Sorry



My deepest apologies to all of my seven readers! No excuses just reasons why it was a little more difficult to blog. First and only, my lovely bride, in attempts to keep us out of the poor house, turned on the internet filter, so I couldn't access all of my beloved sites such as ebay and finishline and most importantly, it blocked me from blogging! Now I'm back and ready to post!

Before I get to it I need to give a shout out to, almost Dr., Rob-dogg, good post my friend! E-Walk as usually giving us something to worship the Father with.

I was driving home from a long day at the office and heard on the Sean Hannity show about a police shooting in NYC with a groom on his wedding day, you can check out some of the logistics if you want here.

I have a few thoughts on the issue. First thought, why is it that whenever I think of police I think of the stereotypical white male wanting to use his authority to make me feel inferior? In this particular case it was mostly minorities, black and hispanic police officers working undercover. They were (according to what they wrote about the events) attempting to prevent a drive by from occuring. It all sounds noble, putting themselves in harms way to prevent others from dying. Well of course this is what they wrote about themselves so who really can you believe? I hope you can trust the officers in this case but when they are the ones that get to give their side of the story one never knows if they are attempting to cover up anything or not. It's a sad day when there are shootings, people die who didn't have to, and you don't know who to believe. One thing that is more certain, if you don't hit a police officer with your vehicle (as the report says) and don't make vague statements i.e. "get it out of the car and handle this" in order to intimidate others (as the report says), you highly increase your chances of survival!

Saying that I'll say this. I have personal knowledge of crooked cop experiences. I really distrust them, although I know one good cop, my uncle, so I guess there's one in the world that I can trust. Most importantly, I have personal experience with people who have to right reports on things and many times their report varied from my report. I hope that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton can shut their mouths a little bit and see that if anything this was minority on minority crime and nothing else. This is not a race issue! The only thing that race has to do about it is that if it were a white male shot to death by some cops on the eve of his wedding in NYC, Brian in Oklahoma would not know about it and Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would not show their faces on every TV channel.

Well, that's my rants for the day. Soon to come, more BCS rants. Thanks for visiting, please accept my apologies with the fourteen days without a post, I admit I dropped the ball and it's my fault and I am truly sorry. I'll try my best to not let it happen again. Come back soon!

Considerate



Thanks to all who commented, please keep the suggestions coming. None of us have it all figured out but we all can help each other (mainly me) figure some things out. Also, thanks to E-Walk for stealing my thunder on this post, the Lord works in mysterious ways!

I am going to attempt to, off the cuff, compose some ways that you can be certain that you aren't being considerate.

You aren't being considerate when you pull out in front of someone only to go noticeably slower than them.

You aren't being considerate when you are stopped at a light, others take off going the speed limit but you are going so slow two other cars and turn onto the road in front of you!

Of course, you aren't being considerate if you drive slow in the left lane.
But, you aren't being considerate if you drive just as fast as the person in the left lane in the slow lane, then no one can get by either of you!

You aren't being considerate if you don't use your turn signal to notify the person that is trying to turn onto the road that you are on that you are turning.

You aren't being considerate (and highly increase your opportunity to total your car and someone elses car) if you leave your turn signal on while driving down a two lane road.

You aren't being considerate if you are talking on your cell phone while driving, especially if you are going slow!

You aren't being considerate if you are driving irratically.

You aren't being considerate if you (this is going to be hard to explain) are at a stop light and are in your lane, but the person behind you is wanting to turn either right or left and can't and will miss the light because you are either not scooted up far enough or are either too far to the right or left of you lane to where they can't get by.

You aren't being considerate if you pull out in front of someone and immediately make a turn thereby causing the person that you pulled out in front of to come to a complete stop, but if you would have waited another .67 seconds you wouldn't have caused anyone to slow down but simply let them pass by!

