Simple Utah Mormon Politics

As more and more evidence comes out that man has very little to do with the established fact of Global Warming, damage controllers have set into high gear. Including a certain Utah governor's Blue Ribbon Advisory Council on Climate Change. It was a Blue Ribbon panel. It is thus infallible. It had all of the experts. None of whom had any conflicts of interest or anything to gain. Right? You'd like to think that, wouldn't you! The Deseret News reported A state blue ribbon task force on climate change stated emphatically Monday that humans are to blame for global warming and offered a slate of recommendations on ways Utah can fight the changes. Disclaimer for infrequent readers of Simple Utah Mormon Politics: I believe that the earth is warming . I believe that we should look for ways to reduce emissions and clean up our environment. I do not, however, believe that we should do so under duress from people who are benefiting from government subsidy to say so, and would ...

After what Michael Medved has said about Ron Paul in the past, I was rather surprised at how courteous he was to Mr. Paul in their interview on Michael's show yesterday. I really like to listen to Michael Medved on the radio...except for when he disses candidates that he thinks cannot possibly win an election, when he denigrates people who think that the North American Union is proceeding apace, and when he belittles people as losers who want to belong to a political party other than the two major political parties in America. Here's what he's said about Ron Paul (and Tom Tancredo, the only Republican candidate for President who hasn't been on the Medved Show yet) recently: Two other also-rans in the Iowa Straw Poll, Tom Tancredo and Ron Paul, will no doubt continue their campaigns regardless of their non-existent chances of future success. Both men seek to publicize issues about which they’re passionate: a hard line on immigration for Mr. Tancredo, and an isolationist ...

US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned today. But he'll still be around for another month. After what I've just found out, I'm not sure why he wasn't fired about 3 years ago. Interestingly, Orrin Hatch disagrees with me. It's time to can Senator Hatch as well. I picked up a copy of the book Our Endangered Values by former US President Jimmy Carter some time ago, and have been reading it here at work whenever I get a free moment. It is an interesting coincidence that I read the following statements just today, on page 127 of his book, just minutes after hearing on the radio the news that US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned effective September 17th. The first quote by President Carter was a statement by the Department of Defense about torture, which I also found on the internet : the president has the authority, as commander in chief, to approve almost any physical or psychological error actually doing interrogation up to and including torture. A...

I've been offended by Bill Maher several times before, but it was likely because of my misinterpretation of his intense hatred of George W. Bush. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert usually make mincemeat of their guests. But in three recent cases, I was surprised at how much these political satire hosts enjoyed their conversations with Ron Paul, and how well he held his own. I guess maybe Jon, Bill, Stephen, Ron, and I have something in common--we don't much care for the establishment. That's why Ron Paul makes such a great presidential candidate. Ron Paul was recently a guest of The Colbert Report. Here are some of the highlights of the conversation he had with Stephen Colbert. "I'd rather be free and alive, and you can be." He said that Republicans deserved to lose the last election, because they did not follow the Constituion. "I ran away from the President, and I won." "All these wars [on terrorism, drugs, and poverty] are just to scare...

People have the right to say stupid things, but they don't have the right to use other people's forums to say it. The Council on American Islamic Relations claims success for getting televangelist Bill Keller off the air, but it was just good business sense, really. Bill Keller has assiduously exercised his right to be un-Christian, making a fool of himself in the process. A "1,400-year-old lie from the pits of hell"? A "murdering pedophile"? This could probably be said about some Christian televangelists, but not about Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. Yet these were claims made recently on a no-longer-extant Christian(?) ministry show. He also said that " if you vote for Mitt Romney, you are voting for Satan. " Rosie O'Donnell wasn't anywhere close to right in claiming that fundamentalist Christianity is as bad as fundamentalist Islam, unless you count Bill Keller, from the fabulously successful "Live Prayer with Bill Keller...

