I can’t believe how stupid the white Anglo Saxon people have gotten. So Judge James E Oakley, a judge I have always supported, invalidates the results of the November election. Madera has a population of 55,000, and more than two thirds are Latino, right?
The Latinos snivel and whine that they can’t get elected. Can any Chicano say Rudy Alvirez? Bless his heart — he ran and ran.
I think Judge Oakley should have ruled honkies can’t vote at all. I think Judge Oakley should have ruled no white can run for office.
That would be fair to the Latinos running for office.
How many Latinos run for office every election, judge? How many Latinos vote out of 55,000, judge? Last time I checked it was a voluntary trip by a person (any race) to go and register to vote and a voluntary trip for a person of any race to get off their behinds and go to the voting booth.
I read in the paper that Jesse Lopez, Jr., whose father had no problem getting elected when Madera was no where near 55,000 souls and two thirds Latino, moaned and groaned.
Come to think of it, I think that a new law barring any white person from running in any election, should be enacted so us poor minorities, including myself can get elected in office.
Can you say level playing field? Judge Oakley, maybe you do know better than the electorate and invalidating their vote is the way to go. Come to think of it, Judge, just invalidate elections, the people don’t mean a thing anymore.
Next election, we’ll get a Latino to fill your bench and everything will be peachy.
The question still remains whether Barack Obama, when president, will continue to use his Blackberry. For those of you who may not know, who may be as technologically primitive as I am, Blackberries are cell phones on steroids. You can use them not only to make and receive phone calls, but also to access the Internet so you can send e-mails, surf the Net and receive a lot of spam.
My question is, why would he want to be bothered?
It isn’t like he won’t have enough to occupy his attention when he is president. Does he need the added diversion of having his pocket vibrate when the Blackberry rings? Does he really want to appear rude when he grabs his Blackberry and checks to see who’s calling during a Cabinet meeting?
He also will have flunkies galore around him to take and send messages anywhere in the world. And you can bet if he needs to make a phone call, a phone will appear.
And he faces another problem: Cell phone calls aren’t private. They are, after all, radio transmissions. A lot of foreign countries are ahead of us in cell phone technology, and could train their spies to tune into Obama’s calls. We do that here in the U.S. all the time. His conversations could wind up on YouTube, or on the Canadian evening news, since the company that provides the Blackberry service is in Canada.
By law, what Obama says and does as president must become part of the National Archives, and that means the National Archives probably would be monitoring his Blackberry activity as well, even though his personal conversations would not necessarily be archived.
Perhaps Obama, like others, is addicted to his Blackberry and will insist on carrying it. If that is the case, it may make more trouble for him than it’s worth.
I have always said that everyone should belong to the NRA (National Rifle Association), but I never did myself.
One recent night I received a call from the NRA, soliciting members. I was on the spot. I am not a hunter, but I do have guns. I have a 20 gauge single-shot that I use to quiet the coyotes at night. And I have some Winchesters that I just enjoy. I want to keep these guns. The 2nd Amendment says I can.
However, there are those who want to take them. For most people, having a gun is neither here or there. My mom has no need for one. My dad never had one. Maybe that’s why I never felt that strongly about it.
Lately I have been considering it more. A friend of mine stopped to pick up a hitchhiker as a friendly gesture. He was shot in the leg during a robbery attempt. He now carries a licensed handgun.
Another acquaintance was the victim of a home invasion.
A restaurant that I enjoy had a “person” come in through the back and shoot the owner. He survived, but you have to ask “Why does this happen?”
A 10-year old was beaten to death in Fresno the other day, they have the jerk in custody. We are going to spend $2 million on his defence and incarceration, when what we should do is just hang him in the park, and let him hang so everyone can see.
There are a lot of things that we should do, but we won’t. In the beginning things were black and white. Lawyers have created the “gray.” Now things are percentages of right or wrong. They are both wrong, but he is a little bit more right than the other guy.
White collar crime has never been “real” crime as we see today with the mortgage and Wall Street people. Governors and Senate “leaders” are up to their necks in crap.
I went for the five-year membership for $125. Didn’t take the pocket knife they offered. I told them to send me lots of NRA stickers to put in my windows. I figured with those, and my California Licensed Snake Handlers stickers I’ll keep the SOBs out.
I fire that shotgun every once in a while, just so anyone around knows I have it. Join the NRA.
My family and I were sitting in the front room discussing what we were going to prepare for Christmas dinner and how many people would be coming, when my mother asked the question, “What was the best Christmas you ever had?”
Each person in the room pondered a moment and then, one after another, began to tell their Christmas stories. At last, it was my turn and I began to recall and tell about my very best Christmas. I must have been all of 3 years old when I awoke that Christmas morning, back around the year 1938. I was so excited because it was Christmas morning and an old, long, tan, cotton, granny-sock was tied to the end of the bedstead that held the coiled springs and cotton mattress I had been sleeping on.
