Thank you Mother of a Warrior over at Walking With a Warrior blog for nominating me. I do feel honored that you nominated me for this award.
However… I must confess I cannot find anything anywhere telling me anything about the award. Who is Leibster? Why is he giving this award? Do I get to boast about it if a I win? Will I get a funny gold statue to put on my desk if I win? Or is this more about getting the “nomination” instead of the award? Is this some sort of internet practical joke? Hhm? Sounds like the one who started all this is skimping out!
Gary Varvel nails the gun law debate with the above illustration. The Liberal Left’s answer to everything is “more laws.” In doing so, they refuse to accept the reality that more laws will make no difference at all when it comes to crime in the world. It just means that the criminals will break more laws, but nothing will be done to curb violence because, as we backwards types who are Christians understand, the law is powerless to change the human heart. The only thing that works with criminals is brute force. Thereby the best thing for our society is a well-armed citizenry so that we can protect ourselves and the innocent in society. Our founding fathers understood that principal and is one of the many reasons they gave us the Second Amendment.
I added a new addition to my blog roll tonight: Galactic Slacker. It is where Jody thinks carefully about issues and allows us to think with him. Check it out.
This is my first addition to the blog roll in a long time. I think the last blog I added to it was Heath’s blog: Tides And Turning
Check both of them out and give me a full report in the morning.
I was trying to find some Wranglers tonight and thought that Kohl’s Department stores would have some. Guess what? They don’t. They do however sell Levi’s 550, 501, 523, 518, 496, 321, 1492 and Pinta Maria jeans for the low price of $60s a pair and up! $60 a pair for jeans? Are they really that much better than Wranglers? After all, back when I was still buying Levi’s, when I was single and had more expendable income, I found the Levi’s wore out just as quickly as every other pair of jeans I’ve ever owned. So why does anyone pay that much for a pair of jeans?
They are too proud for me… I left empty handed and figured I would wait till I could find some Wranglers somewhere.
PS Just a note to my regular readers, I got to eat lunch with Danny Wright today of the Bumbling Genius. It was a joy getting to know him and always a joy to meet fellow bloggers in the cause. Dan told me he has also met Neal Simpson of Eternity Matters, which makes me want to get together with him as well.
Another milestone. This is post number 2,000, although you cannot see all 2,000 posts. About 30 of them are marked private, things I’ve written for my own personal use. But other than that, you have access to all 1,970 posts. Some are must reads, others are just humorous. Some are mildly interesting and some I just posted to post something that particular day. Nonetheless, I hope you have enjoyed reading them, learned from many of them, been edified by others and challenged by more.
I have to confess that my blog has been quite A&M focused of late. A lot of that has to do with the fact that I just don’t care for the heat that some of my posts tend to produce. Witness the recent post I posted about Obama being portrayed as Jesus. I immediately caught heat for it. Sorry, but I just don’t care for the heat at all.
I do lament that Obama won because I don’t think his polices for this country are the best policies, given that wherever those policies are tried, they tend to fail. I don’t believe this country will ever be what it was 25 years ago or even before that. Far too many people want a hand out from the government, instead of a hand up.
Yet, at the same time, I know my LORD is sovereign and that Obama is in the White House because of God’s eternal decree. The Triune God is the ONE who sets up kings and brings them down. Therefore, we must admit that God has a purpose in giving us such a king (Daniel 4:17, 25, 35).
As this country falls into more decay, may we remember that He gives the leadership to whomever He chooses and not who we would choose. This is one of the lessons where we realize that God truly is God, and we are but mere men living in a very fallen world.
Given that, how shall we respond? Here is some advice from our Savior:
But I say to you who hear: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you. 29 To him who strikes you on the one cheek, offer the other also. And from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either. 30 Give to everyone who asks of you. And from him who takes away your goods do not ask them back. 31 And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise.
32 “But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 And if you lendto those from whom you hope to receive back, what credit is that to you? For even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much back. 35 But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil. 36 Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.
Timothy Matters surpassed 100,000 view this morning. Just a small mile marker in the world of blogging. I’ve been blogging since 2005 in which I ran through two different blogs. I killed the first two for various reasons and tried to give it up all together. The only one with a blog was Elisa and she wasn’t using her blog. So in 2006, I performed a corporate takeover and made her blog mine. She didn’t mind.
