Technically, it’s not the end of summer, but school has begun for most, and signals the end of summer vacation.
With that in mind, mom and I told the kids to invite their friends for a party.
After days of preparation, the party day started for me at 6 AM, picking up Miquel at work, where I also bought drinks and ice.
Mike got the party started with a rousing…….
…nap.
Miquel set up the music.
Mike K and Laura splash around
Brandon did acrobatics into the pool
Mike dragged Erin (kicking and screaming) into the icy pool
Lots of food, of course
Next Anna played “Only Hope” while everyone sang around the piano
When a high note sent them all into laughter
Lauren and Doug
Miquel then played, while Lauren tried to ‘help’ him.
After eating and singing, it was back to the pool.
Laura got pushed into the pool…
“He did it.”
Laura gives Brandon a piece of her mind.
Ryan flies into the pool.
Evidence of an earlier Sharpie Fight is on Mike K’s back.
Doug off the trampoline and into the pool
Mike K…..
Mike insists Erin isn’t wet enough
Ryan and Laura share a hug for the camera
Josh
Lauren
Miquel finally dives in…
With help from Ryan and Josh
Laura (the soccer teams goalie) showed up too.
The guys had enough waiting for Lauren to get into the water and picked up the chair with her in it…
and tossed her in the pool!
They’re cousins, Laura and Lauren
Brandon Dives in
A chicken fight between Lauren and Laura starts as Miquel does the Play by Play
Anna helps with Cameron
Chris, always good to show up for a meal!
Night swimming with the disco ball.
It was a fabulous day.
It didn’t rain as predicted, but the heat and humidity was oppressive.
So the choice was to roast outside or freeze in mom’s icy pool.
It was a happy day for all and I think it noteworthy that it was a lot of good, clean, fun and rewarding for me to see my two and their friends enjoy themselves so much.
They pick a democrat to be their ‘darling’ candidate, then get confused when they are blocked from reporting what goes on. This happened during the Clintonista regime, and with Obama, it looks like more of the same.
ABC Reporter Arrested in Denver Taking Pictures of Senators, Big Donors
Asa Eslocker Was Investigating the Role of Lobbyists and Top Donors at the Convention
Reporters are supposed to investigate, right?
This particular one and his camera crew were on a public sidewalk, so far, I don’t see a reason for the arrest.
Police on the scene refused to tell ABC lawyers the charges against the producer, Asa Eslocker, who works with the ABC News investigative unit.
A cigar-smoking Denver police sergeant, accompanied by a team of five other officers, first put his hands on Eslocker’s neck, then twisted the producers arm behind him to put on handcuffs.
….
The sheriff’s officer is seen telling Eslocker the sidewalk is owned by the hotel. Later he is seen pushing Eslocker off the sidewalk into oncoming traffic, forcing him to the other side of the street.
The hotel owns the sidewalk?
Learn ABC and others, you are only good if you are promoting the democratic fantasy they want to sell the people, you’re no good when you try to get to any truth. (Don’t you remember that the Clinton White house was the most closed to the media ever?)
Lisa who knows how much I loved the book and movie Born Free, so much so that I named one of my cats, Elsa, sent me the following movie. First though, a little background:
A lion called Christian
Christian was separated from his parents at an early age and put up for sale in a London department store. Christian’s parents were zoo lions, the father came from the Rotterdam zoo and the mother from Jerusalem, and they lived at the Ilfracombe zoo. When they had cubs, the zoo sold them, and two cubs went to the department store.
Two men, Anthony Bourke and John Rendall, found him there and immediately fell in love with him and determined to buy him. They scraped together the money and brought the little lion home when he was only a few weeks old. They named him Christian.
Tony and John dedicated themselves to giving Christian the best life they could, and the bond that developed between them is a joy to behold. Christian was a remarkable lion, obviously very intelligent and loving, and gentle to everyone, both human and animal.