I bounded down to the end of the bed; untied the granny sock, and pulled it up into the bed with me: then I began to search it’s contents. The toe held an orange, and then there was an apple, and another orange, and a bag of assorted nuts, a bag of chocolate drops and a bag of hard Christmas candy. Sticking from the very top of the sock was a ripe, yellow banana. The grand prize was a little celluloid doll that was sitting next to the banana in the top of the sock. Even though that little doll was my only toy, that was the happiest Christmas I can remember.
I paused and turned to look at my mother. Her eyes had brimmed with tears.
“Anyce,” she exclaimed! “That was the worst Christmas we ever had.
Your father had just come down from the logging camp and he was out of work. He didn’t even have a prospect of a job. Every Christmas, we, at least, had a Christmas tree, but that Christmas we couldn’t even afford one. I was so unhappy that year, because it wasn’t going to be a good Christmas.”
My mother sighed, then continued speaking.
“I prayed and cried for God to please, bless us with his presence and send us the peace and joy of Jesus in our home so it would feel like Christmas.”
Well, God answered her prayer; but she never knew it until I was grown and she asked that question, “What was your best Christmas?”
When I was a child, growing up in the Assembly of God Church at North D Street and Riverside Drive in Madera, I used to hear the saints stand up and testify to the terrible diseases that Jesus had healed them of.
In my heart I would say, “Oh God, I wish you had healed me of some horrible thing so I could get up in church and brag on you like they do.” There I was, a 9-year-old child wishing I could testify like those dear old saints.
Thing was, God had healed me of tuberculosis of both lungs when I was 9 years old, but I didn’t know it. The doctor I was going to said I had the croup — a wheezing soupy cough. So we believed that was what I had. When I was 23 years old, my husband’s Uncle Noe died of tuberculosis. So, the family all had skin tests; but mine was the only one that took.
Doctor Slepnikoff was my doctor at that time, and had worked in a tuberculosis sanitarium. He said I had a place in the top of each lung the size of a 50 cent piece, where the tuberculosis had sealed itself off and healed. He warned me never to smoke, drink alcoholic beverages, or lead a riotous life and be sure and get enough fresh air and exercise, because if I didn’t take care of myself I wouldn’t last six months.
I was 9 when I went to the altar and excepted Christ into my heart. By the time I was 12, that soupy tuberculosis cough had completely gone away. So at 9, God had healed me. He had answered my prayer, but I didn’t know it. It took me several years to find out, just like it took my mother many years to find out that God had answered her Christmas prayer.
So, the moral to this story is we need to continually thank God for his mercy and praise him for his wonderful works; because he is worthy to be praised. We need to praise him, even if we don’t know what he may have healed us of or delivered us from. That way we can keep the true spirit of Christmas alive in our hearts all year round. In psalms we learn that God inhabits the praises of his people (Psalms 24:7 and 22:3).
So, if we want to be a dwelling place for God, praise him and make him welcome, because, He is knocking at our heart’s door (Revelation 3:20).
When Barack Obama walks into the Oval Office Wednesday morning, the first full day of his presidency, he will have more on his mind than deciding on which canine should become First Dog. Let’s hope he feels more comfortable with the decisions of state than he seems to be with the pick of a dog for his children.
His latest choice in the dog department is between a Portuguese water hound or a Labradoodle — a mix between a poodle and a Labrador. He is narrowing on these because they are good dogs for people who are allergic to dogs, as one of his daughters is. These dogs shed very little. Poodles also are good for allergic people and for those who don’t want to vacuum too much dog hair from their rugs and furniture.
He originally had expressed interest in getting a shelter pup, but that seems to have gone by the board. Portuguese water hounds and Labradoodles aren’t your $90 animals from the pound. They are expensive animals, and as large breeds, they require a lot of care and exercise.
As president, Obama will have to worry from day one about the economy, and yet almost everybody he will deal with will have more experience in economic affairs than he does. And they all will have their own agendas.
So far, he seems to have chosen good advisors, and so far he seems to be anxious not to break anything, or do much more than President Bush and his advisors already have done — just more of it.
Obama also will have to make sure that the person leading the economic recovery will be somebody who knows what he’s doing. Is transition aide Larry Summers that man? Or do we need somebody else at the helm?
Do we need a Portuguese water dog, a Labradoodle, a poodle — or maybe a cat?
After Christmas, my wife and I went to our local Wal-Mart to buy some wash baskets.
I wandered off to the nearby toy section to see what was selling and what did not sell this Christmas season. Suddenly, my eyes fell on a toy that I would have loved to have had back in 1955, when I was 5.
