Texas Tidbits: Special Edition! Texas Tweeties by Bob Zeller

Miss April

Several weeks ago on Texas Tidbits, I did a post on The Concho City  of San Angelo. The reason I chose San Angelo as a topic for Texas Tidbits is simple. As you know, my Dad was a trucker for over 40 years and I was thinking of some of those "far away places" he used to drive to, and I remembered San Angelo as a city he delivered to many times. So, I did a post on San Angelo. Long story short: a guy named Bob Zeller emailed me and thanked me for doing that post on his town... San Angelo. If I recall correctly, he eluded to the fact that places like San Angelo were kind of forgotten locales. Since then Bob and I have exchanged emails and blog comments on an almost daily basis and let me tell you it has raised the level of the crowd I hang out with exponentially. Bob's a funky old dude with a gift for photography and an itch for birding. And he does a magnificent job of combining the two. You can see much of Bob's work on his web site Texas Tweeties.

Bob recently took his gift and his itch and put together a calendar for 2011 featuring some amazing  photos of some of our fine feathered friends that have made their way through San Angelo over the past several months. Mr. Zeller was nice enough to send me one of his calendars and it has some outstanding photos in it, one for each month. I showed it to my little girls, ages 3 and 8, and they loved it. We have a bird feeder behind our apartment and it's kind of a game we play when the various birds here in Maine pay us a visit every day. The 3 year old, Bailey, knows what a blue jay is and the sound they make so when she saw the blue jay on the calendar, it was a laugh riot. Anyway, like I said, Bob sent me a copy of his calendar and it's not one of those calendars made out of what feels like Charmin, this mamma jamma is made of some very sturdy paper. It would make a great gift for someone and it certainly would be a nice addition to your office or any room in your home. (mine's going on the wall in my home office or a my wife calls it, "your side of the bedroom".)

I'd love to see Bob sell a few thousand of these calendars, but if it was something that looked like crayon drawings on toilet paper, I would not waste my time, blog space and bandwidth writing about it.I highly recommend it without reservation. And NO I ain't makin' a penny off Bob by promoting his calendar. I'm writing about it because I have seen it, held it and I love it. End of story. Another reason I mention this calendar is that I now consider Bob Zeller my friend. He's a good man with an affinity for taking pictures like few people can. Did I mention that Bob recently turned 76 years young?

You can contact Bob through his blog or bobzeller1 AT aol DOT com. Help a funky old dude out. :)

Plus One: Your Civic Duty

Today is Election Day. From my point of view, this is one of, if not the most important election in the 234 year history of this grand experiment we call the United States. To be up front and open, I want you to know from the get-go that I am a Conservative/Republican, with the emphasis on Conservative.

For the last four years, the Democrats, specifically the Liberals like Pelosi, Frank and Reid, have been in control of Congress. Since that time, they have pulled every legislative trick possible in order to ram through some of the most dangerous legislation this country has ever seen! This is especially true since the 2008 election that brought us Barack  Hussein Obama. The Democrat-controlled Congress has rammed through such socialist policies as "universal" health care, the government bailout of several huge corporations, such as GM and AIG, and that dumbass $1 TRILLION "stimulus" bill against the wishes of a large majority of the American people! I won't go into specifics on each of these disasters as they have argued back and forth and back again. Pelosi, Reid and Company have extended the government's intrusion into our lives like never before in our history. It's extremely scary if you just sit back and think about it. I don't recall the exact figure, but do you realize that you and your children are in debt to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars? And that number is growing by the minute.

I am 54 years old and I have seen the best and worst of this country during my lifetime. I remember the gasoline lines of the '70's, buying on an odd day/even day system and being allowed to purchase a set maximum number of gallons. Gas lines were longer than the restroom lines at Cowboys Stadium on a free beer night. I remember unemployment in double digits and interest rates at 20%! All of those things result of the socialist ideas of another Democrat - Jimmy Carter, the second worst President of my life time. The worst President of my lifetime lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as we speak.

The assholes in power in Washington, D.C. today have no regard for you or for this country. They are in it for power. They could give a rat's ass about you or me. All they want is to control your life from cradle to grave. Think I'm kidding? What kind of crap is your kid learning in Public (read: Government) School? Tommy has two mommies? Global warming? There are no winners or losers in life? We don't keep score at the kids' soccer game so the losing team won't have their little feewins hurt? As your kid goes to college, guess who he's getting his college loan from? The United States Government. Income taxes, Social Security Taxes, taxes with initials we don't even understand. then come Medicare, ObamaCare which means some bureaucrat with an actuary table deciding for you whether or not it's feasible and cost effective enough to have a kidney transplant or get treatment for your cancer. Do you want that shit? I don't. Let's move on to illegal immigration, shall we? The Democrats want to grant amnesty to 12 MILLION people in this country illegally! They broke the damn law to get here! Thus, they are criminals! After amnesty for the "undocumented worker" (that phrase makes me want to puke) the Liberals in Congress will give the illegals every Government subsidy known to man inorder to keep them on "the reservation" and completely beholden to the Government for their whole lives. And who will these people continue to vote for? yup. Liberals. Hell, these illegals will make more money being on welfare here than they ever had the chance to make in their own country! Why in the hell would they wanna vote for anyone but a Liberal. Here's an analogy for you. If there's a stray puppy in your neighborhood and he looks like he needs a good meal, out of the kindness of your heart, you feed him. The next day the same thing happens and you feed him again. Same for the next day. And the next. And the next. The lesson here is : feed 'em and they come back. That's true for stary puppies and "stray" people. feed 'em and they come back. The Liberals are counting on this. Instead of seeing people eager to come into this country legally and reap its rewards from hard work and attaining citizenship and its attendant rights by following the rules, Liberals just want to heap these rights on the illegal immigrants without any sort of path to becoming a citizen! Feed 'em and they come back.

My point here is that this is YOUR country and as a citizen, you elect people to Congress to work for you, not for themselves! Vote those kinds of bastards out of there, they are screwing you without even giving you a kiss. Take back YOUR country! Get out and vote today! Give an elderly person a ride to the polls. Call you friends and family to remind them to vote. Voting is the Most sacred Right you have in this country, a right mentioned in the Declaration of Independence as unalienable.

It's your country and it's time to take it back.The future of our nation is at stake. If you don't vote, you have no right to bitch about the outcome. So get off your ass and go vote today! It's your Civic Duty.

God Bless you and may God continue to bless the United States of America.