As he grew, Christian began to need bigger facilities than Tony and John could provide. Thanks to a chance meeting with Bill Travers (who had starred in the movie Born Free), they hit upon the idea of sending Christian to Africa to live as a wild lion.
The first step when Christian arrived at George’s compound, was to introduce him to Boy, a lion who had been in the movie Born Free and who George had already sent “back” to the wild, without losing his relationship with him.
Christian and Boy eventually became best friends, and within a year Christian was living as a wild lion.
What is so touching is the reunion in movie form here:
When I think of Obama’s choice for running mate, Joe Biden, I think of what happened at Waco.
Some might not remember his part in the aftermath of the atrocity that made up Waco, some might not even remember Waco.
Biden was a interesting choice in my opinion. If Obama wanted a tough and hard man to run with him, he sure got one. Makes sense too. I mean, Obama wants to be perceived as this ‘new’ kind of candidate, a softer, gentler, more spiritual kind of man. Biden can sure do his dirty work and Obama will carry on with his role of “Messiah.”
Back to Waco. For those who don’t remember, at Waco was a compound run by David Koresh. He assembled a group there, the Branch Dividians. There were suspicians of child molesting. Enter the FBI. They investigated for years. At any time they wanted to, they could have picked up David Koresh. Instead they waited, stood outside and basically starved and tortured the members inside (many children as well) and finally they raided in 1993, first by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and, later, by the FBI. As a result of the two raids, 80 Branch Davidians were killed, including 21 children (17 younger than 10); four federal agents also died there as well.
Many of us saw with horror on the television, Reno’s tanks and the place burning to the ground, knowing there were innocent children inside.
The mockery of an investigation that happened later was led by none other than Obama’s man, Joe Biden. This was televised and I watched it almost daily. Joe Biden wholeheartedly supported the actions of federal agents in the Waco standoff, and visibly sneered at witnesses at the Senate hearings who questioned and/or criticized the agents’ acts. Eight survivors have been rotting in prison ever since, serving long sentences denounced by the jury that heard the evidence.
Senate hearings were held with the usual pro government results. Senator’s Orrin Hatch and Joe Biden concluded that the officers that harassed and caused the deaths of these 80 or so Davidians (including women and young children) were not guilty. The supervisors were praised for their service to our country, promoted, given a pay raise, and sent on vacation, while the grieving families of the dead victims were trying to make funeral arrangements.
I so well remember the other members of that investigating committee, trying to get to the truth of this matter, Sonny Bono, who impressed me very much, tried to get good testimony out of the witnesses and hear their story, Biden sneered and shot them all down, blocking truth and protected the Clintons and Janet Reno.
So if Obama wasn’t scary enough, he just got a toughness and a harshness for a running mate like no other. Not to mention, Biden’s record is a very anti-American one:
Biden voted Yes on allowing illegal aliens to participate in social security.
He Voted NO on declaring English the official language of the U.S. Government.
Biden voted Yes on establishing a guest worker program and voted Yes on giving guest workers a path to citizenship.
Joe Biden voted NO on limiting welfare for immigrants.
You’ve heard of road rage. How about computer rage?
Apparently a 15 year old Florida boy became so enraged over a change in computer priviledges, he attacked his mom and younger sibling. He chased his mom with a knife and hit his brother with a sugar cane.
Now before you take it lightly, [43% of parents have no Internet use rules for their kids to follow] here are some guidelines from Howard County Maryland for Parents and Teens reguarding computers and the internet, that seem quite sane to me:
"The most effective, reliable, Internet Safety Filter is an Involved, Informed, and Aware Parent and an Educated and Ethical Kid."
Don’t let your kid have an Internet accessable computer in their room.
Don’t let your kid have a wireless laptop in their room (see above!)
Don’t let your kid have a webcam for ANY reason.
Do start a conversation with your kid about Internet safety.
Do know how to check your kid’s Internet History.
Do buy some kind of Internet filtering program.
If you think those extreme, at least know that young people need limits and boundaries. I think the news story is a perfect example of what happens when there aren’t any.