I renamed the blog Timothy Matters, or things that matter to Timothy when I switched it from Blogger to WordPress in April 2010. The stats that I have only reflect my blogging since that point.
My biggest all-timt month is January 2012 with 10,583 hits. I reposted Mike Sherman’s open letter to high school coaches and it set my blog on fire. WordPress actually contacted me to see if I wanted additional advertising for a fee. The offer quickly went away once the hits dropped back to normal, but it was exciting for the moment.
The next milestone is crossing the 2,000 post marker. I should hit that in a couple of months. Thank you to all my regular readers for keeping this blog alive.
Anyone who blogs knows that with allowing people to post comments, there will also be those who post comments so that you will check out their website where they are selling such wonderful items as male-enhancement drugs, to… well… male-enhancement drugs from overseas. They say things like, “great blog!” in the hopes that you will allow their comment to be posted along with 17 web links to more male-enhancement drugs.
For instance, someone actually wrote this:
Usually I don’t learn article on blogs, but I would like to say that this write-up very pressured me to check out and do so! Your writing taste has been amazed me. Thanks, quite great article.
Obviously, someone from overseas. I hope he learned simple sentence construction while he was here. Keep it simple, subject, verb, object. Try that for a while and see how it works outs. I didn’t follow up on the web link he provided.
Then there is this gem:
the language you use in your posts are not so popular nor too difficult
Obviously it was too difficult for this guy to respond coherently.
He also posted this one as well:
this subject is a lot interesting, it would help me so much.
Oh that you would actually learn English. But I imagine these guys are stuck in some basement overseas and told to post these responses in every blog they can find, in the hope that we might actually follow one of their links. Thank goodness for spam filters.
Is it just me, or do other users of Google Chrome have trouble posting comments to other WordPress blogs? I switched to Google Chrome because Safari has become exceedingly and abundantly slow. Opening pages is a burden. For instance, I’ve opened another page in a tab and I have rewritten the previous sentence three times and this one and it’s still not open…
I’ve tried Firefox and it didn’t work well for some reason. It could just be my 5-year-old iMac. In the world of computing, 5-year-old computers are ancient… but it’s what I have so I have to stick with it.
OK, time to publish this page… second tab is still not loaded.
On Blogging — For the month of January, Timothy Matters hit all kinds of records for readership. I’m not sure why, but the post Mike Sherman Shows His True Character sent the stats through the roof. I had two days in a row that exceeded more than 2,000 hits because of this post. Whereas, my previous record day was something closer to 300 hits in a day, this post was going ballistic.
I don’t know where all the hits were coming from either. Because of this, January 2012 was my busiest month, with 10,584 hits. My busiest day was January 12th, with 2,610 hits. I doubt I will exceed that any time soon. In fact, because of those two days, the people at WordPress sent me information about posting advertisements on my blog. I knew this was an anomaly and passed on their offer.
The Sherman post now sits in the number 2 all time post on Timothy Matters with 6,243, just behind the Godfather, with 7,029 hits. I imagine Sherman will pass the Godfather sometime by the end of the summer.
Dave Brubeck with young Russian Violinist — I love this video of Brubeck in Moscow during the 1980s. He was playing for the Russians when a young, gutsy violinist jumped up and started playing with him. It caught Brubeck by surprise, but it didn’t stop him and the two went on to play together. It’s a joy to watch.
I hope you like jazz because it’s well worth watching it. I’ve watched it three times and listened to it twice more.
A Song from the Secret Garden — My wife likes the movie, if it is the one I’m thinking about, the one about a little girl that… ahem, discovers a secret garden. Anyway, saw this on Youtube and thought she would like it.
This is the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) winner Alexander Rybak playing “Song From A Secret Garden” originally done by Secret Garden.
I did enjoy it as well.
Marco Rubio Defends Conservatism — Senator Marco Rubio spoke at the Hispanic Leadership Conference and defended conservative principles and spoke to how we should deal with the illegal immigration problem. I believe he is right on. Also, please note that early on, he starts speaking in Spanish, but the shifts back to English after explaining how he saved a lot of money on his car insurance.
While it is long, it’s an inspiring speech. Also, shortly into his speech, several men stand up in protest and he handles it quite well. He wanted them to hear what he had to say, but they were too thick headed to listen.
