Constitutional Convention on amending the Constitution to allow for Congressional and Presidential recall elections (a mechanism for which is currently not provided in the Constitution). And then elect people who will truly serve their constituents, and not their own bloated, greedy, power-mad self interests.

They think we’re stupid. Let’s show them. Helm, ahead, warp factor one. Engage!

But how are we preparing our kids for the future? Are we giving them the real-world tools they need to make sense of the world? Are we educating them about the past so they don’t make our mistakes again? Are we teaching them anything useful at all?

Apparently not. At least not according to a study by the Department of Health and Human Services on the affects of the Head Start program through 3rd grade. The report shows that kids who took part in Head Start may have been better prepared for school than their counterparts who didn’t, but those benefits virtually disappeared by the time those kids entered 3rd grade.

I blame it on the parents. Actually, I blame it on an environment and mentality that encourages people to let government take care of it. And this mentality has been nurtured and grown for many decades, by us, by our parents, and by our parents before us.

I can cite at least two examples of how parental involvement in their child’s education reaps major benefits: My two daughters. We home-schooled them and enrolled them in private schools (at great cost) and worked with them at home because not only did we feel the public schools were failing them, but we were actively discouraged from taking a greater role in their education (by, ironically enough, the PTA). But we grabbed the bull by the horns and the result is two young women who know how the world works, are equipped to deal with it, and know the benefits of taking an active role in their kids’ education.

Your mileage may vary, of course, but the point I’m trying to make is that our kids are a reflection of us. And if we’re not careful, we’ll be destroying the very future we’re depending on our kids to create.

Proverbs 22:6 “Train a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not turn from it.”  (New International Version)

What interested me was not so much the report, or the “duh!” response that the Fox News headline inspired in me (“Report shows UN admitting solar activity may play significant role in global warming”), but one of the comments within the article. This comes from Aaron Huertas of the Union of Concerned Scientists:

“I see climate contrarians try this trick almost every time a big new solar study comes out. They somehow tend to neglect mentioning that solar variation is smaller than the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide,”

The “heat-trapping power” of carbon dioxide. I remember studying in biology class that CO2 was a major component of something called life. Without CO2, trees and other plants that require it would die. Plants produce oxygen. Guess what? Without oxygen, most other life forms on earth would die. And, yes, CO2 traps heat. Without the ability to do that, this Earth would be as cold and lifeless as the Moon.

In addition to that, there is conflicting data on whether global temperatures are actually increasing as much as some scientists claim they are. And there are conflicting opinions on whether the data is being manufactured or manipulated, or whether the data is genuine and points to troubling climatological trends.

In any event, we constantly hear proponents of green energy and global warming apologists claim that we need to reduce the amount of CO2 being produced. Which brings me back to my headline. As I recall, again from biology class, Earth-based life forms exhale CO2 as part of the respiration process. Of those life forms, approximately seven billion of them comprise the family known as homo sapiens, or humanity. One could draw the conclusion that these esteemed scientists and politicians who clamor for less CO2 in our atmosphere might be subtly suggesting that fewer humans would mean less CO2.

In other words, some of us would have to die. Large numbers of some of us, in fact.

This ties into my belief that the left end of the political spectrum is, in fact, anti-life. I believe that, if you look at some of the things they support (late-term abortions, just to name one), one might logically conclude that the left ultimately wants nothing more or less than the end of life on Earth. Ironically, of course, they don’t include themselves in that desire.

I could get into all sorts of Biblical evidence that points this out, but I believe that the best way to thwart the Left’s plans for this planet is to keep breathing. Breathe a lot, in fact. Go run a mile, work in your yard, lift some weights, play with your kids. Those are all things the Left despises (unless it’s in their vested self-interest, of course), and I believe simply living your life is the best counter-attack.

So, keep breathing. No, it won’t destroy the planet. But it’ll piss off a Leftist. And in my mind, that’s worth every breath.

Oh, yeah, and played some Angry Birds Star Wars.

This makes the second tablet in my house. All told, we have (in addition to the tablets) two smart phones, three laptops, one desktop computer,a flip phone, two HD TV sets, a GPS, and a DSLR that shoots 1080p video. And two iPhones being used as iPods and a traditional iPod.

When I was a child we had a black and white TV and a dial up phone. And an AM radio.

My, how things have changed.

Where are we going with all this tech stuff? Sure, we can access information much more quickly, get different opinions about issues, even get news that isn’t biased. We can do so much, but my question is, are we? Is all this stuff really making our lives better?

