Wide World of Mike

I came across an organization that is based out of Dinuba/Reedley area that is really cool.  Picked 2 Perfection is a fund raising organization that uses fresh fruit and gift baskets as the tool.  You pre-sale the boxes and keep $10 from every box sold at $25 a piece.  It is open to any individual, group or organization to raise money for camp, mission trips, etc.

Here are a couple photos to illustrate the current fads walking around Spirit West Coast.

I am here at Spirit West Coast in Monterey manning a booth for Southern California Christian Colleges and Universities.  Here is what it looks like around us.  More to come later on the day.

If you can’t tell it is sunny and 60 degrees out.  I just thought all you people in Fresno might want to know that.

Booth Next to us. They have a shirt that says 'Virginity Rocks'

This is our booth...We have a travel edition of 'Settlers of Catan' going in the background

I can’t take credit for this post.  GENE posted it earlier today and I thought it was worthy enough to re-post.  It takes a look at the similarities of George W. and Batman from a political standpoint.

A cry for help goes out from a city beleaguered by violence and fear: A beam of light flashed into the night sky, the dark symbol of a bat projected onto the surface of the racing clouds . . .

Oh, wait a minute. That’s not a bat, actually. In fact, when you trace the outline with your finger, it looks kind of like . . . a “W.”

There seems to me no question that the Batman film “The Dark Knight,” currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society — in which people sometimes make the wrong choices — and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.

“The Dark Knight,” then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year’s “300,” “The Dark Knight” is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.

Conversely, time after time, left-wing films about the war on terror — films like “In The Valley of Elah,” “Rendition” and “Redacted” — which preach moral equivalence and advocate surrender, that disrespect the military and their mission, that seem unable to distinguish the difference between America and Islamo-fascism, have bombed more spectacularly than Operation Shock and Awe.

Why is it then that left-wingers feel free to make their films direct and realistic, whereas Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth? Why is it, indeed, that the conservative values that power our defense — values like morality, faith, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right — only appear in fantasy or comic-inspired films like “300,” “Lord of the Rings,” “Narnia,” “Spiderman 3″ and now “The Dark Knight”?

The moment filmmakers take on the problem of Islamic terrorism in realistic films, suddenly those values vanish. The good guys become indistinguishable from the bad guys, and we end up denigrating the very heroes who defend us. Why should this be?

The answers to these questions seem to me to be embedded in the story of “The Dark Knight” itself: Doing what’s right is hard, and speaking the truth is dangerous. Many have been abhorred for it, some killed, one crucified.

[Read the rest of the article here]