Author Archive

One of the complaints lodged against conservatives by liberals, often even by libertarians, is that in matters such as abortion, drug laws, and marriage laws “you can’t legislate morality,” they claim that though they personally oppose one or all these things, it really comes down to a personal choice of the individual and the government should stay out of it. But their hypocrisy is exposed when you talk about some of the things they want to legislate, such as requiring all to pay into government “charity” in the form of welfare, limiting access to firearms, dictating what type of medical insurance you can or must have, what kind of food your children can have, and a myriad of other “nanny state” doctrines.

This liberal ideology forces people to do and/or pay for things that they are opposed to, and takes away their personal choice. So how do they justify this? By saying it is “right,” “just,”, “fair,” meaning of course, moral. So they are perfectly willing to legislate morality, as long as it is their brand of morality. I have even heard a Christian liberal in my church say that these things are all in alignment with Christ’s command to love others and to care for them. I guess he doesn’t mind that forced charity is not charity at all, or that free will was endorsed by Christ, or that there are better ways of doing this than having the government do it.

My libertarian friends on the other hand would tend to agree with the liberals on the items in the first paragraph, and with me on the items in the second paragraph. And that is good in that it is at least consistent. However, libertarianism is pretty much “anarchy-lite;” it is basically opposed nearly all laws and to anything that presumes to define what is acceptable or unacceptable in society.

A conservative looks at all laws and taxes with a critical eye, yet they recognize that to have civil society requires some laws and the taxes to support them. All but a true anarchist agree that laws are needed to protect against violence, define protected property rights, provide for honest commerce, and protect against government abuse of personal rights. Conservatives recognize that there are legitimate reasons to have other civil laws, such as highway standards, building codes, professional certification, and traffic laws.

The real hypocrisy of saying that you can’t legislate morality is the simple fact that any law that protects people from the rule of the strongest is in fact a legislation of morality. Morality is the core basis of civilization.

There is more to know than you see on your check stub, more than you see on your tax return, more than you see on your quarterly estimated taxes, more than you see at the gas pump. The following numbers from usrevenue.com bring some clarity to taxes in the US.

Federal Budgeted Revenue 2011 (Federal Government Income)

Income Taxes: 1.154 Trillion
SS/Med/Ins .806 Trillion
Ad-Valorem .133 Trillion
Business/Other .079 Trillion
Fees/Charges .001 Trillion
Total: 2.173 Trillion

53% is from personal income taxes paid by citizens
37% is from personal & employer SS, Medicare, or Gov. Ins. paid by citizens & employers
6% is from ad valorem: Fuel, Inheritance, Tariff, Leases, and other value-based taxes
3.6% is from corporate/business taxes
0.04% is from use fees or charges

53 % of all federal revenue is paid up front by us
16 % is deducted from our pay for social insurance
21 % is paid on our behalf by or employer, but ultimately it is passed back in the cost of products
6 % is paid by companies and passed on to us in the cost of products
4 % is paid by companies and passed on to us in the cost of products
Use fees or charges are paid by citizens directly to federal agencies, for the privilege of using (our) public land.

The fact is that we as citizens and consumers pay either directly or through hidden taxes the full $2 trillion in annual federal revenue. Business pays nothing, because they have to cover the cost of taxes in the price they charge for the products or services, which we pay. In addition they must bear the administrative costs for reporting and paying the taxes, again a cost coming to us in the price of the product or service.

There are a total of 311 million citizens, so the average citizen is paying $6987.00 this year in federal taxes. For a family of four the average is $27948.00. Averages however can be deceptive, for taxes are not paid evenly, in fact over 40% of all federal taxes are paid by just 1% of taxpayers, those in the highest income bracket, and a full 97% of taxes are paid by 50% of taxpayers, those of average income and above. Only 3% of taxes are paid by those in bottom 50% of the income scale.

It is just plain ignorance that people believe the rich should pay more taxes; each of us who make less than $410,000.00 are already being heavily subsidized by those who earn more than that.

Those that would increase corporate taxes to “redistribute the wealth” obviously don’t understand that a business tax is just a hidden tax on the consumer, and an overhead cost that takes investment and growth money out of businesses.

To foster a robust economy there should be no taxation of business. People should not have to send their social services money to the government; it should go into their personal accounts. There should be no hidden taxes; citizens should know exactly what they pay in taxes. Business would boom, prices would decrease, consumer power would increase, and personal wealth would increase.

In my last article (Part 3) I evaluated the two presidential candidates from the 2008 Republican primary, Mike Huckabee, and Mitt Romney, giving Romney the edge on both his business experience and his governorship. Today we will look at the remainder of my favorite candidates, Jon Huntsman, Sarah Palin, and Allen West, ending with a ranking of my favorite five potential candidates.

Jon Huntsman, Jr. Huntsman gave the vice-presidential nominating speech for Sarah Palin, and has all but been endorsed for a presidential run by John McCain. To most of America Huntsman is an unknown. He has been an insider in Washington since the 1980s serving in the Reagan, G.H.W Bush, and G.W. Bush administrations as (respectively) White House Staff Assistant, Deputy Secretary of Commerce then Ambassador to Singapore, and Deputy US Trade Representative. He is currently serves in the Obama Administration as Ambassador to China.

He was Governor of Utah for two terms, winning the second term with almost 78% of the vote. The Cato Institute rated him the top governor on tax policy, and the fifth highest on overall fiscal policy. During his administration Utah was listed as the best run state government by the Pew Center on the States.

His business experience includes an executive with the Huntsman Corporation, an international Chemical Company with annual revenues topping $8 billion and over 10,000 employees; and CEO of Huntsman Family Holdings Company. He has also headed major philanthropic organizations including the Huntsman Cancer Foundation, the Utah Opera, Envision Utah, and The Family Now Campaign.

His stand on fiscal matters, taxation, and business is strongly conservative. He is more mixed on his social positions, being strongly conservative on abortion, and gun rights, but he has liberal positions on climate change, same sex domestic unions, the Department of Education, and the Obama Stimulus. He signed Utah up in the Western Climate Action Initiative, basically a western states cap and trade arrangement. He has shunned the Tea Party conservatives but has broad appeal to old school Republicans.

Sarah Palin The candidate for vice-president on the 2008 McCain ticket has a strong appeal to deeply conservative Republicans, the religious right, Libertarians, and the Tea Party movement. The fact that she shared the ticket with McCain has given her some standing with moderate and old-line Republicans.

Upon becoming Governor of Alaska, Palin embarked on two gutsy missions: To clean out corruption in Alaska politics and to cut spending; she did this with gusto rooting out criminal activity and cronyism not just from the state government, but even within her own party. She pared back government programs, size, and waste starting with getting rid of the perks of the office of the governor.

Besides being governor, Palin served on the town council, then as mayor of Wasilla, and as a member of the Alaska Oil and Gas Commission.

Her time on the commission gave her a good practical insight into natural resource issues. Her political position is solidly conservative on both fiscal and social issues. She has experience in operating family businesses and has worked as a correspondent on Alaskan TV Stations. She has shown a great sense of fiscal responsibility and is business friendly.

Because of her run for vice-president, authoring two books, hosting an excellent documentary series on Alaska, being supportive of and responsive to the Tea Party movement, and being a frequent topic of conversation and controversy on talk shows and news commentary she is now well known. In fact, she might be too well known; she is as disliked by the left as she is liked by the right.

While I really like her positions on all the issues, she doesn’t have the level of leadership that most of the other candidates have, and certainly not the degree of financial education and experience of most of them.

Allen West  The newly elected congressman won his seat on the strength of Tea Party support. Some would point to this, his only elective office, as being not enough political experience. However, one does not work as a battalion commander in a war zone without learning a lot about practical politics. He holds a master’s degree in political science from Kansas State and a master’s degree from the Military Command College in political theory, military history, and military operations. So is probably better versed in political processes and institutions than 90% of congressmen.

