Does anyone care about truth?

January 25, 2010 11:30 PM

As I read the morning news, I often get the feeling that I am living in a parallel universe. News stories often report highly questionable information with no caveat, editors or writers offering not the slightest suggestion that the report may be inaccurate.

So we still get stories that discuss global warming issues as though it were undisputed fact, even after Al Gore's hocky stick theory has been complete decimated, even though NASA itself is attibuting climate change to violent activity of the surface of the sun.
Shouldn't there have been at least a mention or perhaps an explanation or perhaps even a disputation of those e-mails that suggested climate scientists were obfuscating the data on global warming? Why won't Al Gore debate those who have found errors in his "Inconvenient Truth"? Judges in Great Britain forbade the schools there to show the film unless teachers point out to their students the nine pieces of disinformation the film is promulgating.

If the scientists are confident they are right, why not openly debate the disputed issues identified by the producers of the documentary "A Convenient Lie"? I want to believe that scientists really are interested in truth.

I want to believe that members of the media are awake and alert, willing to sort fact from fiction, but they seem to be marching forward in a daze, totally ignoring the controversy, refusing to recognize the naysayers, pretending the controversy doesn't exist.

I am also dazed by the lack of complete reportage about the problems with another issue, the wonderful green energy jobs the federal government is funding. The federal government for example is going to create, huge tax cuts for people who install solar panels. I heard one report on the radio and was stunned by the lack of serious questioning of the implications.

Apparently people can install $500,000 solar systems on their houses for an investment of a mere $50,000. Federal rebates, state rebates, APS rebates, and tax cuts take care of the rest. Shouldn't the public be reminded that the rest of us who probably can't afford to make that $50,000 investment will be expected to pay almost a half a million dollars in fees and taxes and higher energy costs for every unit installed?

More important is the lack of logic with regard to government investments in projects of this sort. Say, for example, that the federal government is willing to pay for 25 percent of the cost of installation of those solar panels. Won't companies take advantage of the largesse and hike their prices accordingly?

Please God, send us someone with courage, wisdom and resolve, April 22, 2011

At a fundraiser yesterday Obama said that Republicans think that successful people like him who "have taken much from this country have no obligation to the less fortunate." He’s wrong.  We do think that people like him who have taken much and produced nothing, DC politicians and hedge fund managers who have exploited the public trough, should give it back.

Politicians began buying votes in the 30’s and boy have they been successful… in getting elected, in maintaining power… and successful as well in exacerbating problems, destroying families, destroying housing markets, undermining the educational system. They’ve managed to buy the votes of the poor, the elderly, the art lovers, the unions, the peanut growers, the people who want to bring back the wolf and subsidize the people whose cattle the wolves have destroyed.  They’ve bought us all, from the poorest to the richest. They even pay unemployment benefits to millionaires.

There are those who are trying to get the wheels of government to resolve problems, but each year the problem gets worse.  The wheel gets heavier. Please, God, send us someone with will and courage, conviction, wisdom and resolve.

President Barak Bartleby, July 16, 2011

James Sefcak (Yuma Sun,  June 15) excoriated us for totally ignoring the fact  that President Obama “has had numerous and very successful accomplishments with his logical agenda”  I am not sure what he means by the president’s “logical agenda,” but’s it’s telling that in 7 column inches Mr. Sefcak was unable to mention one of those accomplishment.

 Mr. Sefcak also commends Obama for his intelligent leadership, a defensible position if you define leadership as watching calmly above the fray. It is patently clear that the Medicare and Medicaid programs are unsustainable.  The problem simply must be addressed.  What is Obama’s proposal?  That we must stop Republicans from killing seniors outright.  His leadership is so lacking that he couldn’t get a budget passed for 2010 when his party had control of both congressional houses. He has a difficult time making decisions.  He voted “present” 129 times as a legislator in Illinois. 

Because their countries were being overrun with refuges, England and France convinced Obama to take on Gadhafi, an action that seems to be diametrically opposed to his own statements regarding international relations.  Nor is he able to get NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) to commit much for either of the missions he has taken on in Afghanistan and Lybia.  Just last week, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates heaped heavy criticism on European nations for their apparent incapability and unwillingness to pull their weight.

And there is no doubt that President Obama is a socialist.  Time magazine has admitted that “We are all socialists now.”  Social Security and Medicare, the two biggest boondoggles at the federal level, are socialistic in both theory and practice. Obama has simply carried socialistic trends one step further setting up government systems to run auto industry and big banks and run the country’s healthcare system.

The more convincing bit of evidence regarding Obama’s gravitas, his leadership potential, was his tenure as Editor of the Harvard Law Review, but the managing editor of the program said that “Obama loved the title,  but he didn’t want to do the work.”  The managing editor said he rarely saw Obama except when it was to “take credit (and praise) for what was being done,” and that Obama never wrote one thing for the review during his tenure, something unheard of.

John Podhoretz said that Obama began his presidency as a potential colossus but he has become the Bartleby the President. He would prefer not to.

Political Discourse, March 18, 2010

I am sorry, Mr. Eugene Robinson, “Tea party rant not harmless” but your editorial bemoaning the violence and the threats of violence on the right is so absurd it set my hair on fire.  You identify several supposed threats, some of which may actually have occurred.  However, did you ever object to even one the thousands of threats, really bloody ones, that were opening demonstrated against our own President Bush.  Actually thousands of posters suggesting he be hanged, at least once by an image of Saddam, one by Bin Laden.  Hundreds burning him in effigy.  Listed below are only a few of the most heinous posters. 

“Kill Bush.  Bomb his f------n house.”

“Hang bush for war crimes.”

“Bush is the disease.  Death is the cure.

“I’m here to kill Bush.  Shoot me.

“Bush.  The only dope worth shooting.

Picture with a bullet hole in his head, blood dripping down his forehead. 

                  “Worst president ever.”

“Death to extremist Christian terrorist pig Bush.”

“Death to worlds #1 terrorist pig.  Bush and his sheep.”

Picture of bushes head with blood dripping from grotesquely from his severed neck. 

