Records

The 2005 Texas Young Republican Federation Convention took place this weekend in Houston. I didn't make it to the Hilton Americas in time for the Site Selection Committee meeting but did manage to show up to officially confirm our desire to host the 2006 TYRF convention in Dallas. The convention officially voted for Dallas to be the convention site for 2006 on Saturday morning session.

There were two business sessions, morning and afternoon, took place at the South College of Law in downtown, a few blocks from the Hilton Americas. Rex Lamb of Houston YR ran unopposed and was elected the new TYRF chairman. J. Paul Knight of Bexar County YR ran unopposed and was elected TYRF vice-chair. The race for finance chair was a contested one between Josh Tetens of the Heart of Texas (Waco area) YR and Joseph Bain of Austin YR. Josh was elected with an overwhelming majority. Kenda Culpepper, president of the Rockwall county YR, a newly federated club, ran unopposed and was elected TYRF secretary. Scott Jauregui ran unopposed and was elected treasurer. Claire Koch of our Dallas YR club ran unopposed and was elected the TYRF national committeewoman. The TYRF national committeeman was the only other contested race between J. Shane Howard, president of the Southeast YR and William England, president of the Austin YR. Shane was elected with an overwhelming majority of the votes. John Fowler of our Dallas YR ran unopposed and was re-elected TYRF Director of Club Development.

We heard from Peter Ferrara of the Institute for Policy Innovation on Social Security reform during lunch. Afterward, there were four breakout sessions with topics ranges: a) Media training: how to deal with local media, print, TV and radio as well as the internet with Doug Miller of KHOU, John Williams, formerly of the Houston Chronicles, and Dr. Bobby Eberle of GOPUSA.com, b) How to be a candidate with the honorable Michael Berry, Houston city councilman at-large place 5, c) Fundraising, maximize your earning potential with Elizabeth Blakemore of Blakemore & Associates, d) Washington, DC: how to land a job and survive with Angela Hernandez, who works in the Office of White House Correspondence. You can pick two out of four; I went for Media and Fundraising.

God has mercy on me. It looks like things are coming together for our church's very first family camp Labor Day weekend this year at the Three Mountain Retreat, a Christian facility run by Stan and Linda Gary, good friends of Dennis and Linda McAuliffe, the couple who discipled me. This will replace the youth group camp we have had annually the first weekend of October for the last few years.

Went to Discount Tire and got me a set of four new tires. They are 265/70/16 at 111S rating so the purchase set me back quite a few dead presidents.

Here are a whole bunch of important court cases compiled by Focus on the Family which justice John Roberts will be ruling on once he is confirmed by the US Senate.

First it's the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), now it's the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) leaving the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) to join the Change to Win Coalition, whose membership also includes the Teamsters, the Laborers' International Union of North American (LIUNA), and the UNITE HERE, a 2004 merger of the former Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees (UNITE) and Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE). I felt sorry for the Democrats, who so far has refused to adapt and being crushed by the wheel of history.

Bach and Kelly's going away party was last night and David's 3rd birthday party was after church today.

We had our VPS Film Festival kick-off party at Lush tonight with the food donated by Linda the owner and wine donated by another individual.

Interesting project, should I hope for an automated car by 2025?

In the face of random but routine searches starting today announced by New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and police commissioner Raymond Kelly, it would be a good exercise for the atheists, who are beyond reasons to begin with because it's rather illogical to be an atheist if you have read the book Darwin's black box (ISBN 0684834936) by Michael J. Behe, a graduate of Drexel University and a University of Pennsylvania PhD in biochemistry, to find a solution that strikes a balance between protecting civil liberties, one of which guarantee that one is secured in one's own person from unreasonable searches without probable cause, and preventing terrorist act in the city of New York mass transit system, subway and buses.

If you want to follow the money, here is the report of campaign contributions by John and Jane Roberts by the Center for Responsive Politics.

We covered the Supreme Court nomination, the US Supreme Court itself and also touched on the eminent domain ruling as well as the city of Arlington exercizing its eminent domain power to seize people's home for Jerry Jones to build his Cowboys stadium on our VPAC-DFW radio show tonight.