He served twenty-two years as a commissioned officer in the military including both Gulf Wars serving in Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He earned a bronze star, Meritorious Service Medal (2 oak clusters), Army Commendation Medal (2 oak Cluster, Valor Device), Army Achievement Medal (1 oak cluster), Valorous Unit Award, Air Assault Badge, and Parachutist Bade, as well as ten service medals. After his retirement he worked as a high school history teacher, a college ROTC instructor, and a regional director for a military consultancy to the Afghan army.

West is both a fiscal and social conservative. He sees the last fifty years of liberal social programs and policies as trapping the poor in a culture of welfare and dependency. He has an overriding respect for the U.S. Constitution and is a deeply committed patriot. He has probably the clearest understanding of any person in Congress of the Muslim religion and the threat of both conquest by migration and conquest by aggression that exists from the radical elements of the faith. He has great clarity of thought and a direct and unapologetically sincere mode of speech. He is a motivator and is himself very motivated – he is able to think on his feet, does not need a teleprompter, and is unafraid of debate and discussion.

So the way I rank my favorite five candidates is:
1. Mitt Romney
2. Allen West
3. Sarah Palin
4. Mike Huckabee
5. Jon Huntsman

I could happily support a ticket that has any two of these five on it, but feel the strongest ticket would be Mitt Romney and Allen West, because they nearly perfectly complement each other with their individual strengths. Romney is excellent in economics, business, fiscal responsibility, Administration, and practical day to day politics. West is excellent in international politics, national security, the military, crisis management, and Middle East issues, a critical gap in the current administration.  It is important that the ticket have truely qualified candidates, that they form a strong team, and that they appeal to voters accross the broad spectrum of Republican politics.  To win the must pick up independents, Libertarians, and Democrats.

If this ticket should come about, I could see Palin as Secretary of Interior, Huntsman as Secretary of State, and my preferences for Huckabee include chairman of the FCC (this wouldn’t be possible if he still has ownership in radio and TV stations), or as a white house assistant for reducing government, combining and eliminating cabinet positions and moving functions that belong to the states back to the states, or as transitional Secretary of Education or Energy to transition the department out of existence.

The final segment, part 5, of this series of blogs, will look at those not on my list who are considered or are considering becoming candidates.

Many good potential Republican candidates for the 2012 presidential election are beginning to attract attention. Some of my favorites are, in alphabetical order:

Mike Huckabee, making his second run for president, has experience as a Minister, Educator, Author of several best selling books, televangelist, television station owner and producer, and was a conservative Lieutenant Governor and Governor of Arkansas, a highly Democratic state, is an ABC Radio Commentator, and hosts a talk news show on Fox News Channel. He has very strong conservative stands on economic and social issues, respects the Constitution, and is deeply patriotic.

Jon Huntsman, Jr. is the son of a billionaire industrialist and philanthropist. He served as CEO of the Huntsman Corporation, a successful businessman and philanthropist, served in three Republican presidential administrations, as Governor of Utah, and is currently the US Ambassador to China. He has very strong conservative stands, respects the Constitution, and is deeply patriotic.

Sarah Palin, candidate for vice president in the last election and a cultural icon, TV reporter, author, business woman, commercial fisherman, served as city council and mayor, Governor of Alaska, and has starred in a documentary TV series on Alaska. She tackled corruption in state government, and even within her own party. Young, brash, quick on her feet, she has gained a strong following as well as many detractors. She is conservative both socially and economically, respects the Constitution, and is deeply patriotic.

Mitt Romney, making his second run for president, is the son of the multi-term Governor of Michigan, has served as a lay minister, is a highly successful business man, and was brought in as chairman of the US Olympics to salvage them from scandal and financial ruin, served as conservative Governor of highly Democrat Massachusetts. He has very strong conservative stands on economic and social issues, respects the Constitution, and is a deeply patriotic American.

Allen West, currently a freshman congressman from Florida, is a Career US Army Officer, who grew up in Atlanta Georgia in a military family. His father served in WW2 and made a career of the military, his mother was a civilian employee of the Marine Corps, and his brother, also career military, served in Viet Nam. He is recipient of valorous and meritorious service decorations including a bronze star. He has taught high school history and college ROTC. He is a social and fiscal conservative, and is passionately patriotic.

There are other good people out there, but these are the ones that I favor. In this post I will begin evaluating candidates and end up with a ranking of most favored to least, starting with the two candidates from the 2008 primary:

Huckabee vs. Romney. On issues, these two are almost identical, so either one of them would be a good choice for conservative voters. While I like Huckabee’s stand on issues, I have doubts about his character. I was very disappointed at his attacks on Romney’s religion during their presidential run.

Huckabee is trying to make an issue of the Massachusetts Healthcare bill. Health care is not a federal responsibility. Whether a state will provide healthcare and how they will choose to do is a state issue, and if the citizens of a state want to create a program, it is their prerogative to do so.

I have been put off by Huckabee’s apparently deceitful use of statistics to attack Romney on healthcare. First he notes that Massachusetts has the highest health care premiums in the country since Romney signed health care into law as Governor; this is not a lie, but it is deceitful, because that state already had the highest premiums of any state before the law was passed. Second he used statistics in to show that state health care costs had increased from 16 percent to 35 percent after the law was passed; again technically not a lie, but the law was passed in 2006 and the 16 percent figure is from 1990 – the cost of national health care rose nearly 300% during that period, yet Massachusetts increase was only 220%, so was considerably less than the national increase during that period. He sources this from the Massachusetts Taxpayers Association, yet that organization says the costs “have been relatively modest and well within initial projections… the health care costs are not a problem” and the program is “a great success.”

Beyond the mudslinging approach that Huckabee has chosen, I give Romney the edge on meaningful leadership experience. While both have been governor, Massachusetts has double the population of Arkansas. Romney won two elections there running on a ticket of fiscal conservatism because the tax burden and state budget were in a state of near disaster. He turned the state around reducing programs, eliminating waste, balancing the budget, and initiating private insurance based healthcare without increasing taxes.

On the matter of electability, consider some more differences between the two states. While both states are majority-Democrat states, Massachusetts Democrats outnumber Republicans 3 to 1 and are among the most liberal of states – For the last dozen or so elections they have gone Democrat; whereas Arkansas has voted Republican in the last three presidential elections. The voters in Arkansas are conservatives, both socially and fiscally. Romney based on his fiscal performance was reelected to a second term in a state that a conservative should not have a chance.  He was elected based on performance.  He has proven he is highly electable. So my rating so far:

1. Romney
2. Huckabee

In my next post, I will compare Huntsman, Palin, and West with Romney and Huckabee.

The United States has had an extremely difficult time perfecting an energy policy that makes sense. The bill forming Department of Energy was signed into law in 1977. There are some good things that came out this in the form of standardization and unification of power distribution into the regional, national, and (with Canada) international power grid. However, one of the main goals given the DOE at its formation was to lead the US to energy self-sufficiency.

After more than a quarter century, we are more dependent on foreign oil than ever.

This wouldn’t be surprising if we had no energy resources. However, we are one of the most energy-rich countries in the world. We own more in-the-ground fossil fuel, than any country. We own vast deposits of uranium. We have great potential for more hydroelectric production. We have many resources for other alternative sources of energy. To understand our place in the energy world, consider these facts:

Total US Oil Reserves:
21 billion barrels proven reserves (CIA World Factbook)
134 billion barrels other estimated recoverable reserves (US Dept. of Interior)
0.727 billion barrels strategic petroleum reserves (CIA World Factbook)
155.727 billion barrels total US recoverable reserves

Other Fossil Fuels
2,175 billion barrels of recoverable oil in shale (Bureau of Land Management)
4116 billion equivalent barrels of oil in recoverable US Coal reserves (US DOE)

Total Worldwide Reserves
1350 billion barrels of oil reserves world-wide (CIA World Factbook)

Adding the estimated recoverable reserves to the proven reserves, the United States ranks third among all nations in the size of our oil reserves, slightly behind Saudi Arabia, and Canada.

