Here’s a lot more pictures from Alaska.  I’m working on the video too.  These things take time.  I have graduation stuff to post too.  Please bear with me.

Here is the first set of pictures from our cruise to Alaska.  This is just a sampling of over 200 pictures we (mostly Karri) took.  I shot almost two hours of video.  I plan to spend the next couple of weekends cutting and posting just about all of it, but this will do for starters.

Approaching Sitka

Lighthouse near Sitka

Sitka

Ice sculpture in the main dining room on the Mercury

Hubbard Glacier

Iceberg at Hubbard Glacier

Our Northernmost point

Scott and Karri at Hubbard Glacier

Sammy

Wyatt Earp's gun at the Red Dog Saloon in Juneau

The Red Dog Saloon in Juneau

Juneau

Scott in Juneau

Mendenhall Glacier outside Juneau

Close-up of Mendenhall Glacier

Scott at Mendenhall Glacier

The Lumberjack Show in Ketchikan

Room service aboard the Celebrity Mercury

The Casino on board the Mercury

The (something) Nightclub on board the Mercury, Deck 7 Aft

Midship on the Mercury, looking down from Deck 7 to Deck 5

The Celebrity Theater on the Mercury (Incredible!) 7 Forward

The Navigator Club on the Mercury, 12 Forward

From the Boston Herald:

At the request of U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich and another minor candidate who got only 44 votes, New Hampshire officials will conduct a hand recount of the Democratic and Republican presidential primaries.

Read more…

Who is LHS Associates?

Even more information… BlackBoxVoting.org

The internet was buzzing today with allegations of voter fraud in New Hampshire, but I bet you won’t hear about it on CNN or Fox. Google “voter fraud” + “New Hampshire” or go to digg.com and search there.

The most damning evidence came from Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org, who got the head clerk of Sutton Township to admit that Ron Paul got 31 votes there when they had reported zero votes for him. There are a lot of little townships in New Hampshire. Bev Harris was the subject of an HBO documentary a couple of years ago called “Hacking Democracy” about how easy it is to steal an election now that we have electronic voting machines.

And it’s not just Ron Paul who was affected. A lot of Obama supporters are crying foul too. He was polling way ahead of Hillary going into New Hampshire. How long are we going to put up with having our elections stolen? Get mad! Spread the word!

Update 1/10/08: I don’t think I adequately expressed my disgust here earlier. Our elections are RIGGED! We are not truly a free people anymore! Demand a recount! Demand Justice! Demand Liberty!

Paul Watson at PrisonPlanet.com posted a better article than I can write and included several relevant links. Check it out.

Judicial Watch recently released it’s list of their “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians”. Fascinating! How many presidential candidates do you count?

Happy New Year! Time for a change of scenery. I wasn’t planning on this, but I was working at Church this morning and things were going well. Bill was back (our Lead Pastor, he was sick last weekend), he was talking about God’s Grace and I was finally starting to feel it for the first time in weeks. It felt so good I wanted to share it. So I asked my good friend Les Faires, he’s the Media Director on staff at Neighborhood Church, if I could shoot a few pictures with my phone. He said sure, go ahead, so I’ve posted some shots of the video control room in action. This is where we edit the video for the video podcast as well as the video venues at church on Sunday. We have overflow services they call “video venues”. One of them has no live worship music, so we shoot the worship music for them at the early service on Sunday. The video podcast can be seen anywhere in the world with an internet connection, and you don’t need an iPod. You can watch it on your computer.

If you click on the picture on the left, you can kind of see Ashley in the director’s seat and Steve sitting next to her. Ashley was directing the three camera operators and mixing those three images and Steve was at the graphics station overlaying the graphics on the screen. I run the audio board, which you can see in that third picture. I had all the channels muted and faded out completely except for Bill’s channel. The music was done and Bill was speaking. That’s Josh on camera two in the last picture. One and three are down in the auditorium in the back corners.

What a great way to start the year! If you don’t go to church much and you want to get 2008 off to a great start spiritually speaking, I encourage you to click over to the podcast page and watch one of Bill’s messages. They’re completely painless, really! Bill is never boring I can assure you. You’ll be uplifted and you don’t even have to get dressed.

Have an awesome 2008!

It was definitely an interesting experience, certainly a first for me. There I was on Dana Drive, at the main entrance to Mount Shasta Mall and Discovery Village along with fifteen or twenty other volunteers, waving a sign and handing out literature about Dr. Ron Paul’s campaign for president.

From a little after 11:00 a.m. to almost 3:00, I imagine I watched a pretty thorough cross-section of the local population pass through that intersection. The public’s response was positive overall. There were an encouraging amount of waves and thumbs up and a few honks, but the majority still seemed unfamiliar with Dr. Paul. And that’s why we’re out there. See you next Saturday.

There were a few jerks, like there are in any crowd. A few middle fingers were waved and I heard a “Ron Paul sucks!” from one car. One guy rolled down his window and yelled at us that it is impossible for Paul to win because Hillary already has it all wrapped up.

The saddest encounter I had was when a car with two young ladies in it stopped in front of me. The passenger rolled down her window so I handed her a flyer and a pocket Constitution. She asked “Is he a republican?” I responded that he is running for the republican nomination, but she didn’t let me finish. Instead of handing the materials back to me, she threw them to the ground, rolled up the window as the light changed, and they drove away. I understand her anger and frustration with republicans, believe me. But it’s sad that she chose to dismiss him so readily. If she had taken a moment to read what I handed her, I’m sure she would have been surprised.