In the past, I have taken a lot of teasing from my friends who spent summers going east with their families to Ocean City, and my family always went west to visit family in the mountains of West Virginia and Virginia.
So when I finally got to experience Ocean City, they had a lot of laughs at my questions. Like…Where’s the boardwalk? (Apparently I was standing on it), and “They don’t have chocolate pop tarts here?”
Since then, I have learned a lot about Ocean City culture with more than a few visits back. However, my last trip was a long time ago, and there have been some changes made. For one thing, getting there was different from my last time. Apparently we now by-pass Salisbury completely and they have made a new exit around it. Upon arriving at OC, I noticed the long-standing haunted house was now gone too.
Since it was a long time since I had been to Ocean City, it was basically unknown to my youngest two. So, I wanted to give them a special day of fun, and show them all that I had enjoyed years ago. So after some planning weirdness, I took Miquel, Laura, and Anna away for the day.
We had the fortune of finding parking close to the boardwalk. It was centrally located and we could make frequent trips loading and unloading back to the car.
The boardwalk looking north…
…and south.
I made sure they knew about Fisher’s Popcorn
And Thrasher’s French Fries.
View of the pier, now without the Haunted House, but still has the familiar Ferris Wheel.
Ripley’s Believe it or Not was amusing to them.
I was anxious to show them the work of the sand artist, who during summer months, around dusk, creates a new Bible scene, and gives a message while he creates.
The Kite Loft was a must visit too.
Anna seemed to appreciate the kites, and got into the spirit of it.
I made sure they knew where the best breakfast in town could be found- The Dough Roller.
Unforunately for me
Obamania hasn’t escaped vacationers. I didn’t see one tee shirt for McCain.
Laura was noted the risqué tee-shirts that most definately makes up the culture of Ocean City.
I didn’t have to point out the Art Gallery of O.C., it has a way of showing itself off.
Once up and down the boardwalk a few times, it was time to go even more east, to the water.
The waves of Maryland’s Atlantic…
The gulls…
The sand…..
…and even a sandpiper or two!
Once sunning ourselves and taking a walk on the beach, Miquel got some new sunglasses.
Then we walked to the pier (Something else new, you can’t walk out as far as you used to without paying).
The girls at the pier
Miquel and Anna
Towards late afternoon, I showed the children where I must have disposed of a lot of money in the past, the arcades!
In the early evening, we took too long in eating our dinner at Tony’s Pizza, with full stomachs and a back full of camera gear, Laura and I made a mad and long dash to get an image of the sun setting. By the time we reached the end, we had people cheering us on, and pointing us to the best place to get a photo. Alas, arriving at the end of the boardwalk, the sun had fully set, but the images were still nice.
Before leaving for Ocean City, and the big recent accident on the bridge heavy on my mind, I had asked Miquel to pray for the Lord’s care and blessing on our day. The prayer was more than answered, and the end of the day was a mini sermon by the sand sculpture, and from where I stood, the man said everything right.
Going on with my previous blogs regarding Obama’s desire to take from the profit hungry oil companies. When you take from, who do you give to? The poor?
I don’t think so. That is if the article out of Italy is correct. Enter Barack Obama’s half brother who he has met twice, once recently in 2006.
George Obama lives in a shanty town in a 2 by 3 meter shack.
For ten years George Obama lived rough. However he now hopes to try to sort his life out by starting a course at a local technical college.
He has only met his famous older brother twice - once when he was just five and the last time in 2006 when Senator Obama was on a tour of East Africa and visited Nairobi.
The Illinois senator mentions his brother in his autobiography, describing him in just one passing paragraph as a “beautiful boy with a rounded head”.
Now Senator Barack Obama released his tax statements which show that he and his wife earned $4.2 million in the last tax year, mostly from book sales.
Obama’s campaign expressed that he paid $1.4 million in federal income taxes.
The books that have resulted in Obama’s millions are titled The Audacity of Hope and Dreams from My Father.
Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, contributed roughly $240,000 to charity last year, their returns indicate.