The US contains the largest coal and shale oil deposits in the world. The US has 161% more oil in shale than in the total world oil reserves. Even more amazing, there is enough energy in known US coal reserves alone to eclipse that of all the oil on earth by 400%.

Processing petroleum from oil shell involves mining the oil-bearing shale, crushing the stone, and passing it through a high temperature retort. We currently have the technology to do this, but because it is only competitive when the petroleum price is high, the technological development has not yet advanced into research on reducing the cost of production.

One technique that may make the process competitive with deep well petroleum is that of in situ retorting in which the oil shell is reached by drilling shafts through which heat is pumped releasing the oil which is then pumped to the surface. Certainly, as world oil prices go up oil shell will not only be viable, but attractive.

The myth that oil from coal is not economically feasible has been disproven by South Africa. During the years of the world trade embargo against apartheid, coal-rich South Africa developed a process, and built several plants, each of which produce about 100,000 barrels of oil per day. The Chinese are in process of building as many as 27 of these plants in various parts of China.

Beyond the possibility of converting coal to gasoline, coal holds the spot as the number one producer of electricity in the United States. Even with the huge environmental burden, taxation, and political interference coal still remains the mainstay of the electric industry and one of the most important sources of heat for buildings. When the battery and quick charge technology is finally perfected to have total electric vehicles, it will be coal energy in the form of power grid electricity that drives those cars.

So why can’t we do what South Africa did? Why can’t our oil reserves produce the in range of Saudi Arabia or Canada? Why can’t we get research going to make our Shale oil reserves competitive?

I don’t think it is the fault of the DOE. I think it is the fault of some bad policy coming out of other parts of our federal mega-bureaucracy.
Politically and militarily we had strategic reasons to buy from other countries – if we use their oil, we are saving ours for future use, and we became such a valuable customer to oil producing countries they became our “friends” during the cold war. Both of those are probably valid strategies, and both served their purpose; but they also helped drive us to foreign energy dependency.

However, that was not the reason that US oil production dropped precipitously over the years. The main reason was environmental. In part this was caused by regulations by the EPA, and by such things as species protection. But way beyond that was the general liberal mindset against profits from big companies, distribution of wealth through taxation, excessive time and legal interference on new permitting, and outright banning of drilling in large tracts of known oil reserves. It became too costly and extremely time consuming to do exploratory drilling and to sink new wells into currently producing fields. The Global Warming fiasco with the almost unanimous blind support of the left just about did in the fossil fuel producers in America.

If we had taken half the so called “stimulus” money and put it directly into increased domestic fuel production, we would have seen the economy turn around, and energy cost, thus the cost of everything else, going down. Our number one priority should be to become energy independent as soon as possible, and number two should be to start advancing our energy technologies in all areas.

Politics and religion are important and dangerous topics, and they often have an impact on each other. It grates on me to hear a candidate disparaged for his religious beliefs. There is not much that is more un-American than to do so. Religious intolerance within the Christian community threatens the power of Conservatism.

Polls show that 82% of Americans identify themselves “Christian.” This large percentage of believers belong to or attend literally “thousands” (according to adherents.com) of different denominations from the largest, Catholic, to the smallest single-congregation denomination. An outsider might ask, why so many different kinds of Christians? The answer is simple, beginning with the protestant reformation to the current day, believers have compared their church to the writings in the Bible; and often when doing this they discover some discrepancy, so they split off and start a new church that they feel is modeled more on that of the Biblical description of the church Christ organized during his mortal ministry.

Some of these splits have come about due to disagreement over such things as the mode of baptism, the necessity of baptism, the version of the Bible that is used, the way tithes and offerings are collected or administered, predestination vs. free will, the use of products such as alcohol, makeup, or meat, the use of musical instruments, female preachers, and many more such items.

Even with these divisions, the basic doctrine of Christianity remains in these churches. I studied religion in college, and I read a great deal on contemporary religion. I have not found any denomination that does not have certain basic beliefs as part of their doctrine:

• Jesus of Nazareth was the only begotten Son of God; He lived without sin, gave Himself to pay for the sins of all humans, and is the Savior of the World, the only way back to God
• The First and Greatest Commandment – Love God with your might, mind, and strength
• The Second Greatest Commandment -Love your neighbor as yourself
• The Ten Commandments

These are certainly not the only commonality between Christian denominations, but it is sufficient to illustrate that a Christian who proclaims belief in Christ is a Christian. If I believe that baptism by emersion in a requirement, and you do not, that difference does not give me the right to say you aren’t really a Christian. Whatever else you believe, because you believe in those four items above, nobody can rightly say you are not a Christian.

Religious tolerance means that you give each person the right to worship and serve God in the way they believe is right, whether it matches your belief or not. There is a limit on this tolerance in that the United States Constitution and the body of law resulting from it, including those from state and civil governments, is the only law allowed to deal with mandatory fines, seizure of property, incarceration, physical punishment, or execution for wrong doing. Other than that each church has the right to allow in or remove from membership whomever they wish and to conduct their worship and church business how they choose. And each member has the same right to participate or not.

Each Christian attends the church of their choosing because they believe it is the best church for them, or because they enjoy the fellowship, convenience, or programs. It is not fair to others to say they are not Christian because they don’t see religion in exactly the say way we do. Jesus told His apostles, “For he that is not against us is on our part.” All these churches believe the four things listed above, they are on our part.

As long as they honor the Constitution and obey the laws of the land, a candidate should not be criticized for being a “born again”, Catholic, Episcopal, Mormon, or an unaligned Christian. With the same Constitutional stipulation mentioned in the previous sentence, the same is true for non-Christian religious bodies as well. It speaks well to a person’s character that they respect t and honor their religious beliefs and are kind to others in theirs.

We need to honestly throw away religious bias and select candidates on the strength of their record, education, public service, their stand on issues, and their personal character. In the next of this series, I will exam the three candidates most know for their religious beliefs: Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and Jon Huntsman.

A recent nationwide Rasmussen Poll of likely voters in the 2012 Congressional election.  It shows voters favoring Republican/conservative candidates and causes by a narrow margin.

The night before the November election the voters said by a 51% margin they would vote for Republicans.  The new poll indicates that 45% would vote for the Republican candidate and 38% for the Democrat candidate, a 6% drop for Republicans and as much as a 10% for Democrats.  This does not indicate the political registration of those in the polling pool which is made up of registered voters who voted in the last election from both major parties, independents, and the minor parties.  17% either said they did not know how they might vote, that they wouldn’t vote, or that they would vote for a candidate who does not belong to either party.  Whichever of the major parties can win over the largest number of this 17% is likely to win the election.

When asked if they were an economic conservative 47% said they are.  Asked if they are social conservatives the number dropped to 42%.  So 53% and 58% respectively did not answer, or consider themselves centrist or liberal. 

Good news is that 68% said they believe big business and government working together is to the detriment of consumers and investors.  This seems to repudiate President Obama’s push for more involvement of government in business.

The percentage of those who feel the Obama healthcare act should be repealed completely is still holding at 51%.

In a different Newsmax online poll of potential presidential candidates, President Obama is holding a fairly solid base of those who voted for him in the last election; only about 4% of that group said they would not vote for him in 2012.

Some interesting statistics from Arizona Voter Registration in January show that independent voters in our state now outnumber Democrats; independent voter registration increased since the November election by over 28,000 to 1,010,725.  Democrats also increased their registration by 5,752 to 1,008,689.  Republicans retained their lead and have increased since November by 10,803 to 1,142,605.  In addition the Libertarians have a registration of 24,880 and the Greens have a registration of 5,040.