A guillotine named the Bush whacker.

Can you imagine the furor if even one such poster depicting violence against Obama appeared at a tea party?  You scorn Sarah for her imagery, but were apparently not disturbed at all that John Kerry suggested we “kill the bird in the White House.”  I go to tea parties.  They are Sunday School picnics.  The only violence you’ll see is the violence of your socialists friends, Mr. Robinson, who try to disrupt our peaceful protests.  Speaker Palosi, was moved to tears remembering the violence of the protestors on the left.  When someone on the right participates in an act of terrorism, we help you prosecute them.  You reward your terrorists with lucrative government jobs. 

The Food Police, April 20, 2011

While eating breakfast at Brownies Café, I read the diet detective, Charles Stuart Platkin’s “Movies that educate you about the foods you eat.” (Yuma Sun, April 20, 2011). It is, of course, important that we be better informed about the foods we eat, but I must take issue with a couple of points.  He lauds “Supersize Me” as a film that shows us how dangerous fast food can be.  The film especially indicts McDonalds, but I think we all know that supersizing anywhere “can make you very sick,”  even at Brownies voted “The Best of Yuma” many years in a row. It’s not so much where we eat, but what we eat.

I was also amused, no, a bit put off, by his comment about the movie “Food, Inc.”  which exposes “the highly mechanized underbelly” of our nation’s food industry and indicts it  for “putting profit before public health.”    People who have never run a business seem to not understand that the aim of business is to make a profit, and that a free enterprise system relies on supply and demand, and then we demonize corporations for giving us what we demand. A viable democracy depends on an informed public.   I think we all know what foods are not good for us.  Perhaps someday I will really learn it, but in the meantime, I will take full responsibility for my personal failings.   

My Struggle with supporting the United Methodist Church, July 5 2011

Pastor Tweetie,

Jean has encouraged me to lead the Outreach program at the church.  In pursuit of that, I decided that I should consider becoming a member, so I began surfing the UMC website.  The article “It’s time for Palestine” in the March 9 issue was a deal breaker.  It broke my heart.   I can no longer support the United Methodist Church.  What is there about the Jewish people that the world hates them so much?  Are we jealous because we know they are God’s chosen people?  The Jews stood alone as they faced the evil of Hitler; they stood alone as they faced the evil of Stalin.  They will not stand alone as they face this present evil.  I stand with Israel.

Since we could not abide living with them, we promised them this little sliver of land, this worthless sliver of land, no oil no natural resources, just a pile of sand, to get them out of our way, to assuage our guilty consciences.  The rest of the British Mandate, the huge oil rich area the size of the United States was left to Islam.  Israel has fought seven wars to keep their land and protect their people.  Perhaps that is why they are so feared and hated, because they managed in all cases to repel the barbarians, once in only 8 days, all the armies of Egypt and Syria and all the Arab states. The Jews must still have God on their side; otherwise they would surely have been overrun by the invading hoards. I stand with Israel.

After they repelled their enemies, Israel captured territories including the entire Sinai Peninsula.  The western world insisted they return the spoils of war in an effort to make peace with their enemies, but there is no peace. Their enemies shoot down their airplanes from the Golan Heights and launch bombs from the West Bank.  Now they must draw back to their 1967 borders? Do we think that then their enemies will be satisfied?  Never.   And how do they defend an 8 mile strip of land?  The airport would be 3 miles from the border. There enemies will not be satisfied until the Jews are pushed into the sea.  I stand with Israel.

Listen to Al Zahhar, the leader of Hamas: “The Jews were brought in in droves so then the Palestinians and the Islamic nations behind them will have the honor of annihilating this gang.  All the predators, all the birds of prey, all the dangerous reptiles and insects and all the bacteria in the world are far less dangerous than Jews.”  Listen to Ahmadinejad:  “The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm.” Listen to the leaders of Hezbollah: “Run the Jews into the sea.  Israel has to wiped off the map.”  “The Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation.”  Listen to al Qaradawi: “I hope that before my life is over I have an opportunity to shoot the enemy, the Jews.” Listen to a sweet little Palestinian grandmother: “Allah, bury Israel and massacre the Jews with your own hands.  Allah willing we will massacre them like we massacred them in Hebron.  We, the people of Hebron, massacred the Jews.  My father massacred them ad brought back some stuff.  Thank you very much.”   

The author of the March article said that Israel was an apartheid nation.  What a stupid thing to say.  Twenty percent of the people who live in Palestine are Muslims, they work and worship and get fine educations and take part in the nation’s political affairs.  Eighty per cent of the Palestinians who are citizens of Israel would not want their country to suffer under Islamic rule.

Sarah Palin Hostilities June 13, 2011

I have long wondered why people are so hostile about Sarah Palin.  Women in general and everyone on the left bring to the table their stock jibes, their ad hominem attacks so filled with bile it’s palpable.  I have come to expect it with regard to GW, but why is Sarah Palin such a threat?  David Mamet in his The Secret Knowledge explains a lot.

According to Mamet, Sarah Palin is a threat for several reasons. One is she’s a woman, and the left, really doesn’t like women. “How do I know? Look at Monica Lewinsky and Broadbent, Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, and Mary Jo Kopechne, and all of these people who were in various ways vastly abused, and in one place, killed by liberal men and the left said nothing about it.” Oddly enough, feminists share the left’s contempt for the feminine. And for all her accomplishments, Sarah Palin is feminine, an attractive woman, mother of five with a handsome and devoted husband, so she is attacked as a kind of freed succubus. 

However, Mamet says the animus against Palin is not so much her status as a woman or as a conservative, but as a worker. “ There was a time when the American left was made up of workers, factory workers, people who fix lawnmowers.  The left today is the cheese and white wine guy, the Malthusian type, who talks about a greedy world with too many people getting in their way.”  Sarah represents much too clearly that portion of the population that gets in the way.  She is an actual worker, a commercial fisherman; “like Harry Truman she knows hard work, she knows of what she speaks.”

