Simple Utah Mormon Politics

I think it's because we've always admired rich people, and that we want to become like them, that we often don't seem to care how they got that way. Some rich people worked hard and ethically to get where they are, but you'd be surprised at how many didn't. The truth of the matter is that a heck of a lot of them got their mansions and Lear jets by stomping on you on their way up. A lot of people blame the free market for the economic problems that we have in our country. In reality, with the shysters that we elect to the federal and other governments year in and year out, we haven't had a free market in decades. We've had a butt-kiss market. I'm not better off than I was ten years ago, not to mention just last year. And it's your fault, because you keep voting members of the butt-kiss market into public office. So quit it! The Real Benevolence of the Profiteering Non-Profit Law Firms. I just found out this morning that a lot of these so-call...

Recently, when asked if he as president would sit down with Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela, Barack Obama said he would. Several on the political right screamed bloody murder--especially that he would cavort with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Besides the fact that's not what he said, I'm not so sure having closer communication with Iran is such a bad idea. Hillary Clinton was recently asked what she would do to Iran if it attacked Israel with nuclear weapons. She stated that as president she would obliterate Iran. Recently asked if she still stood by her statement, she said she did : Sen. Hillary Clinton today defended her statement that the United States would "obliterate" Iran if it ever launched a nuclear strike on Israel. "Why would I have any regrets?" Iran, according to the latest US National Intelligent Estimate, has stopped nuclear weapons research, although they continue to enrich uranium. It's probably not very likely, We had talks with the Soviet...

Who was it that claimed that conservatives always tend to flock together? Well, the flock is breaking apart as John McCain, Newt Gingrich, and more Republicans jump on the establishment's man-made (double entendre' intended) global warming bandwagon. Hopefully, as the wagon makes its move down the highway to government hell, you will resist the urge to conform. In much the same way as conservatives claim that liberals coddle terrorists , liberals claim that conservatives don't care much about the environment . Both claims are not very truthful. When it comes to the environment, however, conservatives temper respect for the environment with an understanding of the facts that (1) a lot of the fear of global warming is based on estimates and computer models which don't match the facts of the last 10 years , (2) human ingenuity can solve such problems if they ever really become problems, and (3) government "solutions" Most people who are poor in the world tod...

The entire two-month saga of captivity and abuse of members of the FLDS Church at Eldorado, Texas at the hands of Texas authorities didn't ever have to be, I've said several times in these pages . Finally, the Texas Third District Court of Appeals agrees. It's about time. I hope that these families, molested by their government on unsubstantiated charges of molesting each other--can put their lives back together, healthy and whole. I don't like what the Fundamentalist LDS Church teaches. I don't appreciate the fact that they use my I don't like what the Fundamentalist LDS Church teaches. But I can't believe how many people cheered as the FLDS had their rights trampled in the mud and excrement. That kind of abuse is something that anyone, regardless of religion, should stand up against. Book of Mormon in claiming that theirs is the only true Church of Jesus Christ when they've never even been a part of our church. But I can't believe how many p...

What happens when you hit a home run, but you injure yourself and cannot complete your run around the bases? The rules say that your teammates can't help you. Is there a way that you can make it home? Yes. I hope that something like the incident below would happen in professional sports, but I don't know if it would (it would probably be more like the picture at the top of this article). Even high school sports are probably too competitive. I tend to think that male athletes would have a hard time being this sportsmanlike, but I hope I'm wrong. There are even some parents in little league sports that act like the picture above instead of the video below. The following incident happened between two college women's softball teams and epitomizes the essence of genuine competition. Take a look. It would have been Sara Tucholsky's only home run of her college career. But as she rounded first base, she tore her anterior cruciate ligament, and was unable to continue...

