why i am not a democrat

with advent of two of my favortie democrats getting the oppourtunity of life time-spending a summer with me, working at camp phillip-i decided that i should post some thoughts as to why i am not a democrat. ill also note that im avoiding the topic of terrorism and national security, maybe ill write about that later but now i want to focus on 2 other things: abortion and economics

abortion has been in the news alot primarily because of the bush supreme court appointees which lead to a domino effect. amazing how 2 non elected officials have so much power to decide what the law of the land is not simply how to interrpret the laws. the most fascinating has prolly been a law past in one of the dakotas completely banning aborting, except to save the mother but including rape and incest. i think this is awesome but has been underreported since no one cares about the state of south dakota and not many people in the press believe it is legit. i dont know if it is or not but its definetly progress. the article i read focused more on the pro-choice reaction to women who felt bad about their abortion this really fascinates me because i cant even imagine how a woman would feel after killing her baby. a college student i work with at mcdonalds is a single mom and her name is steph. one girl at work asked steph about being a single mom and being pregnant. steph completely shocked the chick and said that she loved being pregnant and loved being a mom. i could tell this not only by what she said but because her expression completely changed when she talked about it, and she said the words, "one day youll know what i mean." i guess the point im trying to make is that i dont know how a woman could deny that abortion is murder. i mean that fetal tissue could just have easily been me and here i am, werent we all once fetal tissue? furthermore the article noted that most abortion clinics supported both post abortion counseling and parental notification even when many on the pro-choice lobbying groups dont. the clinics want healthy patients and counseling and involved parents can both help. the pro-choice lobbying groups see these as chinks in the armor of abortion legallity. focusing on how women feel after abortion or the process on how to get it are important, because they point to the fact that abortion is the ending of a human life, and that causes the guilt a woman would feel after an abortion. what parent would want their child to experience that kind of guilt? what society can allow people to murder the unborn much less the guilt women experience?

now i understand that being a democrat does not always mean that you support a women's right to an abortion. but the democratic party is the "prochoice" party at the very least. it is highly incluenced by pro choice lobbying groups and if john kerry had been elected john roberts and sam alito would not be on the highest court in the land and abortion would still be legal in south dakota. i could never vote democrat because i know that as minimal as the election is, im voting for the party that supports abortion, and i cannot and will not do that.

the matter of economics is far more complicated but ill explain it as best i can. i support the republicans because the party supports tax cuts that cut everyone's taxes, not just the poor or middle class but heaven forbid, the rich too. taxes represent government intrusion on earnings. now they are necessary and inevitable but i want as little of them as possible, for everyone. when people have more money, they spend more money and the spending of money is the trade that our economy is built upon. the more we tax, the more we stifle people's willingness to work and make money. the more we stifle people's incomes, the more we stifle the economy. this is especially true for the rich, who can sometimes keep more money by taking a lower salary to stay in a lower tax bracket. this person gets more money, but not as much as he could and the government loses money that it could have gotten. what did bush do when he got elected? he lowered taxes. pretty simple and the economy has benefitted. the democrats opposed the tax cuts because they thought the government could not afford it. but despite deficits we have more tax income now, with tax cuts, than we did with higher tax cuts. the cuts stimulated growth, and growth also means more money for the government. tax cuts, for everyone, are good.

ill write more on this later, especially free trade, but right now im gonna go to bed.

so this is whats its like to get what youve always wanted

i had my interview with matthew today. my dad and i drove up together, cuz he didnt want me to go all by myself. i thought this was really unnecessary but it was nice to have someone to talk to on the trip. i really miss the camp phillip sky. more than driving past the abbey or seeing Isa's house, those stars really brought be back to summer. i should have looked at those more. the interview was not as bad ad i expected, of course i was expecting the worst. after an hour and a half, or so, of me pouring out my soul as to how i would react in certain situations with kids, respect the rules that i disagreed with and how much Jesus loves me and the power of that love, matthew told me he was hiring me and asked for my t-shirt size to seal deal. I asked matthew bown to hug me. and then, to make the best day ever even better, he told me he was also hiring tyler shinnick and gave shinnick the phone call right then in there. sarah jones and olsen were getting interviewed after me. i didnt tell them i got hired but i dont think the look on my face could have meant anything else.