You aren't being considerate if you let someone into traffic causing everyone behind you to miss the light (because the light stays on according to the sensor and not enough people were going over it/there was a huge gap in time of people going over it, so only you and the person that you let in get to go through the light.

You aren't being considerate if you are the person wanting to be let into traffic but you are ten feet away from the road, thus causing everyone to wait on you to get on the road so that they can proceed only to get stopped by the light because of you.

You aren't being considerate if you are let into traffic and you continue to let everyone else in because "someone was nice to you so you have to return the favor ten-fold"! Think of the multiple people behind you that you are holding up just because you want to feel good about yourself!

You aren't being considerate if you are the person that is wanting to make a right or left turn and the person in front of you has left you plenty of room to get by but you won't go by them, causing those behind you to miss the light.

You aren't being considerate if you slow down excessively to make an easy turn either to the right or left, causing everyone behind you to slow down and lose their momentum and miss the light.

You aren't being considerate if you won't turn left unless EVERYTHING has cleared thereby taking absolutely no risk at all, even though everyone behind you knows that if you would have went the first time you would have been fine.

You aren't being considerate if you see a Pizza Delivery driver, or any other person whose entire job consists of getting somewhere fast and this determines if they can feed their family or not, and still go slow. Please make every attempt to get out of their way or speed up to at least the speed limit!

You are not being considerate if you don't tip you delivery driver well! (The $1.50 that is called a delivery charge doesn't not go to the driver but to the store, for what you ask, I don't know, I assume it's to pay for the person that answers the phone when you call, but they would do that anyway even if you wanted to pick it up so I guess it's just to make the rich get richer and frustrate all the delivery drivers in the world, for they don't get paid for their gas, oil changes, or anything, if you don't tip them well, they lost money delivering you the items you ordered, thus you aren't being considerate at all!

You doubly aren't being considerate if you claim to be Christ's ambassoder and don't tip well! (This goes for any tipping, including restuarants, the door man, the ice cream shop that you frequent even when they haven't done anything to deserve a tip!)

This list was an abridged version, I reserve the right to post more on this topic in the future. I hope that all of you help the world by being more considerate in your day to day lives. Have a good rest of the day and frequent the links on the right.

Of note, Jed had a good/true life post, E-Walk is always great, Consumed-fantastic as always, Rob-dogg-wonderful, Lil-Brother Ricky is good as well.

P.S. If anyone knows of Big Cheez's e-mail address let me know, I needs to get ahold of him for a great idea I had.

Feel free to link to this post, pass it on to every inconsiderate person you know, print it out and share it at the dinner table during Thanksgiving and Christmas, whip it out on the Fourth of July! Do your part by spreading the word so that we can have more considerate people on the road!

Stay out of trouble and thanks for visiting!

Immigration Cont'd



As promised dear readers, though fighting my sleepy eyes, I am going to attempt to make some more comments and attempt to further the discussion on immigration and how I can better understand how this pitiful sinner can learn how to give honor and praise to my Savior in my views of immigration. But first, I got to draw some attention to Lil' Brother Ricky, this dear brother just gave me some undeserved props for which I am truly grateful. (Beware, selfish plea coming!) Please, Please, Please, someone, especially Lil' Brother Ricky, since none of my other readers have responded, help me learn how to put some pictures into my posts, I've tried and failed too many times and have waisted at least 2 hours of my life, please help!!! (You can probably tell that I'm tired.) Also, I've been meaning to do this for awhile, but if someone help me in showering E-Walk with some encouragement about his blog, it's wonderful. To have a peer devote so much time to make a great intellectual God-ward post day in and day out, it's marvelous, please, if you visited here, make sure you visit there too, and if you think about coming back here again, make sure you visit there first!

Now to immigration, first, I need to apologize to Where the Redfern Blogs for not reading the common-sensical article he suggested, I meant to before I blogged tonight but my eyes are about to shut, I promise I will though. I am basically going to be responding to Jed's comments, so if you haven't read them you might want to take this brief second and read them...