George Soros is a Jew who betrayed Jews to the Holocaust while stealing their property. He is a prominent funding source behind MediaMatters.org. He made a boatload of money at the expense of the former Soviet Union. He helped fund the organization of the Hispanic protests of Spring 2006. He first suggested, in what would become a significant part of HillaryCare, that the US couldn't afford to provide proper health care to the elderly. I always thought that George Soros was a shady character. After further research, I now know several reasons why. Hastening Fellow Jews to the Gas Chambers This one issue, and how he feels about it, tells you just about everything you need to know about how George Soros came to be the filthy person he is today. As a young Jew, Soros felt no guilt by helping the Nazis find and inter other Jews in concentration camps. And he participated in stealing their property. On Adam Smith's Money World on April 5th, 1993, he admitted that went with...

Imagine how many people would scream bloody murder if a stewardess told someone that they couldn't bring their Koran on the airplane with them, because they were going to a country that prohibited Korans. Well, as far as I know there is no such country. But there is at least one country that won't let you bring a Bible. I am currently reading the book entitled The Prince: The Secret Story of the World's Most Intriguing Royal, Prince Bandar bin Sultan . I suspected that it would be a whitewash of the issue, but I didn't really realize just how much. The Jerusalem Post recently discovered a Saudi web site that spoke about items that could not be brought into the country: "A number of items are not allowed to be brought into the kingdom due to religious reasons and local regulations," declares the Web site of Saudi Arabian Airlines, the country's national carrier. After informing would-be visitors that items such as narcotics, firearms and pornography ma...

It seems every year Utah has a more acute lack of teachers to teach in the public schools. The way to solve this problem is to compromise--pay the teachers more and reduce the increase in the public school population through the encouragement of education vouchers. The public school year 2007-08 is upon us, and some children will start their classes with temporary teachers, because some districts don't have enough teachers . Here's what we need to do. 1. Raise Teacher Salaries The only reason that Washington County has enough teachers is because it hired 80% of all applicants for open teaching positions. This is very likely an indicator that the quality of education in Washington County will suffer. Like I've said before , you get what you pay for so you should pay for what you want. The Deseret News article linked to above includes a graphic indicating that at about $26,500, Utah is 7th of 8 western states in teacher salaries. Only 15% of teachers come from outside ...

Twenty years ago, I hadn't ever read a book that referred to the divisions of years as anything other than BC and AD. Now it seems that every other book I read refers to them as CE and BCE. Which way should it be? Does it matter? I'm not even sure where BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini - In the year of our Lord ) came from, but that's what I was always used to when I read history books. Until recently, when some scholars began referring to those eras as BCE (Before the Common Era) and (CE) Common Era. It offended me in my provincial sort of way, even though regardless of what terms were used, the same frame of reference was in effect--the birth of Christ. And then I was called to active duty military service in Iraq, where the predominant religion believes that Jesus Christ was nothing more than a great prophet, and that because Allah needed no one beside him that he did not beget a Son. My world view began to open a bit, to where that doesn't bother me anym...

The National Snow and Ice Data Center reported today that Arctic sea ice has reached its lowest point in recorded history! Hmmmmm. Just how long has that particular history been recorded? You'll be surprised. But then again, if you've already seen the movie The Little Man-Made Global Warming Boy Who Cried Wolf , maybe you won't be. Update 8/19: KVNU's For the People provides additional insights about the same article. September 2005 used to mark the year with the lowest Arctic sea ice ever recorded in the history of earth, and this year is now worse than that . "Today is a historic day," said Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist at the center. "This is the least sea ice we've ever seen in the satellite record and we have another month left to go in the melt season this year." Satellite measurements showed 2.02 million square miles of ice in the Arctic, falling below the Sept. 21, 2005, record minimum of 2.05 million square miles, the ...

Our financial situation in the United States is very tenuous. We've been hearing a lot the past few days about the housing mortgage meltdown. But our largest problem is government fiscal irresponsibility--especially in the venue of health care. I'm currently reading The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care . The author, David Gratzer's assessment of US health care is not pretty. Health care costs eat up about 35% of many states' budgets. The federal government pays for 50 cents of every health dollar in the country, and influences most of the rest of it. I watched a video clip from 60 Minutes last night, (hat tip to David J. Miller at Pursuit of Liberty ), that's got me a bit more convinced that if America is to not fall off the precipice of solvency, we need to get government out of a lot of the business that it has insinuated itself in. In the 60 Minutes video, Steve Kroft interviews the Comptroller General of the United States, David Walker. ...