my dad drove me home so i just sat and thought for a while and heres some of what i came up with:

matthew never once corrected my grammer

taco johns is pretty good but not really anything different from taco bell

does the fact that im hired mean that i cant date any of the jr staff girls anymore? i dont know, but if it does i have to say, "sorry girls, i never wanted to break your hearts but as much as i hate to make you unhappy, its a small price to pay for a job ive wanted since i was five"

i cant wait for summer

i love Jesus

road trip!!!

im sure many of you read all the stuff about me and aaron's trip up to appleton/green bay to go see the state cheer comptetion. well as much as aaron is a hick he is not from northern wisconsin, as funny as that accent is, so i figure a complete tale of our journey should be told. after school on friday i worked at mcdonald's from 4:30-8. so i worked my shift, things were kinda slow, we got one of our grills repared which will make my job a little easier. not that i really focused on any of this, all i could think of was drivin up north. around 7:30 or so aaron showed up at the store and which was good cuz my boss let me go a little early. of course i got lucky in getting to go in the first place because i was originally supposed to work 8 1/2 hours on saturday. i split the shift up and got different people to work it all except for the last hour. which bassically meant we'd be driving home on saturday in a mad dash to get to mcdonalds so i could work one hour on a saturday night and prolly serve like 6 people. pointless and stupid but inevitable. before we left we made sure to get supper so we naturally ordered 6 double cheese burgers for like 3.20. by far the best part about working at mcdonalds is getting a 50% discount. "i can turn the dollar menu into the 50 cent menu." so eventually we drove off into the darkness, two guys, 6 double cheeseburgers and dreams of an amazing road trip for me and dreams of chelsea and chloe sievert by aaron. (both which i suppose would encompass an amazing road trip)

eventually we met shinnick at fvl around 10:15 we would have been there sooner but we missed a road and wound up in mackville. eventually realized we were not going the right direction and found a parking lot to turn around in. Of course for some reason to aaron this was not a normal parking lot, but he swore he had been there before and the place looked very familiar. here we are in the middle of mackville (unfortunately we found it amy-less) and this kid is like, "yeah i think i went to a wedding and we were at this parking lot" crazy. well we turned around and found fvl. the school is huge and very nice. unfortunately by that time most of the people had left the polka dance thing that was goin on so we didnt see many of the camp kids we were hoping for but still saw shinnick, alex vandenberg and a kid i tripped down to a styx concert with, named josh zuberbier. shinnick had his leg brace on him, its hard to see such an active kid be hobbled like that. we drove over to shinnick's house to crash and hang out. so naturally we had to stop at a grocery store to pick up some dew and then we headed over to blockbuster to get a movie (team america, very funny very naughty, my advice for you all: dont watch it, you are too young) we also called bethany to see what she was doing and found out she had to take the act tommorrow, that sucks. luckily we planned a lunch at jimmy johns and preached a little bit to her about her role. of course this pretty much meant aaron saying that as a woman she is a sandwich make and then he quoted his one of his favorite passages, "you wicked and lazy servant" bethany didnt think this to be true so aaron gave the phone to me and i immeidietly asked her, "whats this i hear about you hating Jesus?" yeah we are bad and yeah we are a little offensive but dont take it too seriously because you not married to any of us and it just makes us laugh.

this of course got me to think not just of the woman's role in marriage but also what hopefully will one day be my role as a husband. the bible is not very specific but does say "husbands love your wives as Christ loves the church" im pretty sure the bible is using the word church here in reference to the invisible church so each and every blood bought child of God. so in true lutheran talk, what does this mean? this means that i gotta love my wife as much as Jesus loves her. Jesus lived a perfect life for her, never messed up once, never sinned, never lusted, he was perfect for her. and living a pefect life for her was only one step in the plan, because it was required of him, he died for her willingly. he took her place that instead of her being ridiculed, murdered, flogged, beaten, smacked, crucified and being abandoned by God, so it was Jesus who in love took the punishment that she deserved. He did this so she would not have to feel an ounce of pain or sadness but instead receive a home in heaven and eternal joy. im supposed to love my wife that much. im supposed to live a perfect life for her, be there for her and listen to her as faithfully as Christ listens to our prayers and love her so much that i would die for her. thats the kind of husband God wants me to be and thats the husband ill try to be. of course i gotta find the lucky girl first.