Mamet suggests that Palin’s story is part of the American Myth.  She is the living embodiment of those Hollywood myths: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Contender, The Farmer’s Daughter, The Candidate, Bulworth.  “The myth is played out over and over again and when the left sees that in real life, in someone who is not on their side, someone who has not been indoctrinated, someone who expresses herself well and is unusual and attractive and funny, it scares the hell out of them.”  So what can they say?  “She’s stupid.”

If she is so stupid, how did she become so wildly successful at everything she does? She worked her way from town councilman to small-town mayor, to state oil and gas commissioner to state governor, to vice-presidential candidate in a little over fifteen years.   She took on the corrupt good old boys in the Republican party. She sold on eBay the Westwind II jet her predecessor had purchased against the wishes of the Alaskan taxpayers, and cut down on the staff if the governor’s mansion holding meetings in her kitchen Golda Meir style, while caring for her family and in her spare time helping her husband fulfill his fishing contracts.  Yes, Sarah Palin has it all, beauty, brains, and brawn, and it’s driving the left wild.

Thank you, David Mamet for helping me understand the animus of the left that believes that big government is the answer to all our problems.  They are threatened by “We the people” and our desire to manage our own lives and Sarah Palin is “We the people.”  She is the embodiment of what it is to be an American. 

I will donate generously to the Republican Party when....

Senator Hatch:

I will donate generously to the Republican Party when I see a serious commitment on the part of the party to deflate the federal government.  You can start here:

1. I am a teacher, have taught for 46 years, but I want the department of education eliminated.  It is a ridiculous waste of taxpayer dollars.
2. I want to see the department of energy dissolved completely.  They have done nothing but get in the way of our energy independence. 
3. Get a commitment from all Republicans to be real servants of the people.  Show us your willingness to sacrifice. Demonstrate that they are willing to cut their staffs by half and cut their benefit packages by half. 
4. Vow that you will no longer allow FEMA or federal insurance to pay people to rebuild homes over and over again that are built in vulnerable places.  I read the other day about a $69,000 home that had been rebuild 14 times since 1974 at a cost to the American tax payer of $685,000.  And it happens over and over again.  Are you guys STUPID?

And then you write me a letter on the part of the party and show me what else you are committed to doing to downsize Washington.

If what I see shows a real commitment to getting the federal government under control, I will send you a very generous donation.

Is President Obama conspiring with George Sorros in his attempt to destroy America?

I wondered in an earlier letter why our president would ban drilling in the gulf for our oil companies but give the president of Brazil $1 billion to encourage their drilling efforts and promise that we would be their best customer. Then today I read in Forbes that George Soros, who owns over a million shares of Petrobas, really raked in the dough this first quarter.

Now I assure you that I am not accusing the Obama administration of nefarious activities, but it is interesting that Soros funds so many organizations that share the president’s dissatisfaction with America. Through his hedge fund he has amassed a personal fortune way over $13 billion.  Now I am ignorant of the shenanigans of the financial world, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t create anything.  He just moves money around in profitable ways. 

But what Soros really enjoys is destroying economies and social networks.  He told Steve Kroft in a “Sixty Minutes” interview that “It was a lot of fun.”  And he has had some fun.  He’s known as the man who broke the Bank of England and dismantled Yugoslavian markets. He bragged in the “The New Republic” that his collapsing of the Russian economy was “one of the greatest social robberies in human history.” In 1997 Soros played havoc with the economies of Thailand and Malaysia. Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, called Soros “a villain.” Weng Tojirakarn said, “We regard George Soros as a kind of Dracula. He sucks the blood from the people.”

Now it appears he is bent on destroying America, creating a new world order.  I have counted 74 organizations that Soros funds either directly or through his Open Society Institute (OSI) or his Tides Foundation which receives cash from all manner of donors―individuals, groups, and other foundations―and then funnels it to groups that see America as the Great Satan and either knowingly or unwittingly help him further his goal of destabilizing America. 

Some organizations like the Arab American Institute and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund depict America as fundamentally racist. Other organizations like The Constitution Project defend suspected anti-American terrorists and their abettors.  The Ruckus Society and People for the American Way train radical activists in the tactics of confrontation and intimidation. He supports organizations the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights that promote a dramatic expansion of social-welfare programs and oppose capitalism.  Other organizations like Project Vote strive to promote progressive political candidates

Soros also funds media and the arts groups, organizations designed to change the way judges are chosen, and organizations that advance leftist agendas by infiltrating churches and religious congregations. His think tanks like The Institute for Policy Studies have long supported Communist and anti-American causes.  I can provide you a list of 74 organizations, but you get the idea.

George Soros bragged about the fun he had in Yugoslavia and Malasia.  Think how much more fun he is having in America.  He must have had a real giggle over our mortgage crisis having supported organizations that pressured mortgage lenders with discrimination lawsuits in order to force them to make loans to undercapitalized borrowers. He’s had a lot of fun, and just think what a blast he’ll have with his Petrobas billions. 

The Dubious Intent of the Left 11/3/2009

Rush Limbaugh lambastes the left daily for what he considers disingenuously spinning his “I hope he fails” comment making it seem anti-American.  “If you hope the president fails, you’re hoping the country fails.”  According to Limbaugh, those on the left know full well that the reason he wants Obama to fail is that he wants his socialist agenda to fail.

Both our president and our vice-president scoff at the notion.  “Our policies are socialistic?  You’ve got to be kidding!” (Biden)  “When you suggested I was a socialist, I thought you were joking.” (Obama)   I responded physically to both those comments.  Something crawled up my spine.  Absolutely Orwellian.  Our country has been steadily on the path toward socialism since 1933, and the present administration has said openly that they see the present crisis as an opportunity to move their agenda forward.  Spreading the wealth?  Spending $800 billion dollars as a down payment on a federal health care system?  Incidentally, that’s more than we spent on both war Iraq wars.  Extending unemployment benefits?  Strengthening unions?