Mall Security even tried to tell us we couldn’t assemble on the public sidewalk and wave our signs. We did anyway.

Old Business:

I promised almost a month ago that I would have lots of pictures to post from Mayhem in Mayville. I was given tons of pictures, they’re great and I really appreciate it, but it turns out they’re in the form of a slideshow on a DVD, so it’s not like I have a disk of jpeg files I can post. So if you really want to see them, I’m afraid you’ll have to come over to my house.

New Business:

I was trying to avoid election politics until the election year actually arrives, but they’ve moved the primaries up to January in so many states that I need to speak up now. First of all, if you live in Redding, please watch the news on Channel 7 at 6:00 and 11:00 tonight.

Last weekend my wife and I were driving our 15 year old son and his new learner’s permit out to the college to practice driving a stick shift in the empty parking lot. Well, we drove past the Mount Shasta Mall on the way and saw a group of 15 or 20 people on the sidewalks waving Ron Paul campaign signs. I was so surprised, I thought I was the only one in Redding who had heard of him. This got me so fired up that I got on the computer, went to www.ronpaul2008.com and found the link to my local Ron Paul
meetup group. And this Saturday, I was out there with them on Dana Drive waving a sign and handing out campaign literature for three hours. Boy are my arms tired. Channel 7 news showed up and shot lots of footage. I have never experienced a real honest to goodness grass roots groundswell of support for a candidate like this before. Dr. Paul is curing apathy and cynicism! I could go on and on, but don’t take my word for it. Check him out for yourself and you’ll find out why so many people are calling Ron Paul the Champion of the Constitution!

Official Campaign Site: http://www.ronpaul2008.com
Get Involved at the Local Level: http://ronpaul.meetup.com
Read Ron Paul’s Articles on the Internet
Texas Straight Talk: http://www.house.gov/paul/legis_tst.htm
Speeches and statements: http://www.house.gov/paul/legis_congrec.htm
Press releases: http://www.house.gov/paul/legis_press.htm
Articles: http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul-arch.html
http://www.sierratimes.com/03/arc_page.php?author=Ron+Paul
YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/RonPaul2008dotcom
Or call 1-800-322-1414 to hear Dr. Paul’s latest editorial.

We need to elect Congressman Ron Paul from Texas to the White House next year. I have never felt so strongly about any candidate for public office, ever. He’s running for the Republican nomination but he’s far from the typical republican. He’s a constitutionalist who will appeal to a broad spectrum of Americans, but let’s face it, in this country you gotta get the R or D nomination or you don’t get elected. And in California, you only have until January 22 to make sure you’re registered republican so you can vote in the republican primary on February 5 for Dr. Ron Paul, so we can help him win the republican nomination, and in November 2008, elect him President of the United States!

“Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.”

Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all. “

John 18:37,38 KJV

In a recent post I mentioned that I was planning on taking this blog in somewhat of a different direction. Well first of all, I never want to lose sight of the Gospel, so I pray that whatever I say here, no matter what the subject matter, is always anchored in His truth.

Where should I start? I’ve been reading the prophets and I’m looking around and thinking, hey, our society is heading the same direction as ancient Israel and Judah and so many other societies in history near the end of their declines. The prophets had some dire warnings for the children of Israel and they hold true for us too. I believe the United States is headed for some serious trouble, and much sooner than most people think.

I have some serious questions. I want to bring up subjects that many are very uncomfortable even thinking about, much less talking about. Let’s not go into 9/11 just yet, it’s too divisive a topic to start with and I don’t have many answers on the subject. I’ll just say for now that I think the official version of what happened on that day is a fairy tale and you have to be pretty gullible to accept it at face value.

Here’s what I think. I am far more terrified by George Bush and Dick Cheney than I am by Osama Bin Laden or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and I believe this is no accident. I’m horrified by Bush and Cheney because they are the real terrorists. What the White House does through the mainstream news channels is the dictionary definition of terrorism! But they’re not the top of the pyramid. They’re just the top guys who show their faces in public. I think the “War on Terror” is rapidly becoming a war on the American people. I don’t know exactly what happened on 9/11, but look who benefited the most. 9/11 gave the Bush administration the perfect excuse to launch endless wars overseas and to begin to turn the U.S. into an Orwellian police state. I also think the President’s grandfather was a Nazi (Google “Prescott Bush”).

I think Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda are pretty much creations of the CIA. I’m old enough to remember the U.S. backing the Mujahideen in their resistance against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the late seventies / early eighties. I think Bin Laden is probably dead. These “new” videos of him they trot out every now and then are ridiculous fakes.

There is a bill in the Senate right now, S 1959, already passed the House, called, I kid you not, “The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorist Prevention Act” that literally shreds the Fourth Amendment. Its language is so vague that they can pretty much call dissenters or anyone they don’t like a terrorist and make them disappear, U.S. citizen or not. That terrifies me!

I think there is global trend toward a world government going on today. There’s a movement right now towards a North American Union. Our national sovereignty is being sold out from under us, behind closed doors, by organizations that weren’t elected by anyone! Our borders are unprotected because they want them that way. They want those borders to disappear entirely!

I get upset sometimes because I see the United States I was raised in being overthrown and turned into something ugly and evil. Americans are good people, but it’s time everyone faces the fact that our federal government is far more corrupt than many of us even want to imagine.

Merry Christmas!