as i mentioned before the movie was very funny but i would have enjoyed the movie more if i wasnt so tired and hadnt fallen asleep and woke up around 5 am to hear aaron and shinnick talking about why as christians we do good works. of course i jumped right in and started quoting in first john where it says that we do good works out of love, not out of fear that if we dont do good works we wont be saved, . this completely shocked them of course and i was really glad that i had at least contributed something to that night's reflection topic. of course to say that our reflections generally have a topic is kind of misleading usually we just talk about whatever the spirit leads us. and like usual, we lacked a formal ending, everyone just fell asleep.

we woke up around nine i think. zuberbier had left after the movie and vandenberg couldnt come with us to the cheer thing so me aaron and shinnick just hung out at his house until around noon when we drove over to jimmy john's for lunch with bethany. bethany's test went late so we just sat in jj's for a while. i had never been to one before and the first thing i noticed was how cool the place is. the music was pure classic rock like rush, skynard and metallica. the food was fast, funny signs were all over the place and the staff had awesome tshirts. so me, loving tshirts, naturally asked if they sold them. i talked to one of the kids on the sandwich line and said they did but didnt know how much they cost and wasnt sure how to sell them. he asked the manager and the shirts were only 5 bucks. of course i bought one. eventually bethany came, she was a little down after pouring her brains out on the act, i think aaron had the best line about it on the phone earlier. "why do you need to take the act, youre going to mlc arent you?..........oh, yeah you should take it then." the act is important, unless you go to mlc, then its something you have to do that is just there without any purpose, like a required orientation. actually i take that back, orientation serves a purpose, its more like a study hall. we had fun with her, but i think we convinced her to never date a kid from camp phillip. sorry guys :(

eventually we treked off to green bay. the traffic sucked. and green bay city planners must have met at a local bar, not that there is anything wrong with that, they just shouldnt have gotten as drunk as they did. the city is pointless. for example right next to lambeau field, the resch center and the brown county arena there are restraunts, houses and a marsh. there is not a parking garage. i dont care who you are, or what you feel about wetlands, having a marsh next to lambeau field but not a parking complex is freaking ridiculous. not only did we get caught in a standstill traffic but then we spent 45 minutes looking for a free parking spot. we could have pulled into a restraunt and paid ten bucks for parking but that would have been ridiculous. once we found parking we got to the arena, paid the three dollars to get in, only to find out that fvl and kettle had already performed and we had driven all the way to green bay only to miss what we came for. (of course that is crap, as much as we wanted to see the cheerleaders, perform, we see them every day, while hanging out with people like shinnick, vandenberg and bethany and the rest of the fvl camp kids is more than enough to warrant a road trip. the cheer competition was icing but not the cake.) of course we missed our teams perform so the trip up to green bay was pretty pointless. we did get to say hi to some people and show them that we support them and care but its hard to show that when you tell them that you missed their state performance. There was that and honestly, i found it really boring. as cool as the cheer leaders are, i really felt like i didnt belong there. so after walking around the arena for about half an hour and reminding aaron of the 11th commandment we left. good news though, KETTLE WON!!!!

at this point i was starting to worry about that one hour of work i had. after discussing it with my amigos i called mcdonalds and asked if i could have the hour off. the manager, amber is about 26 and shes strict but cool about it. bassically she said the store had been dead all day so i could have that one hour off, but if it got busy she, "would kick my butt" and to this i naturally responded, "thanks amber, ill even bend over." of course this completely freed us up to stay at shinnick's another night. go to a huge girl's basketball game against hortonville and then a dance afterward.

we originally planned to play in the pep band before the game but after the group met together, a few of the senior band members pretty much said, we cant go out there, we would suck. so we didnt. the game was incredibly played by both sides and i have never seen a crowd that excited about a girl's basketball game. both sides of the bleachers were full and they even brought in smaller bleachers. the closest thing kettle has was the guys game against slinger. as great as the game was, the officiating was even worse and that definetly played a role in the final outcome. after just a game of sloppy calls and hearing a few sermons by shinnick the score was tied with about 30 seconds left. hortonville had the ball and kinda stalled. an fvl girl was playing the ball tight, something that had seemingly been ok, and got called a foul for it. the girl made the two free throws on a bad call. then fvl had the ball and got fouled with aboug 10 seconds left she was fouled and went to the line on a one and one. she missed the free throw, and fvl lost the game. the officiating made me mad, what happend next pissed me off. the hortonville fans had a small drumline which acutually sounded cool and really worked up there side. after the game, the drumline lead the hortonville side on to the court and literally lead a march back and forth on the fvl gym. it was so aarogant. i was standing very close and even had one guy from hortonville bump into me. they had no right to do that, it still pisses me off.