That kind of ad homien scoff  (Silly you! You’ve got to be kidding) is effective, however.   It simply avoids the argument which they both know they would lose hopelessly.  It’s a strategy concocted, I suppose, by James Carvill, the operative who has been working the back room for the Dems since before the Clinton era.  He was the one who, panicked by Bush’s popularity after 9/11, began immediately feeding politicians talking points to “destroy him at once” or they’d never reclaim the White House. You can be sure that Carville feeds talking points to every Democrat in Washington.

He is probably the one who has made certain that the liberals keeps repeating “the carnage of the last eight years,” hoping we’ll all blame Bush’s silly war for our economic problems.  They are educated people.  They know right well that our economic problems result from the fact that the chickens spawned by FDR’s new deal and LBJ’s War on poverty are coming home to roost. In 1955 entitlement spending totaled 12 per cent of the budget, in 1965, 30 percent, in 2008, 55 per cent.  As a percentage of the budget, discressionary spending, including military spending, has remained almost stable since 1965.  The per cent spent on entitlement spending has tripled.  The deficit rose sharply over the last few years largely because the boomers, that large group of wage earners who have been supporting the FDR and LBJ entitlements, are beginning to retire. You can be sure that every liberal in Washington is fully aware of this problem.

I have certainly benefited from that socialistic gamble.  Social security makes my “retirement” years quite comfortable and adequately looks after my disabled daughter.  An inexpensive supplemental insurance policy covers those Medicare gaps.   Farmers love being paid not to farm, especially those millionaire owners of American farms who live in France and Quebec and Saudi Arabia and Germany.  However, I do fear for my grandchildren, indeed, my great-grandchildren.  Mandatory government spending has increased by 769 per cent since1965, and the baby-boomers have just begun sucking at the federal teat.  We may not be as openly socialistic as Sweden or say Great Britain, but if Obama gets his way, we will be by 2012, and his recent stimulus package included every wet dream a socialist ever had.

Those rising costs would pose no problem if we could make the conservative give up their anti-government ideologies.  We can learn that much from European Socialism, countries that have achieved a kind of socialist utopia. Sweden is often seen as a model of a compassionate, healthy, caring country.  To support their socialist state they tax car purchases, for example, at 100 per cent of their cost, and that’s good, because the Swedes opt to ride bikes.  Good exercise and good for the environment. 

It is true that they have a 17 per cent unemployment rate. One has to consider how that rate is calculated.  Great Britain, for example, boasts an 8 percent unemployment rate, but according to The Mail, the officials don’t count the 8 million people classified as economically inactive, 21 per cent of the working-age population. I guess it’s great to live in a country willing to subsidize “discouraged workers,” those just not interested in finding a job.  I can’t say that I understand.  I’m 70 and I still work simply because it seems satisfying.  My siblings, all in their 70’s, also work.  I guess we’re still plagued by that silly Puritan ethic.  We simply convince ourselves that work is rewarding.  Or perhaps Phillip Hammond is right:  that that “21 per cent of the working age population in Great Britain represents a huge pool of wasted talent.”     

So why do liberals, knowing full well what our move toward socialism is costing our country, want to lead us down that path.  Power.  They learned in 1933 that if they put out a trough, we will feed at it, and the more of us they can get feeding at their troughs, the more power they have.  They keep building the troughs and pouring in the slop and we keep lapping it up.   

What puzzled me for a long time was why so many of our billionaires were supporting this madness?  Warren Buffet and George Soros are the ones most commonly linked to the radical left, but the list includes others: Hollywood producer Stephen Bing; Peter Lewis, chairman of Progressive Insurance Company; Herbert and Marion Sandler of Golden West Financial; Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs; Citigroup’s Robert Rubin; Edwin Janss, founder of the leftwing Janss Foundation; and Aris Anagnos, a Los Angeles real estate magnate and a rabid Marxist-Lenonist.  It’s important to note that none of these billionaires are directly involved in an enterprise that actually produces something.  Mostly they just play with money.  If they are simply committed to service to their fellow man, they certainly have the assets adequate to funding their charitable enterprises on their own.

 I have to conclude that charity is not their goal, so there must be another reason for their interest in promoting some form of a fascist-socialist-Leninist state. To Insure their power base?   

The content of this diatribe now veers toward one of those crazy conspiracy theories.  First a fact based question:  Why is it that 80 per cent of America’s very rich are self-made men and that 80 per cent of wealthy Europeans have inherited wealth?  Perhaps because socialism has managed to destroy the talent and initiative of “21 per cent of the working age population.”   Soros and his cohorts Bing,Sandler, Blankfein, Janss, and Anagnos are enjoying the power their wealth affords them and are probably  threatened by our talent and initiative, so they want to get us in the habit of feeding at federal the trough.

Now the really wild theory.  Could it be that our recent stock market collapse was created by those rich Marxists who, perhaps under cover of anonymous sources, pulled huge amounts of money out of the market to create a panic?  They have admitted openly that this decline is an opportunity to advance their agendas, that our system needs to be dismantled brick by brick, that the new order must be accomplished either by the power of persuasion or the persuasion of power.  Chilling, isn’t it?

Merrick, Jame.  “Unemployment is 6 times higher than official figures.”  March 12, 2009.  Mail on Line. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-475517/Unemployment-rate-times-higher-official-figures.html 

My Quest

Today I am starting on my second quest. About a year ago I dedicated my mornings to a 1 year plan for reading the Bible chronologically. I did it. Much to my surprise, I stayed with it. Today I am starting on a thematic program. This time, however, I plan to use the readings as springboards for commentaries.
My first reading Daniel 11:36-12:13 establishes again why it is that kingdoms fall, why great nations destroy themselves. We become so self-satisfied that we“ have no respect for the gods of {our}ancestors.” Daniel 12, the second reading is Daniel’s prediction of the end times. I remember discussing this passage with April, my Jehovah’s Witness friend. She lead me to several passages that determined quite convincingly was Daniel’s “time, times, and half a time” meant. I need to refresh my memory.
Lynne was quite disturbed by the reading of I John 4 when he says, “Those who love God must also love their Christian brothers and sisters.” She felt that love should not be limited to loving their Christian brothers and sisters, we should love everyone. I thought perhaps that the implication was that all of us, are recipients of God’s prevenient (sp?) grace, whether we know it or not, God is with us.

