Friday, June 20th - Zero: Senator Chris Dodd

Greetings from Knoxville, Tennessee. I have spent so much time here this year, I think I may have to pay non-resident taxes...

So, have you guys heard about this? If you don't watch cable news or read the Wall Street Journal, you might not have. The regular broadcast news (NBC, CBS, ABC) have completely ignored this subject. No real big surprise, since Dodd is a prominent DEMOCRATIC Senator. The guy ran for president this year, too.

Dodd has been found to have gotten a 'sweetheart' mortgage deal from Countrywide Bank earlier this year. Yes, the same Countrywide Bank that had to be bailed out by our government this year. The bail out cost us taxpayers $300 BILLION.

Guess who led the committee that put together the bail out? Oh yes he diid... Senator Chris Dodd. He's the chairman of the Finance and Banking commitee.
Guess what his defense was... wait for it... "I didn't know I was getting a better deal than anyone else".

The guy is a total criminal, or he's a friggin' idiot. Either way, it scares the total keerap out of me that this guy is in charge of ANYTHING, let alone our Finance & Banking issues.

He should be in jail, and he should be being lambasted in the media....

WHERE'S THE OUTRAGE!!!!!

Send an email to your senators and congressmen and tell them to investigate this.

Peace, Love, and GOD,
Tracy

Monday, June 16th - Hero: Fathers

Fathers are so important.

Somewhere in the past couple of decades, our society has done a lot of harm to the image of our fathers, as well as downplayed their significance to the family dynamic.

Take any sitcom on TV in the past decade or so, and the father is generally a big ole doofus. Tim Taylor on Home Improvement, Ray Baronne on Everybody Loves Ray, Jim on According to Jim, etc, etc, etc. Compare these Dads to the ones on Leave it to Beaver, My Three Sons, Andy Griffith... The father figure went from being very wise, loving, a little bit goofy to being incompetent idiots who are lucky just to be able to understand english.

I guess I am really a lucky girl, because all the fathers in my life (Dad, Grandads, step-dad, uncles, brother) have been what I imagine real fathers to be about.

First and foremost, a Dad is there. Even when he's not with you, he's still there. His love is unconditional and sacrificial. He's smarter than you will ever be - in the subjects that really matter, anyway. He's patient, strong, and yes - he's goofy when he needs to be.

For a daughter, the very best gift a father can give is to be an example of how a man should love a woman. A father that treats his wife right, loves her with all his heart, and respects her. That is the best gift a daughter can ever get. It totally sets the tone of all her future relationships. Dads - you do this for your daughter, you will never have to worry about her making disastrous choices in her own love life. Because she will never settle for less.

Also, for his children, a Dad provides safety and security. When a Dad loves his children, no one can ever take away their security. Because you can have a lot taken away from you - your job, your home, your health - but as long as you can run to your Daddy and know that he will be there waiting for you with open arms, nothing else matters. It doesn't matter if you are 5 years old and it's a monster under your bed, or if you are 25 and it's a lost love. Dad's presence makes it all better.

Reading back over that, it would be very easy to substitute God for Dad. Could be why God presented Himself to us as a Father, why He assigned a gender to Himself when he surpasses that classification. He knew that there would be a need for a never-changing, always present Father. Truly, human fathers that get it right, get what being Daddy is all about - love, sacrifice, joy - those men are men after God's own heart.

I am so very blessed, because I have had many of these men in my life. I hope that I do a decent job of letting them know, while I have them. I lost my grandfathers, and I really regret not telling them more often how much they meant to me and how much I loved them. Although, I think true appreciation comes with wisdom, and wisdom comes with age. There is no other way to gain it. Which excites me - because if you get it even a little bit right - wisdom brings true joy and happiness.

The fathers in my life:
Rex Curtis - my daddy
Dennis Kincy - my step-daddy
Robert Vine Curtis - grandpa
Huel Gregory Smith - poppy
Dale Smith - uncle
Jason Curtis - brother
Bobby King - husband

My eternal Father, who for reasons I will never be able to thank enough for giving me my family, GOD.

Happy Father's Day,
Tracy

Monday, June 9th - Hero: The Shack

No, I am not talking about an enormous basketball player.

It's a book. A great book. A really, really great book...

I picked this little paperback book up at Wal-Mart last week and read it in just a few hours. I am going to give it to Bobby to read, then, I am going to read it again. It's that good.

I had no intentions of getting this book, because I had never heard of it or the author. I was browsing the paperbacks, looking for some reading for my next two trips. After making a couple of selections I turned to the New Releases to see what's coming out, and there, nestled between the hardbacks, was this little book called 'The Shack' by a guy named William P. Young. I read the back and it sounded a little depressing so I skipped it.