Yesterday was first day back in the gym after a little over a week and I found that I have gained somewhere between 7 to 8 pounds, quite a vacation!

Check out this somewhat encouraging report which stated that the number of abortions is declining, 242 for every 1,000 pregnancies that did not end in miscarriage in 2002 compare to 280 in 1990.

Check out this website the religion of peace .com, which documented the casulties since 9/11 by extreme Islamic terrorists. I wish the Council on American-Islamic Relations have come out stronger and more decisive with everyway they can in their power to counter the messages of these extremists calling for violence among Islamic believers.

Once again president Bush has proven that he is a man of his word by nominating a strict constructionist judge John Roberts of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals for the US Supreme Court. Despite what many extreme rights people have said about Bush, he's principled and smart. He's there to do the job, being the president for all Americans, doing everything absolutely necessary and not one tiny little thing more to accomplish what he promised when he campaigned, and not to make enemy. He's as prolife as you get but to the best of my knowledge George W. Bush has only made one personal appearance at the 30th annual March for Life in January of 2003 at the national mall. Every other year, he either sent people or addressed the crowd through phone or satellite. In addition, I just love him for being loyal to his friends. Loyal and honest are the two character traits that I value the most and I have found that in this 43rd president of the United States of America.

We are finally home, sweet home after spending almost an hour at DFW airport waiting for our checked luggages.

I was surprised to find the LA Times in front of my hotel door this morning. Someone dares to put that liberal newspaper for a Republican like me to read? Usually I get the USA Today instead.

We went to lunch and then stopped by her house before taking a walk at Huntington beach with Kimmy, a long time friend of my mom. Chatted with her husband Ed while we were at her house about his deep sea fishing trip tomorrow.

We headed over to Rev. Ngoc Nguyen so we can go together with him and his family to Angel stadium for the 2005 Harvest crusade. Greg Laurie delivered a short message and the call to salvation. We listened to the music of Jeremy Camp and DC Talk.

We woke up yesterday, went to the Costco just north of the strip on I-15 to get another case of water bottles, got our breakfast from the drive-through at McDonald to save time and drove to Hoover Dam, which only took half an hour from Las Vegas.

Spent a few hours at the dam before driving back. It was 124 degree Fahrenheit in the valley but we were surprised to see that it measured 126 degree in the sin city, hotter than out there in the desert. We meant to wake up to have dinner together with Larry and Tiffany but we overslept. We woke up around 9:00 pm and ate quickly at a buffet place and then walked around taking some more pictures.

Drove back to Los Angeles this morning. Had dinner here in Van Nuys and then went out to the Santa Monica beach. Saw a gal there who was rather good on the hanging rings and was told about gymnastic supplier Frank Endo. Stopped by and got some ice cream at Baskin Robbins on the way back to the hotel.

Two business sessions on Tuesday also ended with not much accomplished except we elected a new district treasurer, and two at-large members to the district board. We heard a lot of great testimonies of what the Lord has been doing since the district conference last year in the many churches in the district.

We checked out this morning, had breakfast and then drove to Las Vegas. Checked in to Bally's and decided that it was too hot to drive to Hoover Dam. Will do that tomorrow morning before it gets too hot. Walked around and took pictures a little bit before posting this from my hotel room.

The business session ended yesterday with not much accomplished. I felt like there should have been better directions from the chair and the business could have been conducted more efficiently.

We had dinner with Rev. Ngoc Sanh Nguyen and his wife XuanDao last night before we went for a walk and shopped a little bit at the Spectrum, an outdoor mall in Irvine, just a few exits down I-5 from their house in Tustin.

I am posting from the library of the Azusa Pacific University, where I have been since last Friday for the 30th annual district conference of the Vietnamese District of the Christian and Missionary Alliance.

We started Friday night with a prayer meeting like always.

Saturday opening ceremony, I couln't really follow the service because it was crowded and I came in late so I had to sit in the overflow area to the side of the stage and couldn't really hear clearly what was being said because of how the speakers were set up and too much echos. To add to the complaints, the benches on the side didn't have any back support whatsoever.