A Confluence of Information

It’s strange how sometimes unrelated bits of information fall into place like pieces of a puzzle. For me, this week, it was a National Geographic story about the happiest people in the world, a rabbi’s enlightening discussion of the story of the Tower of Babel, and the Sunday school class’s examining of several Bible verses that counsel us to be alert, to wake up.
Dan Buettner, a National Geographic researcher recently revealed that people who live in Denmark and Singapore are the happiest people in the world. The investigation conducted by the staff revealed that, however dissimilar the countries are, the reasons for the inhabitants’ sense of well being were similar, feelings of contentment and safety.
Danes are happy because they are well taken care of, all of them, from cradle to grave. Danes pay some of the highest tax rates in the world, but in exchange the inhabitants lack for nothing. Because the system is so efficient, Danes feel "tryghed" -- the Danish word for "tucked in" -- like a snug child. The rigid penal code in Singapore makes it an unlikely place to evoke such happiness. The death penalty in Singapore is invoked more often and for a wider variety of crimes than any other nation on earth. Murderers, drug dealers, tax evaders and the like are quietly hanged in the pre-dawn hours of perhaps every other Friday, on average about 34 people a year. The process is shrouded in secrecy, but as a result the inhabitants of Singapore feel safe.
All such studies rank The United States much lower on the happiness scale. Perhaps we still believe what Benjamin Franklin said: “He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither.” Perhaps we listen more carefully to lessons of history.
The Bible is largely a history of God’s struggle to preserve individual freedoms. I remember hearing the story of the tower of Babel as a child and thought that God was angry at Nimrod for worshiping the tower and, by confusing their languages, scattered the people as punishment. I recently heard a Jewish Rabbi explain the story from a different prospective. The peoples were scattered, not as punishment, but as a blessing. Nimrod had brought together all the peoples of the known world, and under his encouragement they built the tower, a stairway to heaven.
According to the rabbi, the bricks the Israelites used to build the tower were actually symbolic of the Israelites themselves. God prefers people to be individuals like stones, not identical like bricks. So, in Genesis 1:6 Jehovah says, “Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language.” To save them he confused their languages and scattered them. He had created each one of us for a special purpose and through our walk with God we discover and accomplish that purpose. When we allow ourselves to be gathered like sheep in safety and comfort, we find no need of God and, as a result, lose our sense of purpose.
The Israelis slipped almost willingly into bondage several times throughout their history, and many other civilizations have repeated the pattern of destruction, from bondage to individualism to great courage to liberty to abundance, then from abundance to complacency to apathy to dependency and finally back to bondage. The leaders of Rome destroyed individuality by the same method. Their influential people knew that if they provided their citizens with their bread and circuses, made them comfortable and amused, the leaders could maintain their power base and insure their wealth. Nero said, "Let us tax and tax again. Let us see to it that no one owns anything!” Every leader further enmeshed the citizens into a sense of dependency. Eventually the country was buried under a bureaucracy that stifled all freedoms.
The Israelis traded their freedoms for security. Rome was lulled to sleep by bread and circuses. China was held in bondage by England’s generous supply of opium. The Danes like being safely tucked in. The people of Singapore are willing to sacrifice freedom for safety. America, however, might be taking Paul’s advice. In his letter to the Romans he said, "The night is far spent; the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light" (Rom. 13:11,12).

Thank you Karl Rove for "Courage and Consequence"

Thank you for writing Courage and Consequence. We needed that. Many of us have lost faith in the political process. Your book renewed mine by helping me to recognize once again that politics in a democratic republic is necessarily messy. It also rekindled my respect for politics as “the great moving expression of our democracy.”
A distinct mark of your strength of character is that you were so openly able to accept responsibility for your mistakes. Some of your humorous stabs at Norwegians are so funny because they are so true. “Norwegians don’t dance, they twitch.” Painfully true. “The Norwegian who loved his wife so much he almost told her.” That was my father and my grandfather both of whom loved profoundly. I thought that ability to be self deprecating, that capacity to recognize personal failures might be distinctly Norwegian as well.
You also own up to mistakes made by Republicans who indulged in corrupt behavior and thus threw always their chance to make a real difference. It seems, however, that Republicans in general are philosophically more responsible, more principled. I think of Al Gore’s inability to stand firm on any issue, the way Reid and Obama sabotaged immigration reform and then railed about Republican racists, Kerry’s inability to clarify his many conflicting votes on Gulf issues. The liberal philosophy, that the end justifies the means, seems to erodes conviction and character which makes George W. Bush’s courage and character more startling by contrast.
I share your profound respect for George W. Bush. Truman said, “The buck stops here.” G.W. lived it. I especially respected him for accepting responsibility for the Katrina disaster when he could so easily have excoriated Mayor Nagin for refusing to comply with the National Hurricane center\s mandatory evacuation orders. He could have blamed Governor Blanco’s inability to make the decision about ceding control of the situation to the federal government. Instead he accepted full responsibly. I also respect both you and him for your ability to stand straight and tall in the midst of the political storms that raged around you.
The one measure I disagreed with GW on was the prescription drug program for seniors. I felt that wee seniors are enough of a burden on the federal budget, and that the program added unnecessarily to it. You hint that it didn’t. That it “used market forces to drive down the cost.” I hope that’s true, but I’ll have to do some more research to satisfy myself. After all, you are just a politician.
Thanks again for the book, for your dedication, for your work ethic. I’m exhausted!