But I couldn't forget this book. All the rest of my shopping I kept thinking of it, so I went back and got it. Now I know it was the Holy Spirit telling me to read it. This book has had a profound effect on me. Reading this book was better than any sermon I have ever sat through, even better than my most in-depth discussions with Pastor Jeff Richards (and that is saying ALOT).

The premise of the book is about a man that loses his little girl to a serial killer and her body is never found. Several years later he gets a note in the mail from God, asking him to come to 'the shack' for a visit. The Shack is where the only evidence from his daughters murder was ever found.

What happens from there is so gut wrenching, but so wonderful at the same time. And let me tell you, the book is fiction, but so many things written resonated with me, because a lot of what is in this book is exactly the way I have interpreted and imagined the Holy Trinity and Heaven to be like.

If you like, this is the website for the book: www.theshackbook.com. Let me know what you think if you read it!

Peace, Love, and GOD,
Tracy

Friday, June 6th: Hero - Clint Eastwood

As my other Dad, Dennis, would say: "Clint, Baby!!"

I saw an interview done with Clint Eastwood about the upcoming release of a box-set of all his Dirty Harry movies. In the interview the reporter asks him what he thought about Spike Lee saying Clint's movie 'Flag of our Fathers' should have had more black people in it, even though there were no black people in the regiment that put the flag up.

Clint's response "He needs to go back and study the history" and "People like him need to shut their face". Sucka...

So the reason I love Clint Eastwood, beside the fact that he's made some awesome movies, is that he says exactly what's on his mind. He doesn't worry about what everyone else thinks. He makes a movie, and just because it's the politically correct thing to put in minorities, if it wouldn't make sense to the history, he says screw it, I'm going to make it the way it really was.

Oh yea, Clint Baby is also a Libertarian. Need I say more?


There's a lot more to the interview and if you want to read it go to

http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,,2283921,00.html

It's highly entertaining.

Peace, Love, and GOD,
Tracy

Wednesday, June 4th - Hero: Union County, SD

This is a news story that probably won't make the major outlets.

The little county of Union, South Dakota had a special item on their Democratic Primary vote Tuesday. The vote was to approve zoning for a new Refinery. And it passed, by a large margin.

Yes, I said Refinery. Hyperion, a Dallas based company, is looking to build the first new refinery in the US in 32 years. It will be a $10 Billion dollar project, employ 4500 construction workers during the build and nearly 2000 permanent workers in the 50-75k salary range.

This will be a HUGE boon for the area, and the whole state of South Dakota. And brother, they need it. In fact, we all need it.

Of course, this isn't a slam dunk. The story also quoted one of the leaders of the opposition campaign. Of course, these tree huggers are calling themselves the 'Save Union County' group.

Here's my question - who are they saving it for? The population of the region has dwindled down to hardly anything. There's no money, no jobs, and no hope for jobs if the refinery doesn't happen.

Let's think about this whole 'Save the Planet' thing for a moment. Who, exactly, are these groups out to save? Early on they claimed to want to preserve our earth for future generations of humans. Can't have the purple billed hornsoggle disappear from earth before our great great grandchildren can 'experience' them. I don't know about you guys, but the T-Rex wasn't preserved for our experience and I'm actually pretty happy about that...

The other message is that we have to preserve our resources for the 'future'. This one gets me, in one breath we are told that our planet is going to burn up because we are getting too close to the sun, or that Global Warming is going to cause the planet to be flooded because the all the ice is melting, but at the same time we have to 'preserve the resources'! For whom, exactly??? It reminds me of back in the 70's and everyone was saying we would be out of water by the year 2000. Even in elementary school I was confused, because it seemed to me that water was a renewable resource. I thought that whole cycle was a pretty brilliant move on God's part!

Bottom line, all these environmentalist seem to be concerned about is saving Animals and Resources. All of us human beings are on our own. While all their lobbying and filibustering are preventing us from using the resources that our Creator provided us, prices are going through through roof and people are suffering. I read an article the other day that said the average person on Food Stamps and WIC are running out of benefits by the 14-16th of each month. This is because food prices are so high, because gas prices are so high and because corn prices have been driven up by the Environmental Ethanol debacle. Don't even get me started on that!

So, while these short-sighted 'protectors of the Universe' go about doing the dirty work of the Liberal Socialists, real people (mostly children and elderly) will die. Some will die from hunger and malnutrition, some will die when they can't afford to cool their homes this summer, some will die because of their feelings of hopelessness.

Who, exactly, are we saving the Planet for??

Peace, Love, and God.
Tracy