Simple Utah Mormon Politics

Some people celebrate Halloween, while others don't. My family?--we enjoy the heck out of it. (Not quite as much as the people who made the guy in the picture at the right, but...) What's your take on Halloween? Last year, President Gordon B. Hinckley spoke on Halloween at the Tuesday morning BYU devotional. As if to erase any doubt about the LDS church's stance on Halloween, he started out his speech by asking the camera person to zoom in to get a close-up of his jack-o-lantern tie. Some friends of ours absolutely will not celebrate Halloween. Their kids do not dress up, and they do not go trick-or-treating. Their family actually leaves the house on Halloween night and does something fun together, in part so they won't have to answer the door and hand out candy. Our kids are going all-out dressing up for school today. They are dressing up as Jack Sparrow, a Civil War hero, a US Army soldier, Cindy-Lou Who, and Sandy-Lou Fifties Who. We need to get better at the ...

On several different occasions as a child, I would sit on the living room couch, stare at the wall, and try to imagine what it would be like if nothing existed. I still remember vividly how the walls and doors in the entryway to my boyhood home faded to black in my imagination. And my head hurt. Later, I began to realize that I really could not imagine nothing , because the blackness that I had imagined was actually something . To this day I can instigate similar pain as I try yet again to comprehend the mortally incomprehensible. I must not be the only one in the world who thinks this way, because my wife had similar contemplations as a child, and every one of my children has had the same series of thoughts. Occasionally we traverse onto the subject in our Monday night Family Home Evenings, and their heads begin to hurt, too. Especially when put on my evil grin and remind them that their imagined blackness of nothingness is actually something. But that's just fine to have such ...

A buddy of mine was spittin' mad this morning. He woke up late and was thus late to some important meetings he had to be to. What happened? He relied on the government to keep his clock running correctly. I checked my PDA-phone, and it has the correct time. So does my computer. But the government's computers don't. Back in 2005, the government got all sophisticated-silly and decided it would be a huge payoff to change the date on which we switch to daylight savings time. I was irritated by it then . Now, when the government can't even comply with its own edicts, I'm even more perturbed. They've had two years to notify everyone of their stupid change--setting our clocks back on the first week in November rather than on the last week in October. And they still can't get it right. My friend has a clock that is linked to--and gets its time from--a government satellite. Today is October 28th, which would have been the day we set our clocks back an hour f...

In a recent debate on school vouchers, Patrick Byrne defended vouchers on the basis that they would likely help minority students in Utah in a very dramatic way. Leave it to those who oppose vouchers to contort the meaning of his statements and imply that he is a racist. Question: What percentage of Utah minorities in public school never graduate from high school? Answer: 40%. Vouchers can help this problem. Rebuttal: You are a racist. Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com, and supporter of vouchers, made the point recently that failure to graduate from high school is nearly akin to a death sentence for most students who don't graduate. Here are his words : Right now, 40 percent of Utah minorities are not graduating from high school. You may as well burn those kids. That's the end of their life. That's the end of their ability to achieve in this society if they do not get a high school education. You might as, just throw the kids away. My interpretation of this statemen...

Now that the furor over Nobel Scientist Al Gore has died down, lets look at some of the real science of global warming. How about science from people who have actually investigated the issues? For example, is CO2 related to global warming? Yes, but not nearly in the way that the IPCC shills might have you think. The US National Science Foundation has further confirmed the scientific observation that increases in carbon dioxide happen years after natural global warming cycles , and that CO2 does not contribute to global warming on near the scale that was once thought. Its the strongest evidence for the Greenhouse Gas theory of global warming -- that warm periods in the earth's past were typically accompanied by rises in atmospheric carbon dioxide. But that evidence is under serious attack, from new research funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation. The research team, led by Paleoclimatologist Lowell Stott, demonstrated CO2 levels after the last Ice Age started to rise so...

Republican Representative John Shadegg from Arizona has sponsored the Enumerated Powers Act in the United States House of Representatives every year since 2002. It has not yet become law. It would "require Congress to specify the source of authority under the United States Constitution for the enactment of laws, and for other purposes." Pretty simple, huh? Ron Paul is one of its co-sponsors. Guess which 2 representatives from Utah are not sponsors? (1 is currently a sponsor) Here is the ENTIRE text of the bill : A BILL To require Congress to specify the source of authority under the United States Constitution for the enactment of laws, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This Act may be cited as the `Enumerated Powers Act'. SEC. 2. SPECIFICATION OF CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY FOR ENACTMENT OF LAW. (a) Constitutional Authority for T...

It's interesting to look at where the largest donations are coming from for the top-tier political candidates. It gives you an idea of what favors are going to be expected if a particular candidate becomes president. You might be surprised at who is donating to Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton. They can be divided into three categories: (1) employees of the moneyed interests (2) employees of the media interests, and (3) employees of the legal interests. These are the same people who are NOT donating to Ron Paul. Consider what you want your country to look like in four years. If you like it the way it is, continue your support for the establishment candidates. If you don't like what your country is becoming, consider voting for Ron Paul. It has become more frustrating to me the more I think about it that elections are determined largely by how much money is spent. The money effect has become very evident in the 2008 presidential campaign. I am beginning to wonder if a ...