Canadian Health Care

Thursday, January 6, 2011

My experience with Canadian health care is certainly different from Adolf Blackburn’s (“Canadian System better than others” April 1, 2010). My experience suggests that the health care system there is a classic example of how badly governments manage enterprises of any kind, primarily because health decisions get all mixed up with other political issues. One minor example: a town on Vancouver Island lost its saw mill; and, although all the hospitals have brilliantly equipped laundry facilities, the health ministry makes all of them send their laundry to this somewhat inaccessible west island town to provide work for its inhabitants. Political decisions like that are made all across Canada. Patient care takes second chair.
My husband was a scaler who suffered a logging accident in 1985, breaking his back. He lay on the floor of his house living room on heavy doses of narcotics for 3 months before they could free up the proper surgeon to attend him. You might suggest that that was ancient history and that BC has cleaned up its act since then, but two years ago my best friend, an osteoporosis victim, snapped her back and lay on a gurney in the hallway of the emergency room of the Nanaimo, BC hospital for 8 days before she was attended to.

My husband suffered from bad knees for years. When they became critical, bone on bone, he went back to a doctor and got scheduled for an operation, an 18 month wait.  When he entirely recovered from that, he scheduled the other knee, a 20 month wait.  
More recently he suffered some stomach discomfort. The doctor suspected cancer, but my husband would have had to wait 3 months for a colonoscopy and knew that he would probably have to wait another 3 months at least to schedule the operation if he did indeed have cancer. Because a local surgeon had had a cancellation and could do surgery immediately, he opted to trust the diagnosis and they cut out three feet of his colon. He died of complications. Had he had the colonoscopy, they would have discovered that he had a ½ inch tumor that was very slow growing. He could have lived to 90 before it would have caused him any problem. His real problem: Diverticulitis.
And the problem is wide spread across Canada. When there is no more room in critical care units in Canadian hospitals, really critically ill patents, those with severe brain injuries, for example, bleeding in the brain, are whisked to operating rooms in the US. According to the Toronto Globe and Mail about 150 patients a year are sent to hospitals in Washington, Oregon, Michigan, and New York. “Some have languished for as long as eight hours in Canadian emergency wards while health-care workers scrambled to locate care.” Recently there was no room in neonatal center anywhere in Canada for the mother of quadruplets.
On my last trip south at the end of May, I stayed over in Victoria, BC, in order to catch an early boat. In my hotel room I watched a piece the evening news had video of a kid, head in a halo, heck in a brace, left leg bandaged and elevated. According to the reporter, he would have to wait 15 months for an MRI as everything in Canada was booked. I have since Googled, trying to find out how it was resolved, but I get no hits.
No one knows what the consequences of these delays are because no one has the right to review the evidence. I tried to get copies of my medical records as well as my husband’s, but was told that if my American doctors had any questions they could telephone. And the evidence is even more tightly held for patients treated out of country.
When asked if any patients transported to the United States had died, Mr. Jensen, spokesman for the Ontario Health Ministry, said the “ministry does not specifically record the outcomes of health services provided out of country.” The consequences of critically ill patents waiting that long for care are obvious, aren’t they?
Canada is a very wealthy country of under 40 million people, rich in natural resources. Can you imagine the complications for a country of more nearly 400,000,000?”

Rohm Emanuel: Never let crisis go to waste.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Rohm Emanuel: Never let crisis go to waste.

The bible of the left, Rules for Radicals, encourages liberals to never let a crisis go to waste. Use it to further political advantage. They are very good at that, the recent shooting in Arizona being the latest example of their dedication to Rohm Emanuel’s dictum. Consequently, rather than giving the country the time to mourn tragedy, they immediately try to use it to advance their political agenda.
They attacked Sarah Palin showing the pictures of the map which marked with crosshairs the elections critical for the Tea Parties to support. They failed, however, to show the map democrats produced for, I think, the 2008 election which also targeted important contests with cross-hairs.
They took aim at her “lock and load” metaphor suggesting it was incendiary language like that that incited violence, forgetting to mention that President Obama used much the same imagery: “"If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” and “We talk to these folks, so we know whose ass to kick.” It was a democratic candidate who said he “wished people on the right would feel what it’s like to be shot,” and a liberal congresswoman who said, “It’s time to get out the pitchforks,” and Obama’s good friend and President of SEIU who said, we’ll fight them at the ballot box and if that doesn’t work we’ll get out the guns.
Google threats against G. W. Bush and you will find, not thousands, but millions of pictures that incite violence, Bush in the cross-hairs, Bush with a bullet hole in his head, Bush, his head severed from his body, blood gushing out from his neck. NBC ran a story illustrated by a picture of Bush with cross-hairs on his nose. A play ran on Broadway idolizing the idea of his execution
And Palin’s bull’s eye was not so much on Gifford; it was Arizona’s Grejalva that the Tea Parties were intent on replacing. Gifford is a blue-dog democrat, admired by the right for her moderate stand on economic issues, her strong support of gun rights, and for her tough stand on border security and immigration.
So, both left and right share a penchant for colorful metaphor, but let’s take a look at who the Arizona shooter was, certainly not a Palin admirer or a Fox News addict. His favorite books were The Communist Manifesto and Mein Kompf. He is anti-Constitution, anti-flag, and anti-religion.
Every time some maniac attempts an act of violence, the media drools and pants, hoping they can blame conservatives, making accusations they hope will stick. Most of these terrorists have no political affiliation; they are simply insane; however, if they do have a political affiliation it’s almost always on the radical left with the exception of the Unibomber, and The Oklahoma City Bomber.
We can start with the obvious and Bill Ayers using violence for political change. His SDS is still radical, storming the CATO institute in July of 2008. James Jay Lee, who took hostages at Discovery Channel, was a radical environmentalist. Joe Stack flew his plane into the IRS building, ranting and raving, quoting the Communist Manifesto. A liberal bit the finger off a man who disagreed with him on health care. Amy Bishop, an Obama supporter, murdered her coworkers. Liberals destroyed AM radio towers outside Seattle and burned down Hummer dealerships. An SEIU union thug beat up a black conservative who was selling American Flags at a Tea Party meeting. And it was the NAACP who said he deserved it because he wasn’t Black enough. When the G20 meets, it’s the radical left that causes chaos.
Let’s be frank. The left would like to see the country inflamed in class warfare. Saul Alinsky has taught them well that they need chaos to give them the excuse to bring down the hammer: better protection, fewer liberties, more government

Letter to Laura

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Laura, You often force me to think about what I say. One day in some context or other I was badmouthing intellectuals, and you said, “I don’t understand why you talk negatively about intellectuals. You are an intellectual, aren’t you? You’re smart and well educated.” It stopped me short. I had to think about what I meant. I know that Webster doesn’t make this distinction, but when I use the term, and when I hear it used, the word “intellectual” carries a negative connotation.