So by percent of total voters: Republicans 35.8%,  Independents 31.7%, Democrats 31.5%, Libertarians 0.8%, and Greens 0.2%.  There is such a slim margin between the top three registrants that in state-wide elections neither group can win without substantial support from independents.

So taking all this information into consideration things are generally looking pretty good for the Republicans and for conservatives in general, but they certainly don’t have any kind of a sure thing in the 2012 elections. 

The strengths the conservatives should emphasize are getting government out of the way of business and improving the economy.  In the border states, except for California, border security and illegal immigration are still hot buttons with about 70% siding with the Republicans.   If the Republican party can do a good job of promoting their position on these they should do well nationwide, and even better in the west.

On the matter of immigration many of those who support the concepts of “free choice migration,” “open borders,” or “free market labor,” defend their position with the argument that from earliest times immigration was wide open and all comers were welcome, and that is what made America great. This is absolutely untrue. It was never like that, and has never in the history of the country been close to what has been happening since 1965- the immigration problem is a recent one stemming from misguided progressives and free market labor conservatives.

The first immigrants were from Europe, mostly Britain, the Netherlands, and France, settling in the Northern Atlantic coastal areas (During the same period all parties were battling for a share of the Caribbean islands, and the Spanish and Portuguese where concentrating on Central and South America, though there were minor colonies in what would eventually be the United States). During the 1600’s approximately 175,000 English migrated to America. Many of these were recruited to establish colonies for agriculture and to exploit natural resources.

Over the next 200 hundred years about 500,000 British and other Europeans, migrated to expand the colonies; of these at least half were indentured servants, people who were provided passage, room and board, and usually training in return for a long period of working for the colonist. It was during this period that most of the African slaves were brought to America. This was not open migration, it was migration with a specific purpose and consisted of volunteer farmers, merchants, craftsmen, entrepreneurs, indentured labor, and forced labor.

Immigration had little need for control because it was controlled naturally by the arduous and expensive crossing of the ocean. People who came here as religious pilgrims/refugees, were a problem in their home countries where their emerging churches caused conflict with the establishment; colonization got the problem out of the homeland and helped to develop the colonial production needed to provide a robust merchant trade; a win-win for the home government.

This continued to be the situation through the American Revolution, with the added immigration of mercenary French and Hessian (German) soldiers, some of whom stayed on as residents. The restriction of immigration as a consequence of difficulty and cost began to fail with the formation of the United States, since there was considerable political and social upheaval in Europe and ocean crossing had become much faster, safer, and less expensive. The Constitution was ratified in 1787, and the first immigration law of the United States was passed just three years later in 1790 in which only free white persons could be naturalized. From 1787 to 1820 immigration was less than 8000 per year. The next change was after the civil war when blacks were granted citizenship.

In 1875 the first comprehensive immigration law was passed, replacing the 1790 act. The purpose was to control both the number and nature of immigrants, so that they would not displace American workers, would not be enemies of the U.S., would give up allegiance to all other countries, would learn to read and write English, would not carry communicable disease, could assimilate into the American culture, and were capable of being self-sustaining. Fifteen years later, in 1890 Ellis Island in New York became the primary immigration screening and processing point of entry for European immigrants.

In 1854 the Gadsden Purchase added the southern portions of territory to what are now the states of Arizona and New Mexico. In the purchase it was agreed with Mexico that existing Mexican and Spanish land titles would be recognized and those Mexican citizens who wished to remain Mexican could sell their holdings and relocate to Mexico; those who chose to stay automatically became U.S. Citizens. The total population in the Arizona portion of the Gadsden Purchase was less than 500 people, most Mexican citizens, but also many friendly Indians. There were also Mexican Citizens at La Mesilla but they numbered no more than 500, some of these elected to move south and remain Mexican, others accepted U.S. Citizenship.

From 1836 to 1914 30 million Europeans immigrated to the U.S; almost 400,000 per year. The country had vast tracts of western land to populate, so the Europeans were welcomed with open arms. In 1921 the Emergency Quota Act limited the number of immigrants. The Immigration Act of 1924 restricted southern and eastern Europeans from immigrating and was designed to stop the large influx of Italians, Poles, Slavs, and Jews who had been coming in large numbers and settling in ethnic groups since the end of the 1800’s. There was great concern with the amount of time it took for these immigrants to learn English and become acculturated into the American social and economic structure.

Immigration dropped significantly during the years of the Great Depression, and more people actually emigrated from the U.S. than entered the country. During this time almost half a million were repatriated to Mexico, many voluntarily but about half were deported.

The Hart-Cellar act of 1965 for the first time abolished quotas by national origin. This changed the ethnic proportions of the country – prior to the act Europeans made up 60% of immigrants, and following the act only 15% were of European origin. In the five years following Hart-Cellar, immigration doubled, then double again in the following twenty years. Bush I signed the 1990 immigration act increasing immigrants by an additional 40%. Clinton commissioned a panel of experts to make recommendations on immigration – they recommended cutting legal immigration by 60%; the recommendation was ignored.

Today the United States allows more legal immigration than any other country, 317% more than the next highest. We are bringing in over 1 million new immigrants per year. We now have 38 million first generation legal immigrants in the country. In addition to that it is estimated that approximately 12 million illegal aliens are also in the country.

Our current immigration policy verges on the insane. At a time when we have more than 15 million Americans out of work we should not be bringing a million people a year into the country, and we should certainly not be tolerating the 12 million illegal aliens that are in the country, along with granting citizenship the anchor babies, and contemplating giving children of illegals a competitive advantage over children of citizens with the so-called dream act. The success of America was not is based on efficient functioning of enterprise and effective laws and institutions, but also on metering immigration to meet our needs, and assuring that those who are allowed into our country value our ideals and way of life. Prior to 1965 we had rational immigration policy that was anything but open borders, and demanded that immigrants were to become Americans in every aspect. 

We do indeed need comprehensive immigration reform, but not the kind the open borders/amnesty crowd is pushing. We need to repeal the acts from 1965 to present and do two things: 1) reduce allowed immigration to do actual sustainable demand, and 2) let only people who will support our American values and way of life into the country. We need to do that as soon as we stop illegal immigration and repatriate 12 million illegals back to their homeland.

How Nuclear Electricity is Made

It is completely foolish for Washington to be putting restraints on American coal. It is a domestic fuel, which we have abundantly, and could greatly reduce our reliance on unstable Middle Eastern countries. Our country currently runs on coal and should continue to do so for many decades. At one time coal was a dirty fuel; that is no longer the case, it is clean, cheap and efficient. It is and should continue far into the future to be our primary energy source.

It is prudent to expand use of other domestic resources as well – we are rich in natural gas and should fully exploit this resource. We should do all we can to increase domestic oil production. Looking to the long range future we need to continue to take advantage of hydro, wind, solar, and other renewable generation – however in the short term, the next twenty to forty years, wind and solar are not yet competitive and will not be able to provide what we need at the capacity required for many decades. They also require a lot of land, which more traditional plants do not.

The alternative method of generating energy that is currently fully feasible, efficient, and competitive is nuclear power, and it can make an impact in our power production within three years if we were to move forward with expanding our nuclear capacity.

Nuclear power is the cleanest, safest, most reliable method of generating electricity. Its process releases nothing into the land, air, or water. The power plants are expensive to build, but per square foot generate more power. They also require less expensive maintenance and repairs and have a much longer operating life. The biggest drawback to nuclear power is public perception, fueled by environmental scare tactics.

There have been only two major reactor accidents ever – one in the US and one in the Soviet Union. This is with over 14,000 cumulative commercial reactor-years world-wide. Because of poor design, poor fire preventive measures, and inadequate containment measures, Chernobyl power station in the Soviet Union was a disaster. The Soviets were notably careless with both safety and environmental factors in their design and operation of both nuclear power generation and naval reactors. By comparison, Three Mile Island, the only U.S. reactor accident ever, was contained without harm to anyone and with no impact on the environment. The U.S. has 104 operating nuclear power stations in 31 states.