When we rely on computer models and people who get paid to produce gloom scenarios, we get falsification of facts on such controversial issues as global warming. Maybe the globe is warming. But, the hottest year on record? Not 1998. Worry about icebergs melting? Try 1922, before the prediction that we would have a global ice age. What this proves is that we don't know as much as we think we do about global warming, now do we? 1998 not quite the hottest year on record. Recently NASA published "statistics" that "proved" that 1998 was the hottest year on record in the United States. Dadgum that blogosphere! NASA was forced to wipe egg off its face as it admitted that its statistics were wrong . Some of America's top scientists have admitted that the calculations they used to show an increase in the country's temperatures were flawed, after a campaign by an amateur meteorologist using his blog. Climatologists at Nasa's Goddard Institute of Space...

Government spends approximately 50 cents of every dollar that is expended for health care in the United States. It controls the spending of nearly all the rest of that dollar. This is why a comparison of US health care to other socialist health care systems is inapt. The US health care system is socialist. Here's how it happened. so·cial·ism (sō'shə-lĭz'əm) Pronunciation Key n. Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy. Near the beginning of World War II, the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration imposed wage and price controls. As a result, employers looked for other ways to compensate their employees. One of the ways was to provide health insurance benefits. On October 26, 1943, the Internal Revenue Service, in ruling that this was a legal practice, stated that employees were not required to...

We are a people of laws that are being overrun in large part by our country's disrespect for law. But it's even worse. Our national government's lethargy in protecting our borders is financing terrorism against the United States. Updated August 15, 2007 : US Immigration employees are found to be aiding terrorists. It is a slap in the face to immigrants who came here legally to say that it shouldn't matter to us that hundreds of thousands of people are coming here illegally. Of course it should! Domestic production of methamphetamine is down, but only because a much more potent variety is coming from across our southern border . The Federal Government has known about this since shortly after 9/11 , but they don't seem to care about it. In fact, they seem bound and determined to continue on with their Strategic Partnership for Prosperity. intelligence agents discovered that Middle Eastern gangs were having pseudoephedrine, an over-the-counter drug, shipped from ...

I've just decided I'm voting for Ron Paul for president, even if I have to write him in. I've written about him here several times before, but the latest attack on him proves that the liberals and conservatives from the "establishment" are running more scared than ever. Ron Paul is gaining traction in the Presidential race, and so the attack dogs are out. And "conservative" ones at that! Ron Paul reported recently that he requested about $400 million in pork spending in Congress for this year. He's the devil, right? He is the biggest hypocrite on the face of the earth right? Not so fast. I don't think so. Let's look at some facts surrounding the issue, not just the once that Fox News wants you to know. Try a Google search with the words "Ron Paul 400 million earmarks" (without the quotes), and you will find an interesting phenonenon. Brit Hume from Fox News reported Congressman Paul's declaration, and then hundreds of b...

Here are some random thoughts I've been having about public education in Utah. Teachers don't make enough. Class sizes are about right. Public schools are least likely to be racially and ethnically diverse. If we want a quality education product, we need to pay our teachers more. A friend of mine works in a metal fabrication plant. When his bosses started trying to save money by reducing the wages they paid new employees, my friend warned them of the likely consequences. If you pay someone $8 per hour, you're going to get $8 per hour work. If you start them at $15, you're going to get a much higher quality product, because then you'll attract the people that are worth that much. Time proved my friend correct, as his company began to lose business due to shoddy workmanship. It's the same with education. We have to have teachers, because we keep having children. So we might as well have good ones. The reason there is a shortage of good public school teac...

The next time you try to compare US health care with a socialist program from another country...stop. It doesn't make sense to compare socialist health plans with each other. Saying that government should take more control of American health care because it's bad is like saying that because McDonald's french fries are bad for you, we should add more grease to them. I listened to a fascinating presentation by Dr. David Gratzer, who is licensed to practice medicine in both the US and Canada. He thinks it is a mistake for the United States to get sucked into thinking that the Canadian health care system works better than the US's , especially when Canada is returning to privatization in many instances. So are some European countries. The grass really isn't as green on that side of the fence as it may first appear. To listen to Dr. Gratzer's insights, click here . The presentation is about 65 minutes long, but if you download the file and use Windows Media Play...