To me, an intellectual is one who sees himself as superior to the masses. He thinks, because he is intelligent and well educated, it’s his duty to manage the herd. It’s like Cass Sunstein our Regulatory Tsar who says that most of us are Homer Simpsons, members of a bewildered herd. “A lot can be done to manipulate them, to tap into their fears and desires and use them to guide them.” They see themselves as caretakers of the masses. They teach us what to think, not how to think.

They probably would not come right out and say it, but they seem to think that the world needs leaders, kind of enlightened despots, to help us make better choices. . The problem, first of all, is that they are not God; they don’t understand the problem, and the solutions they devise almost always have unintended consequences. Farm subsidies intended to support the family farmer actually push the family farmer off the farm. Section 8 housing doubled the cost of rentals.

The second problem is that there is nothing more dangerous than a man who thinks he knows what is best for us. Consider Mao, consider Hitler, consider Stalin. For the intellectual the problem is hubris. Great works of literature from every culture teach us the “pride goeth before the fall,” that power corrupts. The truth is we are all, the well educated, the blue collar worker, the homeless, all of us are God’s children, all of us are flawed, and that is why no one can be trusted to real power. We are all dealing with demons. and those demons feast on it. God’s purpose for us in life is that we learn to deal with our shortcomings, that we find grace and serenity by working through our vices.

We all make poor choices, that’s a given, but that’s what we need to do. It’s dealing with our poor choices that makes us stronger. More important than that, those poor choices teach us to be humble.

Were our founders men of faith

Based mostly on David Barton who wrote Original Intent

Lest I forget, a few notes about our founders whom we are led to believe were agnostics.

1. Continental Congress printed a Bible to be used in schools.
2. Benjamin Franklin recessed the Continental Congress for three days of prayer and contemplation.  When governor of Pennsylvania he drew up a plan to encourage wider church attendance.  Some historians have discredited him because for his opium use (was in so much pain that he had to be carried to meetings on a chair) and because he was considered by some of his contemporaries to be insane.  They don’t mention that it was because he was so fiercely anti slavery.  In one letter out of thousands he calls himself a deist, but only to emphasize the belief that it doesn’t matter who you think God is, worship him.  When asked about his faith Franklin said there is a god, there is an afterlife where we will have to answer for our sins.  We serve God by serving others.
3. Samuel Adams, governor of Massachusetts called the entire state to prayer and fasting 7 times.
4. Charles Carol, richest man in America used his estate to endow in perpetuity a chapel and a preacher for a remote area.
5. Benjamin Rose founded the Bible Society of America and the Sunday School Society of America.
6. Stephen Hawkins wrote treatises on Christianity
7. Robert Payne was a military chaplain
8. Washington’s adopted daughter described George Washington’s habit of Bible reading and prayer and said that to suggest that he father was not a Christian would be as silly as saying that he was not a patriot.
9. Jefferson signed his documents not just “In the year of our Lord” as most people did, but “In the year of our Lord Christ.”  He instituted church services in the Capitol.  The Marine Corp band played the service.  Ministers of every denomination took turns.  The first woman preacher and the first Black minister in the country spoke there frequently.  More than 2,000 people attended.  He also established churches in the treasury department, the war department, and at the naval yard.  Jefferson published a book called the Red Letter Book, the words of Christ in four languages which was printed every year and handed out to every new member of congress, until 1926 when progressives began taking control of the dialogue and got us to believe that the founders were all atheists.
10. James Wilson founded the first law school and said that you cannot have good civil law without divine law
11. Francis Hopkins published a book in which he set the entire book of Psalms to music
12. Benjamin Rush had a dream about John Adams and Thomas Jefferson who had been in bitter dispute for years.  In his dream he saw a book published containing the many enlightening letters exchanged between Adams and Jefferson.  He felt the dream was a message of the Holy Spirit and wrote to Jefferson telling him about the dream and, because they hadn’t written any letters, encouraged them to forget their differences and begin to communicate so that the dream could be fulfilled.  Adams and Jefferson agreed that messages from the Holy Spirit must be attended to, buried the hatchet and wrote many letters which have subsequently been compiled entitled The Adams and Jefferson Letters.
13. The founders were men of faith and duty.  George Washington did not want to leave Mt Vernon to fight in the wars or serve as president.  Patrick Henry said he had 19 children and 89 grandchildren and he wanted to go home, but he served as well.  They pledged their lives and their sacred honor.   Seven of them were assonated before they could see the result of their efforts.  Seventeen of them lost everything as a result of their stand for freedom and independence.  Five were prisoners of war. 
14. Early schools required students to read two books.  The Lives of the Signers  and The Wives of the Signers.  But in 1926 two college professors (Yale, Harvard, I can’t remember which) wrote a book called The Godless Constitution in which they pictured the signers as agnostics and atheists.  No footnotes, no scholarly references.  A year later a book was published that thoroughly disputed The Godless Constitution, a scholarly book filled with footnotes and references that proved them wrong, but professors at colleges still rely on  The Godless Constitution for their information about the founders. 
15. There are 5,600 quotations in the founding papers.  The largest percentage of them, 34 per cent, came from the Bible,  the largest percentage from the book of Deuteronomy, the book of law of the Old Testaments.

We are missing the point.

We are missing the point.  The fact that taxes are too high or not high enough is not the point. The fact that our deficit is outrageous or is manageable is not the point.  Debt is only a symptom of the real problem.   We think that if we can put the right person in the driver’s seat, he or she can save the country from its woes.   Wrong.  Wrong.  Wrong. 