In addition to power generation the U.S. has operated the largest fleet of nuclear powered ships in the world. They currently have in active service 80 nuclear powered ships, including 11 aircraft carriers. The Navy has accumulated more than 5400 years of accident free nuclear service.

There are some very misleading statistics in some anti-nuclear propaganda in which they list the number of nuclear accidents to be about three thousand per year. What they are calling nuclear accidents are actually industrial accidents at nuclear facilities, and there is a very important distinction between the two. A nuclear accident by definition is a failure for any reason of a nuclear reactor which releases radioactive isotopes; the two examples in the first paragraph are the only two nuclear accidents ever.

The large number of accidents reported, industrial accidents, are identical to industrial accidents in conventional power plants, mines, factories, construction, etc. Industrial accidents include those caused steam explosions, falls, shocks, falling objects, vehicle accidents, misapplication of tools, failure to wear personal protective equipment, and any other type of on-the-job injury or fatality. OSHA statistics show the truth is that the industrial accident rate in nuclear power plants is lower than conventional power plants; ten times lower than manufacturing, and less than half the rate of accidents in business offices. Furthermore, contrary to claims that aging nuclear plants are become more dangerous, NRC statistics show that their safety and reliability improve with time.

Another objection to nuclear power is the nuclear waste, spent uranium pellets. The fact is that this concern has already been addressed, and this waste will eventually be reprocessed reducing the amount of waste considerably, by these measures:
• Deep geologic repositories (easily expandable if needed)
• Greatly improved fuel reduces amount of waste
• Reprocessing of waste back into usable fuel

The waste is stored in one of two deep geologic repositories on existing military nuclear reservations in Nevada and New Mexico. In these the material is stored in solid rock below a dry isolated desert environment 1000 feet underground, and 1000 feet above the water table. At today’s rate of production there is already room in these for 10,000 years of production from our 104 power plants. Because these caverns are developed by conventional mining methods that capacity can easily be increased if ever needed.

The amount of waste created is actually very small. The total nuclear waste and its packaging (it’s stored in barrels) generated during the last forty years from all U.S. power plants, processing facilities, labs, and military waste would cover about one football field.

Europe Claims to have been reprocessing its nuclear waste for decades. Some dispute their claims, but most scientists believe it will eventually be perfected. This has several benefits. It reduces the amount of required waste storage. It greatly reduces the radioactive half-life of the waste. It uses existing uranium, reducing requirement for new mined mineral. In fact recycling the fuel in this way would reduce our current waste from nearly covering a football field to covering only 2.4 yards of the field – a 96.6% reduction in stored waste.

Every valid technical, safety, and environmental concern about nuclear power has been mitigated. We have the knowledge and body of experience to expand our usage safely and efficiently. Nuclear electricity should become, along with coal, a mainstay of our power industry.

I do not like you Jihad Jane.
I do not like you; not at all.
I do not like you on a train.
I do not like your Jihad call.

I do not like you on a plane.
I do not like you a little bit.
I do not like you in the rain.
I do not like your murderous snit.

And I will not like you ever again.
I hope you go to federal jail,
There to feed on ham and gin,
So you will go to infidel hell.

For decades Americans have gotten vaccinations, now this practice is being challenged. It all began when an English surgeon, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, publishing a paper in The Lancet, the world’s leading peer-reviewed medical Journal. He claimed in a clinical study of twelve autistic children that their condition was caused by inoculation of MMR (the combined vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella), asserting that it would be safer to give this as three separate vaccines administered at different times.

When it came out that Dr. Wakefield had, 1) falsified his findings to support his hypothesis, and 2) had developed and was marketing his own measles vaccine and stood to profit substantially by a ban on MMR, The Lancet conducted a deep peer review of Dr. Wakefield’s paper and renounced his claims and retracted his paper.

The UK National Health Service investigated and found that there was no evidence of a link between MMR and autism. In the United States, the National Academy of Sciences conducted their own investigation and said there was no evidence that MMR had anything to do with autism in children. Finally the General Medical Council, the medical licensing agency of the United Kingdom, conducted an investigation, and found a long list of violations including unethical medical practice on children, falsifying medical records, and that he had acted with dishonesty and irresponsibly. He no longer works at the Royal Free Hospital.

In a fever of sensational media reporting Wakefield became a celebrity in England. Eerily similar to the way the media propagandized global warming, they did the same with anti-vaccine disinformation from Wakefield. The myth spread around the world, becoming an actual movement which is growing in the United States.

One of the things you can find repeated by anti-vaccine websites and bloggers is that vaccines have done nothing to reduce disease, that while disease, as well as death by disease, has diminished over the last century it would have happened anyway. They attempt to prove this by statistics showing the trend for reduction of disease has gone down at the same rate before vaccines as after. This is simply not true.

First we should expect a decrease in the spread of disease, the severity, and the death rate as a natural consequence of better medical understand, increased sanitation, and improved patient treatment. For example, prior to the first measles vaccine, most of the deaths from that disease were actually from bronchial-pneumonia; becoming better at avoiding and treating that side effect of measles, reduced the death rate.

As early as the American Revolution soldiers were given a crude vaccination from recovering victims when the doctor would scrape some of the blisters of small pox and work the fluids into cuts on the arms of uninfected soldiers, giving them a mild case of the disease and leaving them immune in the future. These and other early vaccines, while not as effective as modern, still greatly reduced spread of disease and severity of new cases.

In addition to these early attempts at vaccination and improvement of medical knowledge and practice, early vaccines have contributed to all but eliminating measles and other common childhood disease. Some of the anti-vaccine people will tell you there was no vaccination before 1950, however:
• In 1920 a measles serum was made from the blood of patients recovering from measles. It provided some resistance to the disease for inoculated children, though it was not completely effective. In those that did contract the disease it reduced the severity.
• As girls were vaccinated and later as women nursed their children, the children received increased resistance to the disease.
• The first actual measles vaccine was invented in 1950. These early vaccinations contributed to the reduction in disease through those decades.
• In 1963 the combined measles-mumps-rubella vaccine came into usage.

Prior to 1963 the US experienced between 3 and 4 million cases of measles per year. By 1983 the number of cases per year had dropped to 1,497. During the middle eighties people began to resist vaccinations and between 1989 and 1991 an epidemic spread in the US in which there were over 55,000 cases and 123 deaths; one half of these cases and one half of the deaths were children under the age of five. In 2008 there were 140 cases, largest number since 1996, and of these, 127 had not been vaccinated.

The anti-vaccine movement has taken hold in the United States, based on false information and flawed science. Since the advent of vaccines for childhood disease the lives that have been saved number in the millions; the severity of childhood disease has been greatly reduced. It is a grave mistake to deny your child this protection. It is a great disservice to your community as well.

I saw a political cartoon today that has Patrick Henry saying, “Give me liberty or give me civility.” The apparent point being that civility is a limit on liberty. There is a saying that people in the old west tended to be rather polite, because everybody was armed; to the degree that is true, people voluntarily limited the offensiveness of their speech as a matter of prudence. The reality is that anything that governs any action is a limit on liberty, which is why the Founding Fathers held the idea of limited government as a basic tenet of the foundation of our republic.

There is a balance that should be maintained between complete freedom to say and behave in any way a person chooses and in civility and polite behavior. Politeness and civility come from a person’s upbringing and the social culture of society.

When I was a child, in the 1950’s, society was considerably more polite than it is today, not only in speech, but in grooming, dress, and general behavior. Men were careful of their personal appearance, were chivalrous, tipping their hats (everyone wore a hat), stepping aside to allow others to pass on the sidewalk, holding doors for women, children, and the elderly, and watching their language in public.