You think he could spare a little something to the beautiful boy with a rounded head?
When Pelosi took office, she was going to have the hardest working, most honest, and even promised to have this gas price situation fixed congress ever.
Instead we’ve been treated to the most bizarre congress ever. Their approval ratings are the lowest ever too, having sunk down to single digits.
In two decades of record keeping, no sitting Congress has passed fewer public laws at this point in the session — 294 so far — than this one.
Now, that doesn’t mean they haven’t been busy:
Remember that menu change they had? I suppose that was important. They have also:
Saluted such milestones as the Idaho Potato Commission’s 70th anniversary
Recognized soil as an "essential natural resource."
Designated May 5-9 as National Substitute Teacher Recognition Week
Set July 28 as the Day of the American Cowboy
Establishing July as National Watermelon Month.
"The Democrats in charge of this Congress have been heavy on fluff and light on substance," says Republican leader Rep. John Boehner of Ohio. "Resolutions are fine but why aren’t we also passing legislation to lower gas prices? What about health-care reform and runaway entitlement spending?"
An expert from the National Autonomous University of Mexico predicted that in about ten years the Earth will enter a "little ice age" which will last from 60 to 80 years and may be caused by the decrease in solar activity.
What kind of nation would be have under Obama? Considering some of the things he says, it would seem very Un-American.
To pay for "stimulus" checks of $1,000 for families and $500 for individuals, the Senator says government would take "a reasonable share" of oil company profits.
(He doesn’t say what reasonable share is by the way).
You don’t TAKE away a company’s profits. That is UnAmerican, and before you grab your $1000 check, think about how YOUR business could be next.
He recently declared that "The oil companies need to know that there is a limit on how much profit they can take in this economy."
When I put gas in my car, I can’t say I am a great big fan of the oil companies, but I am a believer in the American Way.
But how much profits do they make anyway? And before we go there, consider Exxon paid $64.7 billion in U.S. taxes. If Obama wants to distribute anything, perhaps he should start there first. Only God knows where it all goes now.
Exxon’s profit margin stood at 10% for 2007.
!0% seems reasonable for profit. What do other companies make? Perhaps they should be paying attention should they be next:
Chemicals had an average margin of 12.7%
Computers: 13.7%
Electronics and appliances: 14.5%
Pharmaceuticals (18.4%)
Beverages and tobacco (19.1%)
If 10% is the new standard, the tech industry is going to have to rethink its growth arc. So will LG, the electronics company, which saw its profits grow by 505% in 2007. Abbott Laboratories hit 110%. How come none of those mentioned are the bad guys?
Warren Buffett’s outfit pulled in $11 billion last year, up 29% from 2006. Its profit margin was 11.47%.
Google, which earned a mere $4.2 billion but at a whopping 25.3% margin.
Then consider private-equity shops like Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins, which recently hired Al Gore, also invest in alternative energy start-ups, though they keep their margins to themselves. (No suprise there).
Business needs to run at a profit, that only makes sense. When you start taking it away, well, can you say dictatorship? To me that is what an Obama nation is starting to sound like.
“Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.”
— Samuel Johnson Rasselas
I didn’t get to see Obama and McCain last night with Rick Warren, I wanted to, but the time slot was right before my bedtime. I did go to Drudge to see if there were any special things said. Apparently Obama was asked when does life begin. His reply?
“… whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity … is above my pay grade.”
After some research, I found out that “above my pay grade” means you don’t know enough to make a judgement. Ok…then the next question HAS to be then, if you don’t know, then WHY does your record show that you are solidly behind abortion? He just admitted to a man of God, the American people, and anyone else who cared to watch the show he didn’t have the knowledge to answer that question.
For a man who isn’t sure he votes like one who is sure of something.
