Simple Utah Mormon Politics

Over a year ago, I read Barack Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope . I was nearly taken in by his rhetoric. As I've come to know more about the man, I've determined that he associates with some pretty shady characters, that he has no experience, that his policies would be devastating, and that America could have done much better in their nomination of the first black American to run for President. A good friend of mine is a cancer survivor, although he is still on a regimen against its recurrence, and he regularly visits Once you go Barack, you can't go back! with his doctor to ensure his good health. Painted on the tailgate of his pickup truck is this statement: "I am a cancer survivor. Obama scares me." You know what? My friend is right to be scared. I've never had cancer, but the more I come to know about Barack Obama, the more scared I am that there are so many people who think Obama is the solution to America's malaise. You should know, befo...

Brigham Young University is, unfortunately, a unique institution. While morality is a primary focus of education at BYU, not very many other educational institutions understand just how conducive morality is to a great education. The Utah Legislature might consider this as they determine how best to encourage an improvement in students' mathematics skills and scores in the State of Utah. Singapore has a very different way Learning does not occur at its highest level if it is not accompanied by morality. of teaching math than does the United States. Utah legislators are suggesting that improve Utah students' math scores, we need to emulate Singapore . It's a new twist on an old meme that is drawing serious attention from lawmakers, education administrators and mathematicians who are concerned that Utahns are not prepared for the high-paying jobs of the future. After failing to get a task force funded during the 2008 legislative session, Sens. Margaret Dayton and Howard St...

The most embarrassing blight on America is our foreign policy democracy hypocrisy. While Americans claim to have--and in large part do have--many liberties associated with democracy, such cannot be said of the citizens of most of the nations with which the United States government "does business". U.S government actions indicate that our leaders do not understand a basic, easily observable premise: that the principles of liberty are valid for any people, regardless of religion, race, color, gender, creed, or nearly any other category. Yet the imperialism of the United States for the last 100 years has spit in the face of those principles--all in the name of control. Immediately after the attacks of 9/11, U.S. President George W. Bush asked, "Why do they hate us?" Ironically, he was ostensibly speaking on behalf of the American people in general, whom the rest of the world actually does not hate . Had Bush been speaking of the United States government in particu...

What do you do when the rules say that you have to do something, but you don't want to anymore, because the rules don't make sense? Most of us might think that we could amend the rules in case the issue arises in the future. For Stan Lockhart, Mark Shurtleff, and others, the answer is that you meet in a secret caucus and ignore them. Utah Republican Senator Curt Bramble recently accosted a Pizza delivery girl who would not accept a personal check for the pizza she had delivered, because it was against company rules to do so. Not a big deal? Well...what rule will the Utah Republican Power Machine think it's okay to break next time? Why should she make a special exception? Because everyone knows Curt Bramble!! He's the Majority Leader of the Utah Senate, so why should he have to follow the rules? Showing that the laurels it has rested on for so long have become moldy and decayed, the Utah Republican Party Power Machine flaunted its power in a similar way today, by ...

Recently the United States began training together with military personnel in the Republic of Georgia. A few weeks later a war broke out. How coincidental...? No. We've been taunting Russia for quite some time now. Can those who orchestrate US foreign policy really not see how the actions of the United States provoke the actions of Russia against the Republic of Georgia? For our safety, the motto of the next U.S. presidential administration should be "It's the foreign policy, stupid." An agent provocateur, as defined by dictionary.com is a secret agent hired to incite suspected persons to some illegal action, outbreak, etc., that will make them liable to punishment. A lot of America's incitement of Russia to illegal action is not so secret, but it is incitement just the same. Encouraging the nation of Georgia to become a member of NATO is a pretty big slap in Russia's face, although that's just one way we've incited them. Installing missile ba...

Yes, it is--but not nearly as often as we been taught here in the 21st century. On the subject of when it's morally permissible to go to war, George W. Bush and many of his predecessors could learn a great lesson from an ancient American military commander. We shouldn't talk about political issues in Sunday School class, but I've got to get some things off my chest...so I'll talk about them here instead. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, although it is politically neutral, encourages its members to be politically active. However, that political activism is prohibited from occurring in In modern-day parlance, "just war" means that even a half-baked idea is reason enough for the world's only superpower to dominate yet another nation, because the United States only wants what's best for everyone else. So did Stalin. So did Hitler. LDS meetinghouses. You may imagine, then, how difficult it was for me to bite my tongue to prevent it from...