Every day when I get on Twitter I get so angry about the way things are. I get frustrated when I read the news that doesn’t come from the alphabet networks, then I read the propaganda coming from the mainstream media. I’m sure my blood pressure isn’t benefiting. But what are we doing besides getting more information out there?

There has to be more. We have to figure out a way to make all this tech work for us, just like we need to figure out how to make social media make a difference. I know some are trying, but how can we make it do more?

I don’t want Twitter or Google Plus to turn into the internet equivalent of reality TV (I think Facebook already has). I think there are so many thoughtful, creative people out there that can make this happen, people far more creative than me, who can truly unchain all this technology for the benefit of humanity. Otherwise all this stuff ends up as expensive toys and we continue our societal decline.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s back to Angry Birds.

Reblogged from Monster Hunter Nation:

Apple released its latest iTunes version a couple of days ago. iTunes 11 is touted as “completely redesigned,” and “makes it easier than ever to browse and organize your music, movies, and TV shows.” (See the entire description at Apple’s iTunes website.)

They were correct about the “completely redesigned” part. It looks a whole lot more like Windows Media Player now, and among the former capabilities that were removed was the Cover Flow functionality. Cover Flow, for the uninitiated (and I wish I was among you) allowed the user to list the songs in the iTunes library by title, artist, or genre, while above was a graphical representation of the albums in the library, which could be shuffled through (kind of like the old Seeburg juke boxes) and the user could locate a desired album quickly, without having to scroll through potentially thousands of songs in the list.

Cover Flow is gone. Kaput. Not coming back, according to Apple.

The other thing that Apple did was redesign the way the library files work, so when you upgrade to iTunes 11 and decide you don’t like it, there’s no going back to iTunes 10.7 unless you kept backup copies of your library files. (It doesn’t change the physical music files, thankfully.)

There are already thousands of comments on the Apple support forums about the loss of Cover Flow. And from what I’ve read, most users are very upset about it. Granted, it’s only a music player, but still.

Apple has done to iTunes what it did to Final Cut – screwed it up completely.

One comment I made regarding the loss of Cover Flow was that the function was the only way many people had to find particular songs and artists. Whether they were unable to read, or had some sort of reading comprehension issue, the albums allowed them to listen to the music they wanted simply by looking for the proper picture. Within hours of my comment, I received a response from a user who goes by the handle of “i8nuitunes:”

Your are not alone.  I’m dyslexic and the new iTunes is giving me a headache, literally.  Total insult to the spirit of Steve Jobs, who would have thought about different user needs before removing such an obviously useful feature as Cover Flow.  Apple will try to write this off as a case of users just being “attached” to an old feature.  Not sure why such “attachment” is a bad thing anyway, but the bottom line is that I’m not “attached” to my right-brain style of processing things.  It’s attached to me, and pictorial interfaces help me deal with that.  Thanks for nothing, Apple.

If you’re reading this and you’re getting headaches too (literally or metaphorically), spread the word.  If my guess is right, there are hundreds of thousands of right-brain people squinting at the new iTunes right now and they could usefully band together somehow.  Not to address some issue of “consumer preference,” but to remind the idiots at Apple, and in the world of interface design more generally, that their customers are not sheep that can be genetically re-engineered.  They’re users, and they need user interfaces they can actually interface with.  Not headaches; I get enough of those already.

But the next day, the sun came up.

I have to take comfort in John 14:1, when Jesus said, “Let  not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.” This election was not a watershed moment, like the 2008 election; I truly believe that everyone who voted for Obama knew what they were getting based on the last four years, and they were OK with that. And that worries me more than the thought of what he could do in his second term. I pray that he truly is being honest and forthright when he says he will work with Republicans; the last four years would seem to indicate otherwise, but I’m not going to spend every day of the next four years worrying about what’s going to happen.

I’ve got a life to live.

I think back on this nation and how it has changed over the last, oh, 45 years or so that I can reliably remember, and in doing so I have to say that I’m not entirely surprised we’ve come to this. But regardless of the meme of the day, or the news out of Washington, or how people feel about one candidate or another, the one thing that hasn’t changed is that we all have to live.

There are still a lot of things that make me happy. When I see the sun rise. When I see the face of my loving wife, my daughters, and my grandchildren. When one of my cats crawls up on my lap in the evening just to say hi. When I hear a favorite song. Even when I do the mundane chores around the house, or wind up as a taxi service or doing some other sort of task for my family that I know good and well they’re capable of doing themselves. Even when I go to work, in the face of the possibility of massive layoffs. My truck. My abilities. Trying to model a USS Enterprise bridge in Blender (Google it, I’m not going to describe it here)…and starting over for the umpteenth time.