I've thought about this question a lot lately, and I thought I knew the answer to it. The question is a lot more nuanced than to satisfy itself with only one answer, though. First, some people don't criticize terrorism because they're afraid of the terrorists. Others don't because they can't understand why the United States and others have exercised imperial dominion over the Middle East for so long. But the most important answer to the question--which admittedly came as some surprise to me--is this: most liberals and Muslims do criticize Islamic violence and terrorism. You just have to know where to look. Where Not to Look. One of the places that you can't look to find out what liberals and Muslims really think about radical Islam is the Rush Limbaugh show. Yesterday on his last hour, he attempted to lambaste Barack Obama for his willingness to have a dialog with the Iranians. Limbaugh made the mistake of letting Obama speak for himself and his own se...

Yesterday a "Republican-dominated" California Supreme Court struck down state laws against same-sex marriages. The LDS Church issued a press release, calling the decision "unfortunate". I agree, but not for reasons you might think. Did the California Court make the right decision? Update 5/17/2008 : California decision does not affect prohibitions against polygamy and marriage of close relatives. Why not? Government should not sanction same-sex marriages for the same reason that it should not sanction heterosexual adultery--such activities tend to be destructive to the family as the fundamental unit of society. Before you get too far into reading into my words, let me echo and agree with something that Madeleine Albright wrote in her recent book, The Mighty & The Almighty (one of the better books that I have read in a long time): I oppose discrimination against gays and lesbians and am convinced that heterosexual adultery is a greater danger to the institu...

A human resources officer at the University of Toledo has lost her job because she commented in a newspaper that she "questioned whether homosexuality is a civil rights issue". Should she have been fired for stating her opinion? I don't think so. It seems to me that this is a "liberal" reaction to the issue and that, therefore, liberals are not as open minded as I thought. I don't want to detract from the excellent conversation that is going on here about conservative mind-numbed robots , but I came across another story today that has me questioning the ...it seems when liberals come across any of their sacred cows...they will brook no dissent. original premise of that article--that liberals are more open minded than conservatives. In the case of a University of Toledo human resources officer, it seems when liberals come across any of their sacred cows--in this example, homosexuality--they will brook no dissent. Her attorney said that ...the university ...

Why are there so few liberal radio talk shows today compared to those of the conservative variety? I think because liberals are much more likely to have formed their own well-thought-out opinions. I have a hard time calling myself a conservative these days, despite the official definition of the term. Why? Because Rush Limbaugh is a conservative, and all he seems to want to conserve is people's stupidity. Probably because it makes him rich. Conservatives are a monolithic bunch, don't you think? I once made the mistake of thinking liberals are the same way, but I'm starting to realize it's not true. While I was on the way to get a Subway sandwich at lunch today, I heard a lady call into the Rush Limbaugh show claiming she knew the answer to why there were hardly any liberal radio talk shows. Rush praised her for coming up with the "right answer", which allegedly was that liberals controls all the newspapers, magazines, newscasts, etc. 'Oh, and don...

Just about every guy in the world thinks that he has the best mom in the world, even when he's graduated from childhood and thinks that his own children enjoy that same prestigious honor. My mom's the best mom in the world. But so is my wife. Don't you agree--I mean that your mom and your wife are the best moms in the world? My Mentor--My Mom. Mom was always there when I got home from school. Sometimes all I needed to know was that she was around, and then I'd run off to play. When I was younger, she would often take me down to "the field" where I could sit on the tractor or in the feed truck with my dad. And every once in a while she'd even come down and take me babck home when I felt like I'd been there too long. She always came to my basketball, football, and baseball games, even though I was often not the star of the show. I still remember the first time I read a large book as a child. My mom was excited to tell everyone how proud she was tha...

It's hard to imagine that approximately eight years ago George Bush gave the ugly American speech. An ugly American, he said, is someone who makes the rest of the world do it our way. Now, ironically these eight years later, he has seemingly forgotten his own words, and he is the ugliest American of them all. It will take much more than we think we're capable of to rid ourselves of this stain on the American character. Back when he was campaigning, and when he, astonishingly to me, seemed normal to just about half of American voters, George W. Bush had an interesting perspective on nation building. He was positively agin' it. Or so he said. Who said the following ? I think one way for us to end up being viewed as ‘the ugly American’ is for us to go around the world saying, ‘We do it this way; so should you.’ .. and this ... …I don’t think our troops ought to be used for what’s called ‘nation building.’ ...and this? If we’re an arrogant nation, they’ll resent us. If w...