The big change to this came from the younger members of my generation in the late sixties and seventies. Inspired by left-leaning professors, it started with college students who refused to honor the draft, developed into opposition to the Viet Nam war; running counter to traditional patriotic support of our soldiers during time of war. This bloomed into the hippy era, drug culture, free love, abortion rights, women’s rights, environmentalism, and a general anti-establishment philosophy. They rose up in a mass rebellion against pretty much every social and moral more of the time.

From the close of World War II, the Soviet Union was very actively working to foment this type of unrest through agents and contacts in the American Communist Party, the Socialist Party, labor unions, the universities, and the media. These have elevated extremism to mainstream politics via left wing groups from followers of Alinsky, SDS, Acorn, and various other “community organizations” and radical groups.

The McCarthy hearings of the early fifties identified some of this activity, but concentrated most on the film industry, where they were fairly successful in disarming that propaganda effort. The irony of the Soviet success in placing socialist plants and creating civil unrest was that, while they ended up succeeding beyond their original hope, it did not cause a push for Soviet style communism, but instead a push toward greater liberty; almost, but not quite, an anarchy type of freedom.

There were some very good things that came from all this. Freedom of speech and expression were given a greater emphasis than ever before. Women gained equality in the workplace and a greater say in the political and civic arena. Citizens became openly hostile toward public corruption and cronyism. Industrial pollution and toxic waste has been reduced by probably 90%.

Business has been changed from the type X labor/management conflict model to a more win/win approach. Families have switched from a rigid patriarchal style, to more of a partnership with greater parental involvement with children. All these are examples of the good that came out of this period of unrest.

However, there were almost an equal number of bad things that came from this period; it was a sort of a “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” situation. The polite civility of our parent’s generation didn’t completely disappear, but it was badly damaged and greatly reduced.

The use of slang, poor grammar, and of aggressive, offensive, and threatening language greatly increased. Self-discipline and personal accountability have been replaced with selfish hedonism and victimization. The concept of earning respect was replaced with deserving respect. Our children have been raised to believe that competing is bad, and winning isn’t important; everybody deserves the same reward regardless of personal effort and performance.

Political correctness has created a society unable to address differences between cultures, races, or other social distinctions, while at the same time destroying the concept of the American social “melting pot.” We now have Afro-, Hispano-, Asian-, etc. Americans who believe the culture and values of their homeland or racial group is more important than their identity as Americans. We have inadvertently created a new type of segregation.

So in addition to the many good things, the history of the Baby Boomers and their children has created all kinds of bad fall-out. Examples are extremely high rates of birth out of wedlock, huge numbers of abortions, huge numbers of single parent families, widespread use of drugs, illogical environmental and social laws, great loss of heavy industry, tremendous growth in government and the taxes required to support it, and a less civil, more crude society.

A second irony is the left accusing the right of using violent rhetoric when the use of extreme aggressive violent language, hyperbole, rhetoric , and imagery has been an invention and mainstay of the left; they are now accusing a much more mild right, in particular the Tea Party and talk radio, of abusing freedom of speech with excessive use of violent language. For any liberal to make such an accusation is not only ironic, but also hypocritical.

Personally, I would like for people on all sides of the political spectrum to avoid aggressive language and instead endeavor to express their ideas and opposition with more accuracy and less emotion. I don’t think this will really happen, because the left is steeped in the concept of using every crisis to drive an emotional following to a loud attack on their opposition.

I recently stated that I dislike seeing the Republicans “playing nice” with the Democrats; and I definitely feel that way. I think the Republicans need to respect the right of the Democrats to their opinions, but I also think Republicans need to strongly counter those damaging and anti-American ideas.

Modern politics is more clearly than ever aligned between not just conservative and liberal, but right and wrong. The conservatives are simply right, and the liberals are simply wrong, and there is nothing in that to compromise. I would rather see congress unable to ever pass another law than to pass one more law that will hurt our country.

An example of left-wing civility

In the US most political conservatives are believers in the same Christian God. There are also good patriotic conservatives of the Jewish faith, as well as some other non-Christian faiths, or no professed faith at all. The greatest harm that can be done to conservatives is for us to become factionalized against each other, and the greatest danger of this is among the Christians themselves.

I have been exposed through participation, investigation, and friendship with people of many different denominations. There are some significant doctrinal and ritual differences between Baptists, Pentecostals, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Mormons, Methodists, Roman Catholics, Eastern Catholics, Adventists, various evangelical, and independent Christian churches, as well as many that don’t fit neatly into any of these groups.

There are more important common beliefs than differences among these people of faith. If we are to have the strength of unity within the conservative movement we must look past the differences and focus on the common beliefs and values, and more importantly from a political standpoint, on the common ethic and character we share.

All of these people believe that God the Father, the Creator of the cosmos including humankind, loves us as His children and wishes to reward us with eternal life and glory after this life. They believe that God sent His only begotten son, Jesus the Christ to teach of God and His will and to freely offer Himself up as a sacrifice to pay for their sins. Each of these denominations recognize that repentance, profession, baptism and membership do not in themselves save us, but that each person is saved based on the extent they accept the offering of Christ and yoke themselves (by spirit and heart) to Him.

More pertinent to politics and the good of the nation, each of these churches endeavor to instill in their members a love for fellowman, a desire to be faithful, kind, and of service. Those who live their faith are honest, hard working, fair-minded, moral, ethical, and worthy of trust; they believe in patriotism and obeying the law. This is all we need to know to determine their worthiness to be our leaders and representatives. It doesn’t matter what the details of their dogma and rites are when it comes to being a patriot or a public servant.

We must be willing to drop the discussion of who among us is or is not really a Christian, and understand that God knows the answer perfectly. We must stand by our belief in allowing people the right to worship, or not, as they see fit. We need instead to ask, “Does this person love America and respect the Constitution? Are they honest, moral, and principled? Do they legally, educationally, and experientially qualify for this office? Do they stand for conservative values and the Republican (or Libertarian) platform?”

As a teen I was upset with the way Catholicism was held against JFK. People should instead have looked at his patriotism, character, qualifications, and political positions. The same is true today of both Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney; they are being eliminated by some conservatives because of their religious beliefs. Their denomination is irrelevant – their patriotism, character, qualifications, and political position should be the only consideration.

Quite a stir has accompanied Patrick Moore, one of the founders of radical Greenpeace, saying global warming is a natural phenomenon, and further that politicians are using bad science to create bad environmental policies ( http://www.theblaze.com/stories/greenpe … l-warming/ ).

It is wonderful to see him break with the body of environmental dogma and make such a rational statement. Of course he will probably be excommunicated from membership in the Earth Worship Society, but in doing so he has become a martyr for the truth.

There is absolutely no question that the earth has been in a warming cycle for the last 12,500 years, starting with the end of the last ice-age. There is also no question that man, development of industry, and the use of fossil fuels had nothing whatsoever to do with that warming cycle.

Science, using Oxygen-Isotope Percent dating of core drilling samples, have identified six distinct global temperature cycles in which the earth cooled to an ice-age, then warmed to a tropical age. This six cycle period spans over 450,000 years. So the average cycle from a cold earth to a hot earth is 75,000 years.

Each of these cycles when represented on a chart are not smooth curves, but ragged with peaks and valleys of ten thousand or more year’s duration within both the cooling and heating phase; separate little mini-cycles that are still part of the predominant trend of the mega-cycle.