anyways they had a dance after the game. the dance was fun, the music sucked, like any school dance but they did play stairway to heaven and come sail away so it was pretty good. the thing that distracted me most from having fun, was some drama going on with a couple i knew. it wasnt pretty and i felt bad for both of them.

we went to sleep without a whole lot of discussion or event, everyone was tired. the next morning we went to shinnick's church, mount olive. the church is huge and very nice. we even watched sportscenter and drank dew when a really good teen bible study ended early. after church me and aaron said goodbye to shinnick and headed home. instead of going home though i ended up staying the night at dan brunner's house. that was fun but not incredibly eventful beyond watching some movies and playing halo. good times.

in the end i guess going up north was pointless because we missed the cheer comptetion, our reason for going up north in the first place. but we had fun anyway because even though things didnt go as planned, the plan was pointless because our focus on the trip was the people and they made the trip worthwhile. thanks guys.

busy week

i mailed in my staff application this morning. i wanted to make sure that i at least mailed it by the first and i did that. Granted i slept on the recliner in my living room from about 12:30-5am and finished off the last question and a half that i was having trouble staying awake through. I could have gotten it done sooner but i went to the girls baskteball game with aaron schulz. we won in double overtime but i totally missed the state of the union. disapointing. anyways me and aaron were ourselves. which means we talked about sandwiches and i came up with a good phrase that ill tell you if your lucky. we also rewrote the lyrics to a song in the order of what we tried to do with highway during the retreat. the best thing that happend though was that a freshman girl who i worked with during soccer specialty camp the last 2 summers called me her role model. it really made me glad that i could be a positive influence and have fun. im definetly pumped about this summer, even if i dont get hired i am going to volunteer and still try to be a role model to those kids. oh the final talley on how much i wrote on the application can be summed up by saying that i have never written more for anything in my life. but i feel confident with everything except for maybe the stuff i wrote this morning, because i was kinda tired.

A sad thing about getting up early to write was that i ended up being late for morning bible study. aaron had devo and brought a bunch of random stuff and had people find bible passages that relate. i only made it for the very last one which nate lisko had, a darth vader action figure, which he naturally compared to God being our father. amazing how some people can think early in the morning. i really did miss not being there for most of it. morning bible study has really become the best part of kettle. the teachers are even starting to take notice. for example mr schlomer approached me and ali about leading the school chapel pretty much however we wanted as long as it related to the theme of contentment. after much procratination me and ali met in the computer lab and hammered down a script for our skit while aaron was in charge of the sermon. the skit consisted of me having a horrible day. which included me getting an f- on a paper, getting completely rejected by ali after asking her out to mcdonalds because i could get my employee discount. she responed by telling me she had to wash her hair and then called me a "McLoser." finally i was turned in by dean hughes as kml's infamous "poopmeister." throughout i had a horrible attitude. then aaron did his sermon. that kid is amazing. totally connected different parts of the Bible and told the story of contentment. good stuff. then we ran through the skit again with me having a good attitude. pretty much the best chapel ever.

on monday i had to give a speech which i didnt bother rehearsing or writing because i had study hall the hour before. what i should have remembered was to wear dress clothes. fortunately scott hegman loaned me his band pants and dress shoes and landon loned me a pink button up shirt. i looked good except the pants would not stay up. i had to go to mrs herring to get some safety pins and pin the pants to the belt which i wore on the inside of the pants. worked well enough for me. naturally i did all this during the study hall so i only had time to use shinnick's bernstein quote and write my main points down. i gave the speach and spoke very well. i did have one awkwardly worded scentence and stopped to think for about a second which wouldnt have been bad except i kind of raised my eyebrows and completely changed my eye contact as i was concentrating. my forensics experience paid off and i ended up with an A on the speech.

Finally id like to close this post by stating how cool sarah thurs is. she always comes to morning bible study and participates and is just a fun girl to be around. the best thing though is that when she heard me and aaron making sandwich comments she wasnt at all offended and instead decided to make us each triple decker ham and swiss sandwiches. they were awesome. what a cool kid. i think she proved that the way to a man's heart is through a his stomach. speaking of stomack i gotta go make people's sandwiches at mcdonalds. i got 5 hours this week. i think i need a new job.
see ya later kids
jason schleef