I read three interesting stories in the newspaper this morning, and I couldn't decide which one to blog about, so I guess I'll talk about all three. Dmitry Medvedev took over as Russia's president today. Will he be his own man, or Vladimir Putin's puppet? The LDS Church is working together with CARE international to ship supplies to Myanmar. Now that's what I call foreign aid of the good kind! Jeremiah Wright may be right about a lot of things, but drawing attention to himself as a victim is not one of them. Will Putin Pull Medvedev's Strings? While Vladimir Putin took away a lot of liberties in Russia (in the name of stability) as its former president, new president Dmitry Mevedev seemed to indicate that he is more of a liberty-loving president. "Human rights and freedoms ... are deemed of the highest value for our society and they determine the meaning and content of all state activity," he said. But it all may be moot. Putin stays on as Prime...

You may think that abortion is okay anytime. You may think it is never okay. I happen to think it is okay in very rare circumstances--much more rare than the million or so abortions that are occurring each year in the US. However, regardless of your or my position on whether abortion should be legal or not, it is impossible to make a case that the Roe v Wade decision of the US Supreme Court in 1973 was constitutional. I personally think the Roe decision was a huge blunder from a social perspective, but that's not the point. The point is that the Supreme Court should have never heard the case. It has nothing to do with how strongly you feel about the rightness or wrongness of the issue. The question is, did the United States federal government have the constitutional right to decide on the issue of abortion? Constitutionally, the answer is no. George W. Bush has made a mockery of the Constitution. Do you care about that? If so, you must care about the mockery of Roe v Wade ...

The rich in the United States are getting richer. We're not Rome yet , but we're heading in that direction in a lot of ways, and particularly with regard to the growing divide between rich and poor. The ethanol scam is a perfect example of how that divide most often gets wider-- with the help of government . When the richer get richer by theft, they should be punished, even if government helped them in their highway robbery. And those government shysters should at least be voted out of town on a rail. The ethanol people never really did have as their primary goal to save the planet. Their primary intended consequence was to get filthy rich--which they have now done. Congress wasn't out to save the planet either. They may have been out to look good, but their primary goal was to buy votes. It goes like this--dream up a scary scenario, then provide a "solution" for the concocted problem. Then, before too many people find out about the scam, make millions of ...

One way that you can tell if someone is telling the truth about something is if they point out those related issues that do not flatter their personal point of view on the subject. On this, the man-made global warming lobby fails miserably. If they were honest, for example, they would admit--while they're screaming bloody murder that there is no ice left in the Arctic Ocean--that the globe has not warmed since 1998. I apologize in advance for my mockery. I don't usually mock people who disagree with me on various issues, but with Global Warming I can't help myself. Because it is so obvious to the person who looks at it with an open mind--we just don't know how much of an effect man is having on earth's climate. Just because Exxon paid some scientists several At any rate, the globe has not warmed since 1998, but very few scientists are talking about it. And the ones that do are revealing that they're freaked out about it. thousand dollars to do research o...

From the Federal Reserve to the socialist policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the socialist policies of George W. Bush, it's time to thank the elitists for "trying" to help us live more comfortably--and send them packing--because it sure isn't helping. If you think their "capitalist" policies have failed, you haven't studied economics very deeply, because them policies ain't capitalist . When I was a kid 30 years ago, I could buy a loaf of bread for 1/4 the price it is now. Thank you Federal Reserve! The Fed was the worst economic decision the United States of America ever made. (The moral-hazard-enhancing beast called the FDIC was a stupid idea not much smarter than the Fed.) The Fed's inflationary monetary policies benefit the elite few, but by the time the money trickles down to everyday-you-and-me, the prices of everything have gone up! The Fed presided over a cataclysmic economic depression beginning just 16 years after its It's no...