Saturday afternoon single adults service was great with Rev. Timothy Tran and Mrs. Thi Nguyen were our two speakers, addressing the various issues of single life. We were encouraged to make sure that there are four things we need to be working on: 1) Have Christ as Lord of our lives, 2) To have direction and goal for our life, 3) to continue working on developing the nine fruits of the spirit, 4) to wait patiently and to accept God's will, to serve him diligently and to keep to a life of sexual purity. God only wants the best for His children so don't settle for any less. Also, she told us lthe ten things not to do in getting married: 1) not to do it while we were too young, ie. younger than 20, 2) rush into marriage, 3) to run away from problem with parents, happen a lot in Asian culture with the girls especially, 4) to please the parents, 5) know too little about each other, 6)when one yet to have the mean to support oneself financially, 7) too much differences between each other: in age (more than 10 years,) education, personality ..., 8) not to ignore one's parents' and spiritual leaders' advice regarding a particular person, 9) don't push your boyfriend/girlfriend to accept Christianity, 10) not to ignore any uneasiness in going forward with the marriage because that may be when the Holy Spirit is warning you about going forward with that person.

Saturday night, Rev. Thach Le once again talked about personal developments, the five steps everyone must go through to become a mature adult: 1) establishing one's identity, 2) to work out individual relations with one's family, becoming independent from one's parents especially, this is particular important in Asian culture, 3) to identify one's core values, 4) to development one's core competencies, 5) to choose one's life mate. In addition, Christians must go through two additional steps: 6) spiritual formation, and 7) become trained in Christian ministry and minister in the body of Christ.

Sunday morning worship service was the most crowded of all. Sunday afternoon was the 2nd commencement excercise for the Vietnamese Divinity School. We had to evacuate half way through the service because security and police found a bag left unattended. We had a service commemorating how the Gospel first came to Vietnam in 1911 and how the Vietnamese District was established here in the US in 1975 and the history of the District in the last 30 years.

The first business session started this morning with just the conference adopting the district's annual report.

Saw the Modern Marvels show on the History Channel last night, which featured the German Autobahn. It also featured Mark Rask, the author of the book American Autobahn, who is advocating for the ability to drive from New Orleans, LA to Atlanta, GA in 4 hours. He's got some good points: fatality rate is .84 in America which has speed limit compare to .72 in Germany where they don't have the speed limit. However, are we willing to pay to have the highway with 27-inch thick concrete instead of the 11-inch we have right now? Would we be willing to put up with constant road maintenance because in order to drive at high speed, any crack or bump or pothole is dangerously and fatally unacceptable. The show also metioned how president Dwight D. Eisenhower pushed for the US highway system after he saw the German autobahn as the Allied Forces went through Germany. One thing we forgot to copy was the curves, which theoretically would prevent what is know as the highway hypnosis.

Saw this BeInSync ad on Yahoo!. Read their FAQs and think I am going to try it and see for myself whether it's a deal or dud.

Completed the request for the transfer of registrar for my ky2ninh.org domain name this morning after I was provided the AUTH code by my current registrar, eHost. I should get a one year registration extension after the transfer is completed, courtesy of my new registrar, OpenSRS and reseller, Tucows, who is partner of my hosting service provider, iPowerWeb.

I signed up with iPowerWeb last week and made the necessary changes: DNS, FTP, Domain Name redirection, ... today.

Stopped by Red, Hot and Blue to pick up two slabs of ribs, one wet and one sweet, for dinner before getting on the road heading for Florence, SC on Friday evening.

We got to Florence Saturday, headed to Myrtle Beach to hang out at night and then packing everything in to the U-Haul on Sunday and started the trip back through Greenville, SC for Dallas, TX.

With the way senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) mangled the word "non-proliferation" in a speech he delivered yesterday on the floor of the US Senate in opposition to bunker busting nuclear weapons, maybe there is hope for non-native English speakers like me in politics. Encouraging, isn't it?

Allergy season is here because my nose has been stuffy and I have been sneezing all morning. Time to stop by Costco to get some Claritin and submit the receipt to get reimbursed from my Health Saving Account.

A reminder from Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of these United States: "Let the Fourth of July always be a reminder that here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights; that government is only a convenience created and managed by the people, with no powers of its own except those voluntarily granted to it by the people."