Ok for state to restrict late-term partial birth abortion. (Apr 2008)
Rated 100% by NARAL on pro-choice votes in 2005, 2006 & 2007. (Jan 2008)
Voted against banning partial birth abortion. (Oct 2007)
Stem cells hold promise to cure 70 major diseases. (Aug 2007)
Trust women to make own decisions on partial-birth abortion. (Apr 2007)
Moral accusations from pro-lifers are counterproductive. (Oct 2004)
Pass the Stem Cell Research Bill. (Jun 2004)
Protect a woman’s right to choose. (May 2004)
Supports Roe v. Wade. (Jul 1998)
Voted NO on defining unborn child as eligible for SCHIP. (Mar 2008)
Voted NO on prohibiting minors crossing state lines for abortion. (Mar 2008)
Voted YES on expanding research to more embryonic stem cell lines. (Apr 2007)
Voted NO on notifying parents of minors who get out-of-state abortions. (Jul 2006)
Rated 0% by the NRLC, indicating a pro-choice stance. (Dec 2006)
Ensure access to and funding for contraception. (Feb 2007)
He even opposes to protect born-alive babies!
A nurse sees a baby who survived an abortion tossed into the trash. Obama would leave the baby there.
“He actually did vote on March 13, 2003, in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee to approve the Illinois Born Alive Act, which was the same as the federal law. Then he voted it down,” Stanek said. “He is the most pro-abortion senator. … Even NARAL went neutral [on the federal Born Alive Infant Protection Act].”
The Born Alive Infant Protection acts on the state and federal levels provide that infants who do survive abortions should be given necessary medical care and treatment. Stanek has been working to institute such provisions since, as a nurse, she discovered an abortion-surviving infant alive, but relegated to a closet shelf where the child was left to die.
The nurse’s story:
One night, a nursing co-worker was taking a Down’s syndrome baby who was aborted alive to our Soiled Utility Room because his parents did not want to hold him, and she did not have time to hold him. I could not bear the thought of this suffering child dying alone in a Soiled Utility Room, so I cradled and rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived. He was between 21 and 22 weeks old, weighed about 1/2 pound, and was about 10 inches long. He was too weak to move very much, expending any energy he had trying to breathe. Toward the end he was so quiet that I could not tell if he was still alive. I held him up to the light to see through his chest wall whether his heart was still beating. After he was pronounced dead, we folded his little arms across his chest, wrapped him in a tiny shroud, and carried him to the hospital morgue where all of our dead patients are taken.
Might I suggest that a man who votes repeatedly on something he doesn’t know about is above our nation’s pay grade and definately ‘dangerous and dreadful’ to the unborn, and even the born.
President Bush is sending a stern warning to Russia that it cannot lay claim to two disputed regions in Georgia.
Bush says there is no room for debate on this point. He says the breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia are part of Georgia and lie within internationally recognized borders. Russia’s foreign minister has said that Georgia could forget about getting back those provinces.
I know very little about the country of Georgia. What I do know has been from my own curiosity since my photo-sharing site Unique has a few members from this nation. The first one to join, Ailama, shared images from dangerous high top mountains, amazing valleys, close looks at it’s villagers, and black and whites that tell many things in one image.
Since the conflict with Russia, I became concered for Ailama and wrote him. I don’t know him personally, only through his photos, and yet he was touched that I wrote. He had just come back from the front lines and asked me to pass on to others a request for prayer. There are people to rescue from under what is now city ruins. Even though there was a cease fire, he explained that Russian troops still occupied deep into Georgia. He felt Georgians had fought a good fight, but did’t know how there nation would be able to endure without help from the international community, who so far really haven’t done much.
Russia’s ministry of defence has denied accusations by a human rights group that it had dropped cluster bombs on Georgia during the conflict. Human Rights Watch, the New York-based monitoring group, said Russian aircraft dropped cluster bombs on two Georgian towns on August 12, killing three civilians and wounding five.
Col Nogovitsin dismissed the accusations as “pre-prepared lies”.
“We did not use cluster bombs, and this was not necessary,” he said on Friday.
In May 2008, 107 nations agreed to a total ban on cluster munitions, but Russia did not participate in the talks.