And then there’s this: http://news.yahoo.com/occupy-sandy-onetime-protesters-cause-074517400.html. If this is true – and (sarcasm alert) it’s the Associated Press, why wouldn’t it be? (sarcasm alert ends) – then I find a new reason to be hopeful of humanity, and that we can rise above.

John 14:1.

After Friday night, however, many questions linger in this fan’s mind. First and foremost, why couldn’t they hit the ball? Their average with runners in scoring position over the last two weeks of the season was anemic. They went 3-7 over their last ten games, all against the Oakland A’s and Anaheim Angels (I refuse to call them the “Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim”), which ultimately sunk their season.

Second, starting pitching. Geez Louise, guys, you get a batter down two strikes and then you pick at the plate until you walk him? The ghosts of Rangers pitchers past must still haunt this team. Or maybe Mike Maddux, the pitching coach, is channeling Dick Bosman. Who knows? For whatever reason, that killer instinct was missing from not only the starting pitching but also from much of the relievers. You can’t lump Alexi Ogando and Koji Uehara in that group, though; those guys were stellar. And, truth be told, Joe Nathan was fairly solid as the closer – although down the stretch it seemed as though he ran out of gas, too.

Third, infield defense, particularly Ian Kinsler. He used to be as solid a second baseman as any in the league, but he played this year as though he expected to make the play, and was surprised when his fundamentals failed him. He forgot the first rule a coach teaches his infielders when they first take the field for Little League - get in front of the ball. Kinsler could still make the spectacular plays, but he made some uncharacteristic mistakes at second. And his bat – don’t even get me started on his uppercut swing. Not every pitch is going to go into the left field stands, Ian. If he can flatten out his swing and get his mind back in the game, he could be the Ian Kinsler of old. After this season, though, I’m tempted to let him try with another team.

And this brings us to next year. According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Rangers have seven free agents this off-season, headlined by Josh Hamilton. (They own a club option on Scott Feldman; if they buy him out he can also become a free agent.) If the boos at the Ballpark on Friday were any indication, the fans of North Texas are about ready to see Hamilton bolt for greener pastures. His remarks in Spring Training, regarding whether he felt he owed the Rangers a “home-town discount,” would seem to indicate that he is ready to test the waters. Nolan Ryan and Jon Daniels have some soul-searching to do, and not just because Hamilton was Jekyll and Hyde at the plate and in the field this year. He also brings the Rangers (and MLB) a ton of marketing money, not to mention the butts in the seats every game (which totaled slightly under 3.5 million, obliterating the Rangers attendance record). There are rumblings that he may be seeking a five-year, $150 million deal, but some insiders doubt he’ll fetch that much. For one thing, he’s 31, and although he’s younger than the recipient of the last big-dollar deal (Albert Pujols), his body is that of a 40 year old thanks to his years of drug abuse. I can almost guarantee that it won’t be the Rangers who come out with the first offer…if they make an offer at all.

Of the free agents on the list (Hamilton, Mike Napoli, Mike Adams, Scott Feldman, Ryan Dempster, Koji Uehara, Mark Lowe and Roy Oswalt), the only ones I’d consider re-signing immediately are Napoli and Uehara. Napoli has always been solid behind the plate for the Rangers, and although he’s streaky with the bat he can win a game with one swing. Uehara has been more than solid down the stretch, showing why the Rangers dealt for him from Baltimore in the first place.

Although Feldman showed glimpses of greatness at the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012, he began to revert back to the Feldman of old (before his knee surgery). My thought is that we saw the true Feldman, and if the Rangers keep him it should be as the long man in the bullpen. Dempster and Oswalt were a bust (although if you throw out his stats against the Angels, Dempster was actually not bad), and if either is made an offer it should be a 1-year deal with an option for a 2nd – and heavily loaded with incentives. Lowe should be allowed to walk – he never made an overall positive impact with the team. Adams was shut down by injury late, and that could have contributed to his poor showing down the stretch – it might be considered something of a risk to re-sign Adams, but there were many times during the season when he shut down the side in the 8th to set things up for Nathan. In fact, when the Rangers had a lead going into the 7th inning, you could usually count on the trio of Ogando, Adams and Nathan to shut things down. I think it might be prudent to see where Adams’ rehab takes him in the off season – and perhaps give him a minor-league invite to Spring Training before tendering an offer.

It’s going to be a long, lonely winter (with apologies to Bobby Vinton) as the Rangers try and plug the holes that sank their championship hopes in 2012. One thing you can hang your hat on, though: This will be a different 2013 Rangers team taking the field in Surprise, Arizona in February.