Okay, I too believe that the world, in our minds, shouldn't have borders, we are to love all men, this world-view is played out to me as when I see hurting Somalies and Iraqi's and Ethopians and Africans throughout the world my heart should ache, most of the time it does but sometimes I experience hardness and self-centeredness and then it doesn't of which I am ashamed. Though in my mind the world shouldn't have borders for a person is a person no matter where they were born (their life begins at conception too)and unredeemed peoples are going to spend eternity away from God. Saying this, the way the world is constructed and according to the infinite wisdom of God this world has borders, there are multiple countries in this world, some have more than others. I believe that this country should do everything in its power to help out the poor and needy, and fight for the defenseless as much as we can. I agree with Jed that this country as it is today is not doing a good job with any of this. I think we did the right thing with Iraq, people dying needlessly is never a good thing and something needed to be done about it and thankfully we stepped in.

We still don't have a good judicial system that appropriates justice, this is not to say that we shouldn't because we should, this is inexplicable to me. I hate the fact that we don't enforce our own laws, it's just so contradictory to me. I am for the illegal immigrants in the fact that I want them to have opportunity and not have to live in poverty for the rest of their lives, I don't have a problem with them working in the states and sending their income back to Mexico for their family either. The main problem that I do have is that they are here illegally! Let me break the law and not pay my taxes and see how fast I wind up behind bars, it's just not right! Besides them not paying taxes, I hate it that Cubans, North Koreans, Africans, Somoli's don't have the opportunity to walk across our borders and have freedom as well. It shouldn't be so easy for the Mexicans and not everyone else, it's just not right! Plus, the whole deal with Mexicans crossing the border to give birth so that their children are citizens isn't right either. I guess my chief complaint is that we should allow immigration the same to all and not make it so stinkin' easy for one people group while for the Iraqi's, Somoli's, and North Koreans it's so stinkin' difficult.

Taking this worldview a step further, I am desperate to know how I can care for the poor and needy in my area? If anyone in the greater Tulsa area can help me out with this I'm open to suggestions. I'm in the book, Brian Barnes.

Mainly I want to know how I can balance, two jobs, saving for a house, paying off all my debts and helping out those in my community that I lived just like a little less than 8 years ago. Also, how do all of these things balance out with having parents that are struggling to make ends meet as well? This inquiring mind wants to know! If you have any advice on how I should set my priorities and honor the King by doing these things please help a brother out. You can be any geek off the street, I don't care, as long as you have some helpful advice, it's more than welcome!

As always, thanks for visiting, check out Lil' Brother Ricky's site check out E-Walk's as well, give them both some encouragement, they deserve it. Post comments as many and as long as you'd like. Don't forget my other question that no one has commented on in my previous post, I think it's two posts before this one, I still need answers. Finally, if I wake up tomorrow and realize that I didn't make any sense than I'll revise this post and post again on this matter that I desperately need help in. Have a good rest of the day.

Soon to come... a post on being considerate (this won't be your normal post!) so come back soon.

Hiding in Him,
Brian Jason Barnes

Disgusted





As much as it makes me sick to my stomach about losing the House and possibly the Senate to those who are in favor of killing kids, it makes me sick as well to see our President belittled to the point of being called Mr. Bush, at first I didn’t know who they were referring to, I thought to myself, President Bush has a brother besides Governor Jed Bush? I finally realized that the writer of the article was calling our President, Mister. How absurd, if you don’t respect the man you still respect the office. Needless to say, this was, in my recollection, the first time that I have read an article in the New York Times, and it might just be the last time.
Thanks for visiting and the immigration post shall come later in the evening hours so come back soon.

