Simple Utah Mormon Politics

The UN envoy to Syria is asking Bashar al Assad to step down. A Russian deputy foreign minister said that Assad's control over Syria is weakening. So what does the Obama Administration do? It riles up the situation by sending US troops into the fray.

If you see the glass as half empty, you are a pessimist.  If you see it as half full, you are an optimist.  If you learn to expect that God can help you fill your glass to overflowing, you are a synergist.

Anti-Mormon critics often set up as a straw man the claim that the LDS Church  teaches that prophets are infallible. It does not. Antagonists cite, for example, the talk "14 Fundamentals in Following the Prophet" as well as the song primary children are taught called "Follow the Prophet".  It is not fair to take such things out of the context of how LDS Doctrine is really established. Detractors from the Church do not make LDS doctrine. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does.

With the fall of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, many Americans bemoaned the imminent takeover of Egyptian public life by the Muslim Brotherhood.  Clearly the MB dominates the legislature, because they were more organized than other parties in the first ever free elections, but events that have unfolded in the past few days indicate that it will not be nearly so easy to dominate the rest of Egyptian life.  Freedom of speech and association are alive and fairly healthy in Egypt today.

What's it really like to live in Gaza? It really sucks. Even Israeli Arab citizens don't have all of the freedoms that Israeli Jewish citizens do.  And it is much worse in the West Bank and Gaza.

The primary problem in the Gaza is Hamas.  Hamas is rightly designated by most of the world as a terrorist organization, and it is rightly hated by Israelis, because Hamas regularly commits terrorist acts against Israel.  Ironically, though, Hamas is revered by most Palestinians, because most of what Hamas does in the Gaza is provide humanitarian services to destitute Palestinians. Israel will never beat Hamas in the game of war, which is guaranteed to only create more Palestinian enemies for Israel.  The only way Israel can decimate Hamas is to do a better job of doing what Hamas does best--providing the services that Palestinians need.

I'm sure there are worse places to live than Iran, but there can't be too many. It is a living hell for many. Its government has usurped religion to wreak on its people things that religion was never meant for. Below I describe a small part of the desecrations that are going on in that country.  The Iranian people deserve much better.