It was a Martian. And if you pressed a button on its Martian chest, its arms moved back and forth with a ray gun in its left Martian hand as yellow light began to beam from its eyes.
I thought to myself, this is fantastic. So, I put a red one, a green one, and a black one in my basket. Then the thought suddenly came to me, Wal-Mart has taken over the world. Orson Wells was right. And everyone who shops at Wal-Mart is a Wal-Martian. They have taken over without a single shot being fired.
But the question remains, who will write the final chapter of mankind: “The Wal-Martian Chronicles?”
Oh! And when I went to the checkout stand, I explained to the cashier that I am a grandfather. In fact, I do have four granddaughters and three grandsons. So, the Martian space alien toys I bought are for my grandsons (but they’ll have to come to Madera and play with them at my house. Are you reading this, Salvador Lorenzo, Tristan, and Tyler Roush?
A lot of folks have been talking about the Republican Party lately, wondering what will happen to it now that the Democrats are in charge. A lot of the talk is about returning to “our roots,” whatever those are. But it could be the future of the party will largely be in responding to future opportunity.
The Democrats faced the same problem when President Bush was elected and Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. It appeared Republicans would be in charge more or less for the long haul. That was not to be the case.
As things went not as planned for the Bush administration, Democrats wisely seized opportunities where they found them and cranked up the rhetoric machine. When it came time for Barack Obama and other candidates to run for president, they principally ran against Bush — who was not running. Go figure. Once Obama won the nomination, he ran against Bush all the time, not against his opponent, John McCain (who also ran against Bush whenever he could).
But soon, starting right after noon next Tuesday, Obama will find to his shock that Bush no longer is there to run against. Obama then will start making his own mistakes. That’s when the Republicans will have to be ready to pounce.
The future of the Republican Party at that point will depend on the validity of its ideas and the skill with which its partisans express them.
Let’s hope Obama’s mistakes — and he will make some — are policy blunders rather than errors committed while facing crises such as attacks on American soil or record-setting hurricanes, crises which shaped much of the Bush administration. In fact, let’s hope Obama, and the country, are spared such trials, and that the Republicans have to work hard for their opportunities.
Conservationists in Australia are scratching their heads. The idea seemed so good, but it backfired.
They had been worried a few years ago that cats on Macquarie Island, off Australia, had become too numerous and were eliminating too many of the seabirds. The seabirds are native species, while the cats aren’t. People sailing past had dropped them off. Cats don’t fly or swim in the ocean, so it wasn’t their fault they were there. They were, however, illegal immigrants.
But once there, they found it to their liking. There were lots of local birds and rabbits to eat. The rabbits also apparently had been dropped off, and also were illegal immigrants.
Some busy-body conservationists came along and decided to help the birds out by removing the cats. “Removing,” in this case meant taking the kitties off for a slumber party where the slumber was permanent.
When the cats were gone, the rabbits, rats and mice came out to play, and wound up eating the vegetation on which the seabirds depended for cover. So now the rabbits, rats and mice have to be removed.
Our cat would tell you that it is always the cat that gets the short end of the stick in any argument. For instance, I am mad at her right now for biting Mrs. Doud on the arm, and I won’t let her (the cat, not Mrs. Doud) in the house. It is the second time she has bitten one of us. Last time she bit me, on the leg. I gave her a good bawling out at the time, and you would thnk that would have kept her from biting again, but it didn’t.
Maybe she is bored, looking for action. Our regular backyard birds seem to have gone away for the winter, and the cat has nobody to stalk, except her two humans. I’ve thought about having her removed, but I don’t want a lot of rabbits hanging around.
As I am sure all of you are aware, during the past week Madera Babe Ruth lost a valued and loyal member, Ken Taylor, from our league. We are deeply saddened by this loss. Ken impacted many lives during his time with our program including the players, coaches, officials and supporters.
As a tribute to Ken for the 28-plus years he managed, participated in the league as a loyal supporter and board member, we would like to expand the announcer’s booth at the Madera High School Varsity Baseball Field, which was a “pet peeve” of his.
Ken impacted many lives during his time with our program from players, coaches, officials and supporters. However, much as this project is planned with good intentions, our finances are limited. Each year our league receives donations, sponsorships and player fees to help alleviate the operational costs and often encounter a very minimal profit.
We are contacting local community members who may have had contact with Ken Taylor to help us fund this project. Your donations are tax-deductable and will be recognized at the 2009 Babe Ruth Opening Ceremonies in May 2009. Any donation that you could provide would be greatly appreciated. Donations can be mailed to Madera Babe Ruth c/o Bobby Anglin at
16564 Canal Way, Madera, CA 93638. (Federal Tax ID # 77-0236830)
Once again, thank you for your consideration in supporting the Madera Babe Ruth baseball program.