Viewed together this geological history makes it clear that:
1. Heating and cooling cycles were happening on earth long before man was even on the earth.
2. There is no way for science to determine exactly where we are in the current heating and cooling cycle.
3. All the weather and climate data that has been collected in the last 1000 years represents such a small sample compare the duration of mega-cycles, that they are useless for predicting anything but extremely short term and minor temperature change (and even then very questionable).
4. Even if we are able to establish a multi-century trend, there is no way for science to say whether that trend is one of the mini-cycles or part of a predominant mega-cycle.
5. Looking at the core samples over the most recent 5000 years, it actually looks like we have reached the bottom of the warming phase and are starting into the beginning of a cooling phase. However, even 5000 years of isotope dating is too short a time to establish a trend for the mega-cycle.
6. According to archeology, ancient history research, and carbon dating, man could not have influenced the last warming trend, because there was only a small population and no large scale civilization until the final third of that warming cycle.

Approximately four thousand years ago the Egyptian culture developed in the vicinity of the northern Nile River. This is considered the first large civilization which departed from a hunter/gatherer or simple agrarian economy, to include commercial endeavors in large scale agriculture, mining, manufacturing, sea trade, and development of technology.

For a reason science does not know, the cooling trends take from 50,000 to 100,000 thousand years to peak, but warming trends take less than 20,000 years. This has been true of all six of the mega–cycles.

Actually, if climate change could be influenced by anthropogenic greenhouse gasses, it might be a good idea to generate as large a volume of them as possible to slow the current rate of cooling and lesson the severity of the cooling peak. This would give man 50,000 years or so to figure out how to live with the natural mega-cycles of climate change. That said, it is unlikely that any anthropogenic product or activity has even the slightest effect on these mega-trends.

There have been at least 20 attempts to assassinate a US president, president-elect, or past president. Of these four succeeded, Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy. Two other presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan were wounded in assassination attempts. There has been speculation since their deaths that Zachery Taylor and Warren Harding were assassinated by poisoning.

Fifteen of these were by gunfire, including all six of those in which a president was harmed. Three attempts were by bomb; in one case, the perpetrator changed his mind but was caught driving the car bomb, in another the disguised hand-grenade was prevented from detonating by the bandana being tied too tightly around it, and the third was disrupted when the plot was discovered by Saudi Secret Service.

Three times attempts were made to crash airplanes into the White House; one actually succeeding in crashing into the lawn, killing the pilot, one ended when the perpetrator killed the pilots then committed suicide, and one was stopped by brave passengers who refused to allow terrorist to carry through with their plot.

Only three attempts were motivated by domestic politics and three were attempts by foreign enemies. The attack on FDR’s party in 1933, was most likely not actually targeting the president, but was a successful mob hit on the Mayor of Chicago who was giving Al Capone trouble. In all other instances those attempting to assassinate the president were mentally troubled men (only two women in the whole group), often delusional, unemployed or marginally employed. Four attempts have been made by members of a cult or a domestic terror group, including the two attempts by women – one a Manson devotee and the other a Symbionese Liberation Front sympathizer.

These attacks have included sixteen against Republicans, ten against Democrats, and one against Theodore Roosevelt, former Republican running unsuccessfully on the New Progressive Party ticket. (He was shot in the chest prior to giving a speech, got up dusted himself off and gave the speech before going for medical attention. The bullet was never removed.)

In most cases the perpetrators used weapons that were illegal, transported them in a way that was illegal, and of course the act of attempting murder of itself was also illegal. A number of them were prohibited from possessing a gun, because they had criminal records. None of these laws in any way deterred them from moving forward with their plan. It is logical that this would be true, for once a person has settled on killing someone, any lesser law becomes irrelevant.

Beyond the ineffectiveness of laws another problem with trying to reduce violence by outlawing guns is that those who are set on violence have many options, as well as many illegal sources of obtaining weapons. For example, almost anybody can make a powerful bomb with simple readily-available ingredients. If a person is crazy enough to shoot a public figure and as many people around them as possible, wouldn’t they also be crazy enough to take a bomb or incendiary device into that same crowd and set it off, or drive a car, with or without explosives into the crowd? The result will be at least as bad as an armed shooter.

The difference is if the shooter uses a gun he must target each individual and if there is a policeman or an armed citizen present they can stop his attack by shooting the murderer; with the other options the slaughter is over before anyone can react.

My opinion is that we need to work on the root of the problem: 1) How do we keep people from concluding it is alright to murder someone, and 2) Why do we allow those who are unstable and unpredictable in their emotional and mental control to run freely in society?

I think that the trend toward an ethic where nothing is really wrong depending on the circumstances and away from traditional family and religious mores has created an environment that allows monsters to develop. There have always been psychotic and emotionally troubled people, but we have not always allowed them the freedom to make the terrible choice of bloodshed.

On the issue of Muslim Sharia Law, let’s take the Muslims out of it for a moment. Consider how Americans would feel if I were to organize the New Church of the Brutal Ultimatum (NCBU), which is based on the teachings of Attila Reltih of Ghana. Those who follow this church, now numbering in millions, adhere to only two articles of faith:
1. They believe that their god, who is Reltih of Blessed Name, is a jealous and brutal god, for whom commandments are a deadly ultimatum.
2. The Minister has authority to determine Reltih Law based on the Divine Writings of A. Reltih, to pass judgment and exact any degree and method of fines or property confiscation, imprisonment or enslavement, and corporal or capital punishment upon any member of the Congregation of Believers, as well as against any person who leaves the faith, insults, or speaks against the Church, the Book of Divine Writings, or blasphemes Reltih of Blessed Name.

I, as the supreme minister, or any council of lesser ministers could have people beheaded for the sins of lying or halitosis, stoned to death for the sins of adultery, fornication outside of marriage, homosexuality, or voting for Obama; or on the other hand if they were beautiful enough, I could show mercy and have them enslaved to me for my legitimate sexual pleasure. (It would be legitimate because I said so, based on The Writings.)

I would demand that the state and federal government honor Reltih Law, because freedom of religion is protected by the Constitution. A federal judge, who attended university in Ghana, the homeland of the Reltih faith, would rule that NCBU members had freedom to practice their faith, and to institute Reltih Law above that of the state and federal government.

So when we peacefully go about maiming and executing those I don’t like, er, I mean sinners, all is well until authorities begin to find human body parts strewn in the streets. This is intolerable so they arrest me for health violations, but when I point out that in our faith you cannot touch the blood of a sinner two minutes after a limb is severed or after they are dead, the authorities are forced to let me go because it is an issue of faith.

Of course this scenario could go on and on, but this is enough to illustrate how ridiculous it is for a court to limit a states right to refuse Sharia Law. Only the words, and the political correctness, are different between the Reltih Law and Sharia Law.

Rule by Sharia Law would exempt ecclesiastical authority from adhering to prevailing state and federal criminal laws. In Sharia it is legal for a husband to beat his wife for refusing to sleep with him. In Sharia it is legal for a hand to be removed from a thief or for an adulterous woman, a homosexual, or a blasphemer to be put to death. In Sharia a man is allowed to take a child of six as his wife and to have sex with her.

In America all these things and many more that are allowed by Sharia are illegal. If someone wants to come to America and abide by the Constitution in all its aspects and the laws of the land, I have no problem with that. But if they wish to come here and keep the brutal Bronze Age culture of their homeland, they should not be allowed in.

There has been much made of a pre-election campaign poster that pictured Democrats that were targeted for defeat by Republicans with the graphic of a crosshair to emphasize the concept of their being targeted. This symbolism has been used for years on political media by both political parties and individual candidates. Harry Mitchell used a photo with his opponent centered in the crosshairs – if only we had known he was attempting to incite murder, we could have had him arrested. At least according to the liberal hysteria coming from the left. I have probably a hundred photos of liberal and Democratic examples of what they are so eagerly condemning the conservatives and Republicans. A few are posted below.

This is a graphic used by the Democrats in the last election. Notice the targets on the states where they hope to defeat a Republican, or did they REALLY mean to kill a Republican? Absurd? Of course it is, but no more so than what they are saying now about the right.

A subtle hint of violence from a liberal protest march.

Satire, not hate from our liberal friends.