The founders knew one basic fact that makes all the differences.  We are imperfect beings who make mistakes; we stumble.  If we manage our own lives we can get up, “brush ourselves off, and start all over again.”  However, if we put our faith in another to manage our lives, all 300 million of us, and he stumbles we’re in for a rough ride. Thomas Jefferson said, “A constitution should be structured to permanently protect the people from the human frailties of their rulers.” 

 That’s why God confused the languages and disbursed the people when they built the Tower of Babel.  He didn’t want them consolidating power.  That’s why God didn’t want the Israelites to have kings.  He knows that power corrupts.  That’s why God wanted the Israelites to organize themselves into families and clans.  He knew that people can take care of themselves if left alone.  We were designed to be free, to walk our walk and stumble and learn and walk again with a “little help from our friends.”

Our Tower of Babel is our federal government.  We have built a leviathan to pay homage to.  Our founders set up a limited government to serve the people.   The egomaniacs in DC have lost their sense of humility.  They see themselves as Gods able to solve our problems, but their solutions are invariably toxic, creating more problems to be solved until we have this colossal tower of government that is not so much interested in protecting the interests of the citizenry as it is interested in making sure that the citizens serve the interest of the state.

Like the Israelites we have yielded to the will of an earthly king trusting that he’ll take care of us rather that remembering the lessons of the past.  Thomas Jefferson’s letters are filled with references to past histories. He understood what destroyed the great empires of the past, the Greeks, the Romans, the Anglos and the Saxons:  centralization of power, towers of Babel.  He said, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.  In vain would man…subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.”  

July 4 Celebration/Ceremony

MATERIALS AND FOOD NEEDED FOR THE CEREMONY

-- Iced Tea

-- Salty pretzels

-- Strawberries and blueberries and whipped cream.

-- A small bell The ringer on your cell phone will do in a pinch

An American coin The bigger, the better. A half-dollar is ideal, but a quarter will do.

-- A printed (unsigned) Declaration of Independence.

-- Lyrics to "God Bless America" for all your guests. .

THE CEREMONY BEGINS

DIRECTION: Everyone gathers around the table.

HOST SPEAKS: Today, we take a few minutes to remember what the Fourth of July is about and to remind ourselves how fortunate we are to be Americans.

Before America was a nation, it was a dream -- a dream shared by many people, from many nations, over many generations.

It began with the Pilgrims in 1620, who fled Europe so that they could be free to practice their religion. It continued through the 17th century, as more and more people arrived in a place that came to be known as the New World. In this new world, where you were from didn't matter; what mattered was where you were headed. As more and more people settled, they started to see themselves as new people -- Americans. They felt blessed: The land was spacious. The opportunities limitless.

By 1776, a century and a half after the first Pilgrims landed, this new liberty-loving people was ready to create a new nation. And on July 4 of that year, they did just that. They pronounced themselves to be free of the rule of the English king. We know this statement as the Declaration of Independence.

DIRECTION: Host invites the young people (generally ages 7 and older) present to read and to answer the following:

YOUNG READERS:

Q: Why do we celebrate the Fourth of July?

A: Because the Fourth of July is the birthday of the American people -- the day we chose to become the United States of America, a free nation.

Q: Why was America different from all other countries?

A: Because in 1776, all countries were based on nationality, religion, ethnicity or geography. But America was created on the basis of a set of ideas. This is still true today.

Q: What are those ideas?

A: Three ideas summarize what America is all about. They are engraved on every American coin. They are "Liberty," "In God We Trust" and "E Pluribus Unum."

DIRECTION: Host passes around an American coin and chooses readers from the group to read the following:

READER No. 1: "Liberty" means that we are free to pursue our dreams and to go as far in life as hard work and good luck will take us.

READER No. 2: "In God We Trust" means that America was founded on the belief that our rights and liberties have been granted to us by the Creator. Therefore they cannot be taken away by people.

READER No. 3: "E Pluribus Unum" is a Latin phrase meaning "From Many, One." Unlike other countries, America is composed of people of every religious, racial, ethnic, cultural and national origin -- and regards every one of them as equally American. Therefore, "out of many (people we become) one" -- Americans.

HOST: We have on our table items that symbolize the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War that won our freedom.

DIRECTION: Host holds up each symbolic item as he explains its symbolic meaning.

-- We drink iced tea to remember the Boston Tea Party. "No taxation without representation" was the patriots' chant as they dumped British tea into the Boston Harbor.

-- We eat a salty pretzel to remember the tears shed by the families who lost loved ones in the struggle for freedom in The Revolutionary War and all the wars of freedom that followed.

-- We ring a bell to recall the Liberty Bell, which was rung to announce the surrender of the King's army. On the bell are inscribed these words from the Book of Leviticus: "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof."

-- We eat strawberries and blueberries dipped in whipped cream to celebrate the red, white and blue of our flag.

HOST: We celebrate America's greatness without denying its flaws. There are no perfect individuals, so there can certainly be no perfect country. Our national history has its share of shame. The greatest of these is the shame of slavery, which existed at our founding, as it existed throughout the world at that time.

But let it never be forgotten that we fought a terrible civil war in which hundreds of thousands of American died. And the reason for that war was slavery.

Let it also not be forgotten that America has fought in more wars for the freedom of other peoples than any nation in history.

America's history is one that we can be proud of.

DIRECTION: Host holds up a copy of the Declaration of Independence.

We now close with one more ritual. Let each of us sign our names to the Declaration of Independence. While it is a replica of the one our founders signed, the words and sentiments are eternal.

DIRECTION: Everyone present signs their name to the Declaration of Independence. As each one signs, the host hands each person the lyrics to "God Bless America."

HOST: Everyone sing with me.

"While the storm clouds gather far across the sea, Let  us swear allegiance to a land that's free,

Let us all be grateful for a land so fair, As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer. "

God Bless America, Land that I love. Stand beside her, and guide her

Thru the night with a light from above. From the mountains, to the prairies,

To the oceans, white with foam God bless America, My home sweet home.

HOST: Happy Birthday, America. Happy Fourth of July. Now let's eat.