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ATTENTION TEXAS ANGLERS!

The 28th Annual CCA Texas STAR tournament is just around the jetty! This year’s tournament kicks off at sunrise May 27th. Get in now and don’t miss your chance to take home part of over $1,000,000 in prizes and scholarships! Remember, youth age 6-17 enter for free with a $10 CCA membership for a chance to win a chunk of $325,000 in free college! To date, Texas STAR has awarded over $5.8 million dollars in scholarships to Texas youth.

Driveway sized prizes can be claimed by STAR anglers with the first 10 tagged redfish. The first five winners will drive home in a loaded 2017 Ford F-150 “Texas Edition” XLT SuperCab, pulling a brand new 23’ Haynie BigFoot boat rigged with a Mercury 150L Pro XS OptiMax motor and Coastline trailer. The next five tagged redfish winners will each claim a 23’ Haynie BigFoot boat with a Mercury 150L Pro XS OptiMax motor and Coastline trailers.

If you don’t chase redfish? Gafftop, sheepshead, and flounder anglers can take home a brand new Shoalwater 19’ Cat. Trout fisherman in the upper, middle, and lower coast divisions will take home a brand new 22’ Mowdy. We have something for you anglers who venture beyond the beach too! Heaviest kingfish, ling, and dorado will each take home a new Polaris Ranger on a new trailer.

The STAR Scholarship Divisions were implemented in the hopes of getting more kids off X-boxes and into tackle boxes by offering $325,000 in scholarships. This year STAR participants, ages 6-10, who catch the largest flounder, sheepshead or gafftop will again each be awarded a $50,000 college scholarship. Winners 11-17 years of age, will be awarded a scholarship worth $25,000 in the flounder, sheepshead, gafftop, as well as, Upper, Middle and Lower Coast Trout Divisions. In addition, participants ages 6-17 years old in 2017, are eligible to win a bonus drawing for a $25,000 college scholarship even if the participant never wets a line!

Major sponsors for the 28th Annual CCA Texas STAR Tournament include Texas Ford Dealers, Tilson Home Corporation, Capital Farm Credit, Mercury Marine, Academy Sports + Outdoors, Whataburger, LP Building Products, KTRK-abc13, Haynie Boats, Mowdy Boats, Shoalwater Boats, Hoffpauir Polaris, Dargel Boats, Texas Fish & Game Magazine, Coastline Trailers, McClain Trailers, Chris’s Marine, Shiner Beer, Costa and MustangCAT.

Visit www.startournament.org or any Academy store to get signed up today. For more information, including a list of weigh-in stations, instant-entry registration locations in your area and weekly leader board updates, you can also go to www.startournament.org

CCA Texas is the leader in marine conservation. CCA Texas’ Web page can be found at http://www.ccatexas.org.

“The Way I See It” is an attempt by the columnist to enlighten readers on a subject as he views it, and does not necessarily reflect the views of this publication.

Comey Firing

FBI Director James Comey stepped way out of line back last summer when during a very bitter Presidential Campaign he came out to the Media and spoke about an on-going investigation. After itemizing dozens, even hundreds, of felony violations of National Security Laws by Hillary Clinton and her illegal “home E-mail server”, he said he was “not going to recommend that she be prosecuted for any of that because HE DIDN’T BELIEVE she intended” to endanger National Security with her ‘mistakes’. Typical of current “The Swamp” behavior, he refused to do his duty, usurped powers of another branch, and aided a cover-up of criminal behavior of an Establishment figure. Is this “Democracy”?

There are dozens of things wrong with that, and he should have been removed right then & there. The FBI is a law enforcement agency whose duty is to investigate crimes and turn the evidence over to the proper Prosecutorial authority and THEY decide what to do with it. He itemized dozens of felony Federal Law violations and then made ridiculous excuses for it. Hillary Clinton was briefed on proper Communications Security procedures, and refused to abide by them. It was well known in the Democrat “Inner Circle” that she did that because she was “forced to it” to avoid being subject to Freedom of Information Requests from “the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy” that would “keep her from getting anything done”. Hey, doofus Comey, that is beaucoup “INTENT” right there! Not to mention all the “selling access” for donations to the Clinton Family Foundation. (Used to be called “Bribery”. Hillary can’t help herself, she is an Alinskyite and a knee-jerk sneaky sleazy lawyer, always looking for the “loop-hole”, money, and figuring she can lie her way out of anything if she gets caught.) She was willfully and intentionally breaking the laws, no further “intent” has ever been required to prosecute anyone else, even if they did it unintentionally or accidentally. What is worse, she lied about it at every step of the investigation, and every lie was proven. Failure to report a Security violation is another violation, and lying compounds the felony. If every violation was counted, her prison sentence would be measured in centuries.

Why Comey made the ridiculous excuse for Attorney General Loretta Lynch to not prosecute Hillary is even further “out of line”. Was he being a loyal “Obamunist operative”, or just a media whore in some popularity contest is up to you to decide. In late October, after all the other really bad stuff about Hillary and her campaign kept coming out, he stuck his nose in it again with his Media release of his “report to Congress”. Was he feeling guilty for covering up for her before, realized what a fool he had been, or realized that Trump would win? Any way you look at it, it was highly inappropriate for an FBI Director, and again, he should have been removed. After Trump won, the Lib Dems blamed Comey, not Hillary. After that didn’t work, then the BIG Deal was blaming some collusion between Putin & Trump to “steal” the election. Bull feathers! Look at the election map broken down to counties and Trump won about 80%. Hillary won only in the “Big Cities”. And along the Mexican border and a few “Poverty Pockets”.