Why on earth was this person not arrested? No hint of left-wing inducement to violence here.

Aliens demanding their constitutional (what?) rights in Phoenix.

Lefties proudly desecrating the American flag. This is actually violence against America, but the left has no trouble supporting this right to free speach.

Since the left has been doing this kind of protest and campaigning for the last several years, and since they are saying this type of rhetoric causes crazies to kill, we shoud brace ourselves or an onslaught of mass assassination and murder. Of course the caveat is that it’s only bad if it does not reflect their view… Would the word hyprocrite be appropriate here?

The fact is that this type of protest and advertising does not cause deadly actions. In the United States there have been four presidents assassinated and twenty attempted assassinatiion of a president. Of these only three were politically motivated; the rest were all perpetrated by an unbalanced person with their own incomprehensible motivation. Interestingly enough, almost all of these were committed by a relatively young male, a loner, unemployed, with previouse social and legal problems, who acted alone. This sounds very much like the man who committed the outrage in Tucson. I don’t really want to mention his name, because that is what he apparently wants – fame.

Instead of dwelling on the murderer, or misplacing blame, we would do well to mourn the loss of Christina Green, Gabriel Zimmerman, John Roll, Dorwin Stoddard, Dorothy Morris, and Phyllis Scheck. Their love ones have lost them from this life, and we have lost an unknown number of blessings from their being taken. Let us remember in our prayers Representative Giffords as she fights her battle to regain her life, as well as Bill Badger, Ron Barber, Eric Fuller, Susan Hileman, George Morris, Pam Simon, and Mavy Stoddard all of whom were wounded by the killer. May God bless them all to have a rapid and complete recovery.

The tragic shooting of US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Federal Judge John Roll, and up to 18 others (depending on differing reports), has resulted in at least five deaths including Judge Roll and a nine year old girl. Representative Giffords is recovering following surgery and is reported by the hospital to be responsive. This criminal event is not only a human tragedy due to the death and injury of innocent people, but is a civil tragedy for our country – violence against our legal office holders and innocent citizens exercising their right to participate in government is violence against all who believe in government by the people.

I do not agree with much of Representative Gifford’s political stance, but I have respect for her because she conducts herself with dignity and intelligence. She has done nothing that I can see that could be used by any reasonable person to justify a physical attack on her. This was a pointless, senseless attack making the perpetrator the worst kind of criminal.

Let’s hope that the aftermath brings with it some retrospection and rational discussion, rather than emotional political responses. Already a California Congresswoman has blamed the shootings on Tea Party activists, without know one fact about the shooter. As it turns out the shooter, 22 year old Jared Loughner of Tucson, is not sympathetic with the Tea Party movement, but was more aligned with leftist ideology. His favorite books include Mein Kampf, The Communist Manifesto, and Animal Farm. His personal social networking pages included rants against government, schools, the flag, and the status quo. Would Representative Giffords’ Jewish faith possibly have some connection with this, considering that Loughner is a fan of Mein Kampf?

The event will surely be used by those supporting gun control to justify more gun control. However, the gunman was shot by a bystander who was armed; if the armed citizen had not been there, how much worse might this tragedy be? The fact is an armed citizen cut the tragedy off before the assailant had finished his attack. All this proves is that guns are used by both bad and good people; bad people will do bad things, and good people will respond in a good way. So the effort needs to be not to disarm America, but to stop criminal activity.

My heart and prayers are for all the victims, both primary and secondary, to be blessed with personal peace and comfort, and that the injured might quickly have a full recovery. I also feel we should all be not just praying to God that such violence will cease, but that we might all understand what needs to be done to make such acts abhorant to every American, so no such acts would take place in the future.

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President Obama at the recent Climate Change Summit, said, “…we risk consigning future generations to an irreversible catastrophe. The security and stability of each nation and all peoples—our prosperity, our health, and our safety—are in jeopardy and the time we have to reverse this tide is running out.”

Note particularly “irreversible catastrophe,” “ our prosperity, our health, and our safety… in jeopardy ,” and “time… is running out.”

The current godfather of liberalism, George Soros recently said “…then work on a better world order where we work together to resolve problems that confront humanity like global warming. And I think that dealing with global warming will require a lot of investment. …the American consumer who has been spending more than he has been saving, all right? Than he’s been producing. So that motor is now switched off. It’s finished. It’s run out of — can’t continue. You need a new motor. And we have a big problem. Global warming. It requires big investment. And that could be the motor of the world economy in the years to come.”

Note particularly “world order,” “global warming,,, could be the motor of the world economy,” and the fact that he blames American Consumers for breaking the system.

It should be obvious that the left-wing purveyors of global warming are talking as much about spending the money of Americans and citizens of other developed countries as they are fear mongering to the masses.

The real purpose of global warming is nothing more than a grab for the resources, freedoms, and prosperity of the world, so the rich liberal elite and their puppet politicians can establish a world order. This is the same dream held so dear by Stalin, Lenin, Mao, and even Hitler – to gain complete control so their “ideal society” can succeed.

Global warming is fake science, a fraud, a tool to destroy freedom and elevate the elite. Science has been corrupted by the investment of money by environmental fanatics and liberal governments. The very concept that activities of man are able to disrupt the mega-weather cycles is clearly absurd, there is insufficient data to be able to draw any true scientific conclusions.

A big problem with predictions that the carbon dioxide released by industrialized man is driving the earth to disastrous heating is simply that there cannot be any meaningful data to validate or dispute this. Scientific research proves that, 1) the earth has warmed and cooled without the presence of man for hundreds of thousands of years, and 2) the cycle between ice age and warm earth takes tens of thousands of years. If all the climate data accumulated in the last one hundred years is used, it still has statistical insignificance; it would amount about 1/1000th of a percent of the natural cycle time– not enough to make any reasonable conclusion.

Analysis of ocean floor core drilling shows that during the last 400,000 years the earth has experienced five ice ages; these are cyclic in nature with each cycle having a duration of about 80,000 years. During each of these cycles, starting at the warmest point it takes around 60,000 years to reach the coldest point with temperatures decreasing, often interrupted by multiple periods of increasing temperatures, but always trending cooler. Once the full ice age is reached, temperatures begin a much more rapid decrease reaching the highest average temperature in about 20,000 years. So during the warming cycle the change is three times faster than that of the cooling cycle.

Archeologists have concluded that humans have only inhabited the earth for about 200,000 years. That means that Homo-sapiens have survived through about 2-1/2 ice age/warm age cycles. Man appeared on the earth during the time of high warmth as the earth was first entering into a new cooling cycle. Pryor to man there had been at least four ice ages and probably many more since there is no reason to assume that this normal cooling/heating cycle has not existed almost as long as the earth itself.

Looking at the cooling/heating trends of the last six partial and full ice ages, it appears that there is a very slight trend towards warming, with three out of four most recent ice ages both taking longer to reach the coldest peak and with the peak being slightly warmer than previous ice ages. So this very slow warming trend existed before man was even on the earth.

There is no question that there will be continued cycles of cooling and heating. We actually appear to be entering into a cooling cycle, but if so science will not know it for probably 10,000 years, and Soros, Obama, Gore, and you and I will probably be lost from human memory.

People must resist the scare tactics; stand to protect their God-given rights, and insist that they will determine their own direction, choosing for themselves how their money will be used. The basic premise of liberalism, socialism, and communism is that people are neither smart enough nor good enough to do the right thing, only an all powerful government can do that.

We must stop this environmental scam, end the confidence game that would take the money of the worker, the grower, the investor, the industrialist and “redistribute” it to those who have not done the work, have not raised the crops and herds, and have not taken the risks to develop prosperity.

This does not mean that we will not help the poor and downtrodden, it only means that in helping them we will transfer the skills for them to prosper in their own right, and not kill the economic system that has been the most successful the world has known.