The Deseret News this morning told us that Lindsay Lohan might be somewhere in Utah. Oh my heck!!! That is like so totally awesome!!! Updated: 8-8-2007 A gracious response from the Deseret News journalist. What is it with so-called news sources that they have to slap putrescence on their pages and call it news? I must at least compliment the Deseret News for not having a non-news story about Lindsay Lohan rehabbing somewhere in Utah on their front page. (Of course if there hadn't been six miners missing in Huntington, Utah, Lohan may have been on the front page, huh?) I guess they were trying to keep up with the Salt Lake Tribune and the Daily Herald, who also think this story is news. BYU Newsnet didn't report it; the fetchers... Not to mention that the DesNews article did not have a scintilla of original-source reporting in it, only citing such august sources as E Online, the Insider, and US Weekly. But I guess that helps them fill up space so they can get their paper o...

Finally, you don't have to feel guilty for being overweight! In the past 18 months or so, it has been determined that your fat can be used as a source stem cells! Alan Russell is the founding director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. Russell leads a biomedicine program that explores tissue engineering, stem cell research, biosurgery and artificial and biohybrid organs. In a video recently posted on ted.com, he discuss several new forms of cell therapy. One of them is adult stem cell therapy. (As of this writing, there are still no known therapies using embryonic stem cells, and certain adult stem cells have been discovered that are as flexible --can generate any type of cell tissue--as embryonic stem cells are thought to be.) Dr. Russell's presentation is about 19 and a half minutes. At 13:35 , you'll see how stem cells have been used from a patient to help heal that patient. At 15:20 , you'll see a discussion about...

The Deseret News reported today that some Utah legislators are up in arms about the new state secondary school mathematics curriculum that the State Board approved. I wish they would have given more details, but my first thought is that who would know more about what the curriculum should be--legislators, or educators. Does anyone know any more details? The decision to change the curriculum was unanimous, so that ought to count for something. A good friend of mine is on the state board. I can't imagine he would have voted for something crappy. The number of legislators said by DesNews to be bothered by the curriculum is three. The impetus behind the concern was the apparent math fiasco in the Alpine School District, which generated a great deal of concern in many parents in that district. In February 2006, Stephenson tasked a committee with studying the state's math core to correct problems he saw with the Alpine School District's controversial program, which allowed unc...

Yes, yes, I know that the earth is warming. And I've come to accept the reality of man-made global warming. But you'll be surprised why. I heard on the radio this morning that July 2007 was the hottest July ever in Utah, with an average temperature of about 84 degrees. Of the 5 hottest Julys ever in Utah, one was in 1960, and all the others were in the 21st century (2007, 2005, 2003, 2002 or something like that). Yeah, but...did man do it ? One of the synonyms for "to make" is "to fabricate". One of the definitions of "fabricate" is "to fake or forge." So in this way there is man-made global warming. This is the way in which I believe that man is making global warming . There are a lot of people who are fabricating "evidence" and "consensus" when it comes to global warming. Global warming is occurring, but man is making it up that man is at fault. No one disputes the fact that the globe is warming. They (we) ...

Credit card companies continue to bombard us with invitations to use their products, yet guess who was the impetus behind the most recent changes in US bankruptcy laws, which, by the way, make it much more difficult for those who need it most to declare bankruptcy? It's been a while since I studied how banks make money, but I remember enough to know that if you say "out of thin air" you'd be close enough. Bankers and credit card company tycoons are some of the richest people in the world. Yet when it comes to bankruptcy law, guess who was behind making it much harder for the average Joe Blow to declare bankruptcy? I've opined before that people get into bankruptcy because they buy too big of houses. It turns out that that's not nearly as big a factor as I thought. Since at least 1997, bankers and credit card moguls have been pressing for a squeeze on the little guy , and in 2005 they were successful. The 500-page legislation won final congressional approval...