Six months after the election, many Dem “leaders “ were still blaming Comey for Hillary losing. He was “incompetent” & “a sell-out to Trump” because they could not find or manufacture any real evidence of any impropriety by Trump or his campaign. Oh, there were dozens of Big Stories pushed by the Media propagandists, but none stood up to any honest investigation. Most were shown to be hoaxes paid for by the Trump haters, both Dem & RINO. But the Lib/Prog Media “Lap-dogs” will not let go of that “bone”, because they have nothing else to chew on.

Trump fired Comey because his legal advisers in the Attorney General’s department told him it was totally out of control. Comey was becoming some kind of Media “Star” or whipping boy, but embarrassing everyone. The firing was way over due. Dems were over joyed at first announcement, but the Media propagandists saw a new opportunity and turned 180 degrees in a couple of hours. Comey was a martyr for the Dems because he “had the goods” on Trump and the Russia connection, had asked for more money to expand the investigation, and Trump fired him to stop the investigation. More lies on top of lies. There was no request for more money, the investigation is turning up nothing on Trump, and firing Comey made Assistant Director Andrew McCabe the Acting Director of the FBI. McCabe is a Democrat operative, bought and paid for by Terry McAuliff, the Clintons, & probably George Soros. His wife was running for office in Virginia and got over a half million dollars “donations” from them. She lost anyway. McCabe is a Trump “enemy”, most probably a “leaker”, and a real danger to his Administration. But Trump fired Comey anyway, knowing McCabe would inherit the Directorship. Why? I think Trump is a pragmatist and a tactician who knows McCabe will give him an excuse to fire him, too.
I really hope there will be an honest neutral Special Investigator appointed to look into the “Trump-Russia connection”. First to shut up all the Democrat whining, but also to investigate all the false accusations, and the real Hillary Campaign connections with Russian oligarchs. There is plenty to prosecute there. But wanting to find out the truth, to try and “plug the holes” in Classified Material that may have been revealed to our enemies is called “Hate Speech” by the Hillaryites and their Media. Well, so be it. I do “hate” treason, incompetence, and lies.

And when the truth about Comey ever comes out, I think the final reason he was finally fired was he was covering up for “leakers”, who asked for certain people to be “unmasked” in NSA investigations, and who in the Obama Admin Administration asked for the “unmasking”. But that is another very serious felonious scandal. Just the last of a long list of why James Comey needed to be removed.

Check the website for ongoing updates and references to sources. I will answer any serious questions or comments, but not “trolls”. Do not feed the trolls.

Pray for Trey Gowdy to be the new FBI Director!

As regular readers may know, at the start and end of every NBA season, I have continuously predicted the death of the San Antonio Spurs, and I have come to apologize and atone myself, as my rantings about their demise may have been greatly exaggerated.

As of this writing the Spurs are about to begin the Western Conference Finals series, the first time they have made it this far since they won their last NBA title in 2014.

This was not the way I or many other fans would have seen this franchise trending at this same time last year, when the pending retirement of future Hall Of Fame forward Tim Duncan and a partially aging core seemed to point to a couple of lean years while the Spurs retooled and reloaded at least.

However stellar play by all star Kawhi Leonard, smart veteran free agent signings like Pau Gasol and top notch coaching and team culture have kept the ship upright and sailing even at the times that most sports franchises would have found themselves sunk without their retired or aging stars.

Actually, it is interesting how the Spurs have deftly avoided mediocrity and obscurity over the last couple of seasons. After all, I use them as a subject matter for this column regularly because I am a fan, they are my second favorite NBA team next to my beloved Chicago Bulls.

In that frame of mind, these twice yearly columns almost seem to be almost mocking the Spurs, daring them to prove me and conventional sports wisdom dead wrong.

Which the Spurs have continued to do, time and time again.

Basketball is at it’s heart, a simple sport invented so athletes could exercise indoors in the Winter time, escaping the snow and the cold. All simple things however have a complex heart. It is easy to dismiss them because they do indeed seem so very simple, but for every pick and roll or slam dunk, there is a logic there, the following of a plan and play style that should, if working properly, make the game of basketball as easy as it appears on television.

Tracing this back to the source, Coach Greg Popovich and the rest of the San Antonio Spurs staff as well because they have a system that players buy into and a aura of being the team that makes the smart move most of the time, all while staying relevant and competitive while dealing with massive roster shake ups.

Excitement builds however each Spring as the playoffs arrive. From here on out every game means a million times more than its regular season counterpart. Competition gets intense as the winning teams get one step closer to winning an NBA title.

As the story stands as of this writing the Spurs could have their sixth NBA Championship, bucking a trend and proving once again that they are a dynasty and one of the greatest franchises in the NBA…

You are invited to an OPEN HOUSE hosted by the Seadrift Masonic Lodge Number 1098 on Saturday, May 27, 2017, starting at 11:00 a.m. and ending at 2:00 p.m. The address is 404 Fourth Street in Seadrift. The Open House is part of a statewide effort to inform all of our citizens about the Society of Masonry in and around our area. The Lodge members will be available to explain all aspects of Masonry, including the Order of Eastern Star (our Women’s organization), Rainbow Girls (our young ladies organization), the Demolay (our young men’s organization), Masons (the men’s organization), the York Rite, the Scottish Rite, and the Knights Templar.

There will be two presentations made during the Open House:

Community Builder Award presented to a local citizen for their contribution to the community;

Texas Masonic Charities Fund Scholarship presented to one deserving High School Senior.

If you have questions about Masonry or just curious about what we are all about, the Open House will be the place to come. There will be light refreshments available.
Looking forward to meeting and speaking with you. Should you need additional information, please contact Jim Washek at 361-526-3022 or Raul Guitterez at 210-865-6219.