Simple Utah Mormon Politics

America's foreign policy toward Iran should be to apologize. Had the United States not meddled in Iranian domestic policy, Iran would hardly be the boiling cauldron that it is today, where secret police and military thugs kill hundreds and arrest thousands of their protesting countrymen. The Iranian people have been more than once within a hair's breadth of enjoying liberty--only to be thwarted with the help of the United States. If someone did to America what we've done to Iran, you'd want an apology, too. I'm not talking about apologizing to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or his bearded overlord. Those men are criminals. What I'm advocating, rather, is an apology directly to the Iranian people for stealing their liberty--for the things the United States did to their country decades ago which, if we hadn't done them, Mr. I'm not talking about apologizing to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or his bearded overlord. Those men are criminals. What I'm advocating, rather, i...

Sometimes I wish that fewer people would vote in elections. (Actually, I just wish they would become a little bit more informed before they cast their votes.) We have had some great choices in recent elections. Unfortunately, though, it's nothing new that most Americans are content to be arm-twisted into voting for the lesser of two not-so-great choices. In his book Boiling Point: Republicans, Democrats, and the Decline of Middle-Class Prosperity , Kevin Phillips writes this about the recent presidential election: By condemning the Bush administration for favoritism to the rich and neglect of the middle class, Obama tapped a historic Republican vulnerability and took a strong lead over John McCain from July onward. True, many voters still doubted the Illinois senator's trustworthiness. McCain's last rival for the Republican nomination, Texas congressman Ron Paul, had insisted the Obama couldn't be believed, because he was financed by the same elites he purported to ...

I had to listen to Glenn Beck's monologue a couple of times today about the discussion between President Obama and Nico Pitney of The Huffington post. And I still didn't get what Beck was so inflamed about. Perhaps Beck ought to be paying more attention to what's going on in Iran rather than wondering if Pitney was just another media person being nice to Barack Obama. (Press conference Here , Pitney's subsequent visit with CNN, here .) Here's part of Beck's critique of the President's supposed tactics: He's contacting a media source ahead of time to plan a question for a live press conference. Who thought the media was in the tank for him? Who, booboo? He's contacted a liberal blog site to do it. He reveals that he follows the liberal blog site closely. And to top it off, he calls them second in the press conference. By the way, ADD moment. Which one of these things just doesn't belong? Associated Press, Reuters, the Huffington Post? It was a ...

In Farsi, Neda means "voice". The accidental "voice" of the New Iranian Revolution has also become its first martyr. The murder of Neda Agha Soltan has become the nourishment needed for the blossoming of freedom in Iran. Millions of Iranians, now honoring her innocent memory, will not be stopped, even if for many of them, it also means death. The days of the backward rule of the Ayatollah and the Iranian Supreme Council are numbered. As Neda lay dying, her father counseled her "Natazhsid!", which means "Do not be afraid!" This has become the rallying cry of millions of freedom-loving Iranians. Please pray for their success. Please pray that Neda's death has not been in vain. One of the greatest chapters in human history is playing out before our very eyes, yet most of us choose to watch mindless entertaining drivel on television instead. Iranians are suddenly on the verge of a freedom that has been centuries in the making. Do you care...

For many years I have admired the passion of the Iranian people. Regardless of having lived for decades beneath the damning hand of dictatorship, they still have not lost their innate yearning for freedom. If only Americans could be as passionate about liberty as the Iranians are. Americans are content to simply have a Tea Party and then go home. Iranians, harking to a bygone American era, are deadly serious about liberty--just as Americans Americans can't just have a tea party every now and then and feel like we've made any kind of a difference. once were. While Iranians risk their lives and forsake their livelihoods for days on end in an effort to retain some vestige of representative government, Americans are too busy-- spectating at their favorite sporting events or figuring out where their next mortgage payment will come from--to care very much. It has become clear over the past eight days that Mir Hossein Mousavi, challenger to the not-well-liked Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, ...

At the recent convention of the Western Governors' Association, Nick Bridge, British counselor for global issues, stated that the earnestness of global warming is like "driving towards a cliff at high speed and [you] have a 30 percent chance of brake failure. Would you get in the car? Nobody would get in the car." Well, no, actually, I'd do a computer model simulation to ensure that the 30% chance of failure is a correct estimate. ;-) Mr. Bridge's verbal faux pas indicates the inanity of the claims of those involved in crying global warming wolf. He can't even think through the process of evaluating risk. If I had a car whose brakes had a 30% chance of failure, I would test them thoroughly--under actual conditions--to find out what percentage of the time they actually did fail . If they actually failed at all, I'd get them fixed. Global warming criers, however, think that delving in theory, simulating risk, and crying wolf is all that is needed in orde...

The man who committed murder at the Holocaust Museum yesterday is being deadpanned by hordes as a "right-wing extremist". The murderer was certainly an extremist, as, blessedly, these things are the exception rather than the rule. But the murderer was far from being "right-wing". Defining "Left" vs. "Right" with regard to what side of the aisle of parliament you sit on is meaningless. The worthwhile definition of left vs. right has nothing to do with political parties. Rather, it all depends on how you feel about freedom. "Stalin is left-wing, Hitler is right-wing." "Stalin is left-wing, Hitler is right-wing." "Stalin is left-wing, Hitler is right-wing." If you say it enough...it still won't be true. Yet somehow, if you search for "holocaust right-wing" on Google News, you'll find a plethora of "news" articles calling the Holocaust Museum murderer a right-wing extremist. Like this ...