I've read a couple of times The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Now, as I read The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel, I find myself going back and forth between Strobel's and Dawkins's books to see how they disagree. As you can imagine, the subject of the origin of life is something these men have virtually no agreement on. Interestingly, I think they are both a little bit wrong. Joseph Smith had a better idea. The Case for a Creator makes a pretty compelling case that for DNA and the various proteins of a single cell to work together in their complexity, an intelligent designer must have been involved. Dr. Stephen C. Meyer tells Strobel in an interview that ...to have reproduction, there has to be cell division. And that presupposes the existence of information-rich DNA and proteins. But that's the problem--those are the very things they're trying to explain. The Case for a Creator, p. 231 Meyer goes on to explain the quandary as equivalent to a man fall...

I agree with Noam Chomsky on certain things, such as the lunacy of the Iraq War, but I think he's off his rocker when it comes to social programs. He indirectly accuses me of believing things that just aren't true. We got a way cool gift subscription to NetFlix recently (which we'll probably extend when it expires), which allows us to watch certain movies instantly. I've already watched No End in Sight , a movie about the futility of the Iraq War (about which more in a later post.) Now I'm watching Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without a Pause . It's great stuff. I agree with half of it, but I disagree with the other half. I think he's right on when it comes to the Iraq War. The Bush Administration has unduly scared the crap out of a lot of Americans and run us economically into the ground with it propagandizing for and prosecuting of the Iraq War. What surprises me, though, is that Chomsky says that anyone who is against federal government funding of education doe...

Of course it will take several years to develop new domestic petroleum production. But it will take a lot longer to develop a lot of other alternative energy sources. I would LOVE to not have to rely on oil for anything, but that's a ways off. That's why I support the latest legislation in Congress that supports "All of the Above"--developing all energy sources, including oil, so that we can be energy independent. It really drives me nuts when people say we shouldn't develop domestic oil production because it won't be productive for 7-10 years. That would be a workable argument if we could have enough alternative energy by that time that we wouldn't need oil. I don't think, though, that anybody believes that. In congress recently, legislation was introduced to do encourage the development of all forms of energy. HR 6656, also known as " All of the Above ", will solve that problem, but apparently Nancy Pelosi thinks that at least two ...

The dollar crisis is getting worse than I thought. The Dairy Queen on Canyon Road in Provo, Utah is proof positive that the American economy is going through some exceptionally difficult times. I'm not sure if this is happening chain-wide, but --as you can see in the picture at right--at least here in Provo, an indefinite hiring freeze has been implemented. Based on what I encountered when I looked at the other side of their sign, though, I'm guessing it probably has something to do with their promotional practices as well. Ostensibly, because of their fear that the dollar will continue to lose value, Dairy Queen of Provo has taken to giving away free ice cream cones. Well, sort of. The only way that you can get your supposedly "free" ice cream cone is by bringing in one of your used combs. I don't have any combs left, so I'll have to go elsewhere to get my ice cream. At least at my grocery store I can still get "free" dog food when I turn in an...

If somewhere you see an increasing disparity between rich and poor, you can be sure that government is involved. Somewhere, somehow the myth grew up and has become far to often believed that capitalism, or the free market, causes a growing disparity between rich and poor. Perhaps this Members of free societies are more equal in material things than those who live in non-free societies. This should surprise no one who has been properly educated in both economics and history. grew out of the lie that the market caused the stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent economic collapse. A careful study of history will reveal, however, that Federal Reserve policies caused the crash, and that socialist government policies made the economic malaise far worse. In his book, Free to Choose , Milton Friedman states Nowhere is the gap between rich and poor wider, nowhere are the rich richer and the poor poorer, than in those societies that do not permit the free market to operate. That is tru...

Since the calculated stock market crash of 1929 and subsequent blaming of capitalism for the failure of the US economy, a myriad of "welfare" programs have sprung up--most of them like a cancer on the social and economic fabric of America. While it is important that we take care of our poor, a governmental approach--which is often much more complicated than it needs to be--seldom works. Here's an approach, however, that will work. In an era when presidential campaign finalists attempt to outdo each other in promises to provide for the medical and economic welfare of all Americans, it would do us well to take note of a few realities. Nearly all current government welfare programs are destructive of the family, teach indolence and dependence rather than thrift, and steal human dignity. Government intrusion into the medical arena is the primary reason for skyrocketing health care costs and declining medical care in America. The United States has a current and future debt ob...