The home, at 8111 Traverse Street, a few blocks from Detroit City Airport, was the nicest house on the block when it sold for $65,000 in November 2006.
Foreclosure hit. It become run down and vandalized. The price lowered to one dollar….and it STILL took 19 days for it to sell.
On Tuesday, Realtor.com listed one other single-family home, one duplex and one empty lot at $1 in Detroit.
Dollar property sales are the financial hangover from the foreclosure crisis, said Anthony Viola of Realty Corp. of America in Cleveland.
Lenders that made loans to unqualified buyers during the height of the subprime market now find themselves the owners of whole neighborhoods of vacant, deteriorating homes.
So desperate was the bank owner of 8111 Traverse Street to unload the property that it agreed to pay $2,500 in sales commission and another $1,000 bonus for closing the $1 sale; the bank also will pay $500 of the buyer’s closing costs. Throw in back taxes and a water bill, and unloading the house will cost the bank about $10,000.
It’s a little hard to have sympathy for the bank. If they had paid $10,000 to help the owner instead of foreclosing on them, perhaps this story would have a different ending for both parties. News Story HERE
There is a lot of speculation as to why this is happening [Weather or many tickets were given to sponsors and are being unused]. No matter what the reasons are, to not let mom and dad go to an empty stadium to see their loved ones compete while they bus in volunteers to fill the stadium, will never make sense to the average American.
I think I am starting to remember now why I wasn’t so into these Olympics this time around…
Unlike years in the past, I haven’t really been watching the Summer Olympics this year. I feel a little out of the loop considering before, I would dedicate time to watch the Olympics, both Summer and Winter.
It’s a bit of a shame to have missed a lot of it so far, especially when an old neighbor of ours won a silver medal in swimming.
Here is another thing that I missed, but Bill O’Reilly talked about it last night.
It seems the Spanish Olympic Basketball Team posed for a photo, and he went on to give them the Pinhead award for poking fun at the Chinese. Each team member posed with their fingers making their eyes slant.
Now, I don’t know what they were thinking. I don’t even know if they were poking fun at anyone. I don’t even know if someone even thought it could be considered inappropriate or insensitive to pose this way. Maybe even it was harmless, but, no matter what one thinks of the Chinese government, they are the host. Seems to me some kind of respect is due them, and even if there were no malice in the photo, just to think for a bit that someone could be offended might have been the best way to go.
The failure to recognise the potential consequences is striking in the light of the problems Spain has had with issues of race and the Spanish Olympic committee’s continued desire to host the Games in Madrid in 2016 or 2020.
In the past the Spanish have been left in no doubt as to the sensitivity of racial issues internationally, especially since Spain’s football manager, Luis Aragonés, made his infamous remark about Thierry Henry, monkey chants greeted England’s football players in a friendly game in Madrid and the formula one driver Lewis Hamilton was subjected to abuse in Barcelona.
Perhaps you have heard of this amazing plug-in for Firefox already.
If not, let me tell you about it.
When searching for, or at sites with mnay images, PicLens can transform your browser into this amazing 3-D wall of images for you to see many at once.
Today while looking up images of West Virginia in Flickr, I got to see so many at once, selecting the thumbnail that was most interesting, and just that fast, I could see the thumbnail image larger. Larger Image HERE
You take your mouse left and the wall of images goes to the beginning of the set, take your mouse to the right, and you seem to go to infinate amounts of images to the right. You are literally whisked to hundreds and maybe thousands of images.
Now, if you are worried once seeing the image larger, you don’t get to see who took the image on Flickr, PicLens does have a small globe icon that takes you to the image on Flickr. Also, once there, a link to go back to PicLens.
There is so much more too. Image searches in google can be done this way, so quickly without waiting for pages and pages to open. Also, Video Searches, Discovery Searches, Shop Amazon searches can be done without page loading time.
Also, if you are really keen on the idea, you can add your own site to PicLens. It offers two ways to add your images there, a quick way, or a rss feed manner. Neither of which I found too easy, yet.