Odds and Ends




One quick question for you readers out there. Is the Haggard scandal as big or bigger than the Jimmy Swaggert scandal. I am not old enough, or maybe I am but just didn't care at the time, to remember anything about the Jimmy Swaggert scandal. Truthfully, I still don't know anything about the Jimmy Swaggert scandal, I don't know what he did, who he was, or anything of the sort. Kind of like this Haggard deal, I have no clue who he is, still don't know what he did, is it just buying drugs, a gay affair, who knows? Truthfully this all brings me back to a conversation with Dominic one day last year when we found out that the job that he has now came open because the counselor was caught at a high school wrestling match peeping at the boys in the locker room. We both knew the guy and knew that he was gay but never would have thought he would commit such acts. We both came to the conclusion that he is no worse than either of us for without the grace of God sustaining us than we would be exposed doing far worse than he. The same goes for both Haggard and Swaggert, both are professing believers like me (to my knowledge, I can't say for certain that Swaggert is for I don't know anything about him except for his name and probably am mispelling that) both are as dependent upon the grace of God as much as I, it just so happens that for Haggert and Swaggert, the Lord chose to hand them over to their lusts in order to make them more like Jesus. It's kind of odd how when I heard of what Haggard was accused of doing it made me sick to my stomach just envisioning the man with man massage that he did confess to having made me a little queisy inside. But knowing that if Haggard really is putting all of his faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of God's Son, than this happened for his good, literally, God chose this to be the best thing for him. How many of us would really welcome the exposure of our lives to this degree, but if the Lord deems it best for us let us rejoice in Him being faithful to us and leading us to repentance.

I'll have a post about my immigration concerns tomorrow, or should I say Wednesday. Until then, pray that I abide in Him one more day and that He would grant both Haggard and Swaggert greater holiness and more intimacy with the King.

Don't forget my initial question, it wasn't a rhetorical one, I really want to be able to put this into historical perspective. Thanks for your help and visit again soon.

U of L moving up in rankings


Eventual Dr. Rob-dogg recently posed a question to me and I think I should address it before the big game tonight that I won’t be able to watch due to being at work, yeah! The question was, what do you think about UofL’s recent jump in the poles. My response is, the BCS is one of the biggest jokes I’ve known, it rates up there with Santa Claus! It’s a sham, all they wanted to do is increase viewers of the game tonight by pitting 3 vs. 5, that’s it. This makes for better commentary on talk shows like Cold Pizza and ESPN and makes it easier to have a team from the Big East in the National Championship game and further it creates more controversy down the road, what happens if Florida wins out? Does UofL deserve a shot at the National Title more than a one loss Florida team, or any one loss SEC team? That’s going to be everyone’s cry towards the end of this, looking at WV schedule, they play no one except UofL, which is ridiculous, at least UofL tried to play a good team this year and stuck it to the U. Side note, Tom Jurich should take this occasion to challenge anyone in the nation to schedule a home and home with them, I’ve heard he’s done it in the past, but tonight he’ll have a national audience, he should do it WWE style and call every school out that has refused to do it with them and challenge everyone to take him up on the offer! This will increase recruiting and increase the likelihood the they never have to hear that they aren’t worthy of playing for the title because they didn’t play anyone, it will make it clear that he’s tried and UofL can’t help it if everyone is too scared to play them, end side note. Now we all know that neither Notre Dame nor USC deserve to be in the National Championship game for ND got it handed to them at home by the Mighty Wolverines, and USC got beat by a team that UofL blew out last year and most people never knew that they were even supposed to be kind of good this year. Texas doesn’t deserve a rematch with anyone for they struggled against Texas Tech last week and needed a bogus pass interference call to help them seal the victory. The loser of the UofM and OSU game doesn’t deserve a rematch either because if they wanted the Title then they should have won that game, enough said. The only teams that should have any hopes of the title is OSU, Michigan, the winner of UofL and WVU, and any SEC team with one loss, that’s it, not Rutgers because if they beat both UofL and WVU it just proves that the Big East was overhyped, that’s it. Well, that’s all I got for now, root UofL on to victory for me! Thanks for visiting and stay out of trouble!