Wanted: Conservative Candidates

Regardless of political party - or even lack of party affiliation - the United States needs to back up and regroup. The current direction our elected "leadership" is taking us is wrong, and will destroy what is special, even unique, about the United States. The Democratic party isn't likely to change direction, considering those currently elected to public office. The only hope for a change in direction will have to come from newly-elected, conservative candidates - at ALL levels of government.

Conservatives who belong to the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, no party, or even the Tea Party, need to come together and state, unequivocally, what they want in a candidate, and refuse to support anyone that doesn't meet those qualifications. My personal list of absolutely necessary requirements are:

• A candidate that puts the three essentials of good government first: protection of individual liberty, property, and process. By "process", I mean the right to make personal decisions for themselves about such things as political orientation, health care, where they live, housing, education, social contact, and other PERSONAL decisions. I also mean that people making these personal decisions must also be responsible for accepting the consequences of their decisions, good or bad. Unless a candidate will commit, in written or spoken word, to base every decision he or she makes on these essentials, they're not worthy of my vote.



• A candidate that understands the critical necessity of responsible spending: all taxes are paid by individuals, either in direct payment or in indirect "pass-along" taxes. Only those taxes that are required to support essential government functions - defense, coining/printing of money, maintenance of basic infrastructure, foreign policy, and other specific, limited functions listed in our Constitution, are "essential". Anything else, especially anything that's solely based upon the "commerce clause" of our Constitution - and quite frequently, only by warping and twisting the meaning of "commerce" - needs to be examined closely to see if it's actually needed, actually producing the desired outcome, and can't be done by other means at less cost or intrusion into the lives of America's citizens. Any candidate that won't commit to working toward these goals is not worthy of my vote, and won't get it.



• A candidate that understands that "government" is not the answer to every problem.



• A candidate that understands that the Constitution means exactly what it says, and the only valid amendment process is the one listed in Article IV of that Constitution.



• A candidate that understands that we have too many laws, many of them so vague that they're virtually impossible to implement properly, and that this mess needs to be cleaned up.



• A candidate that not only understands these basic premises, but will promise that he will act in accordance with them on all issues he faces.

I'm sure such candidates will be difficult to find, but they're absolutely essential for the continuance of our nation as it was founded.

GOD is NOT happy with America.

Contrary to most of the myths being spread around the world today, there IS a God - one God, the God of Abraham and Moses, of David and Solomon, of Joshua and Jeremiah. God is also not silent: He will talk to anyone who will LISTEN to Him. He is not happy with "modern"
America, and those of us who have quietly listened have gotten an earful.

God is not happy with our government. That doesn't just mean with the current president, or the Congress, but with every dishonest person that is elected, appointed, or employed to govern the affairs of our nation. He hates the fraud, waste, and outright theft that occurs on a daily basis. He hates those that use the power given to them to conduct the affairs of our nation in the manner established by our forefathers to line their own pockets, to enrich their family and friends at the expense of others, and those that use bureaucracy and red tape to deny aid to the needy, often for petty reasons.

God is not happy with our "entertainment" industry. It seems that each day, they try to see how more revolting they can be, how much farther they can push back the bounds of what most of us consider the minimum consideration of modesty and behavior. God punished Sodom and Gomorrah for behavior many of us can see or hear every day. He is also furious at US for allowing this garbage into our homes without protest.

God is not happy with our "news" industry. He knows that they lie to us at least once or twice each day, that they do this deliberately to promote or protect those they support with their efforts, and for many, with their hearts. He knows they have failed in their duty to be the "watchdogs of society". Instead, they have become the lapdogs of those that do all manner of evil.

God is not happy with those that pretend to "educate" our children Much of what they teach mocks God. Many of those that pretend to teach instead spend the majority of their time pushing an indoctrination that is destructive of the very rights and freedoms that are the Gift of God. Teachers' Unions are far more interested in seeing that they are not held responsible for the poor job they do than in preparing a new generation to deal with the future. The very basis of our government, its dedication to God, is prohibited from being taught in our schools.

God is not happy with our churches. These "Houses of the Lord" are all too frequently filled with cardboard worshipers - and led by cardboard "preachers/priests". The Spirit of the Lord is seldom evoked. The presence of the Spirit is palpable in its absence. Yet Jesus himself said that He would be with those that gathered together in His name. How many times has the Spirit of God, through His Son Jesus, been felt by most worshipers?

God is not happy with us. He gave us a new nation, conceived in His name, and dedicated to ensuring that His laws were paramount in our lives. Today groups are alive and active all across this continent, doing their best to destroy what our founders believed was the most perfect form of human government, and most of us do nothing. Too many people accept the fallacy that we have a "right" to not be offended, to not face unpleasant truths, to not have to accept responsibility for our own behavior. God, however, will sit in judgment on the final days, and He isn't distracted with all the petty "offenses" others use to destroy us.

God is also forgiving:

2 Chronicles 7:14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

He also knows those who truly put Him first, instead of putting themselves first:

Matthew 7:15 ¶ Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. 16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? 17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

21 ¶ Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

God wants us to be happy, but He wants us to be happy in HIM. Look around the world today and see which people are truly happy. I don't mean those that pretend to be happy, but those that seem to be happy day in and day out. They are people who put God first in their lives. They're also remarkably successful. This, too, is the plan of God for His people:

Matthew 6:28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: 29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? 31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? 32 (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. 33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.. 34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

Our nation lived by putting God first in the daily lives of its citizens from 1776 until the early 1960's, and our nation prospered beyond the wildest dreams of its founders. There were trials and tribulations, including some horrendous problems that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of our citizens, but God's Plan continued, and our nation prospered. But God isn't happy with our nation and its people today, and has turned His Face from us. Unless we return to the path of our ancestors, we will find God's Face turned from us permanently. That would be catastrophic for all of us.

"This too shall change."

For those not familiar with the above quote, it's attributed to wise men of a Chinese emperor, who wanted to be known for something that would last "forever". Indeed, the truth behind these four words will always be with us - on the macro scale with universal entropy down to the micro scale of today's weather. EVERYTHING changes - the weather, girls' hemlines, what's "hip" or "in", even ourselves. None of us today are the same people we were at 25, 15, 5, or five months. We age, we change. Some of us even mature.

The current government of the United States is planning to try to "lock in" a particular level of one minor greenhouse gas to keep the world from changing. It's not going to work. In fact, the climate itself is showing that placing all our emphasis on one factor of literally dozens is foolish. The sun, rather active for most of the last century, has gone in to a quiet period not seen since 1913 - when there was little in the way of carbon dioxide being dumped into the atmosphere. Temperatures have steadily dropped - with a small delay - along with solar activity. Unless the sun's activity increases significantly, we can expect temperatures four, five, even ten degrees below normal over the next 20 years.

The current government action has nothing to do with science, and everything to do with a monstrous power grab. If Congress succeeds, expect to see huge taxes, prices escalating by unbelievable amounts, and fuel and utility costs increasing in inverse proportion to availability. Also expect to find that wheat won't grow in northern Alberta, that corn takes longer to ripen in Iowa, and a lot of food items won't grow any longer below Memphis. A Dalton Minimum (Google it), which is fast becoming a probability instead of a possibility, will shake up the entire world, far more than "global warming" ever would.

"Man-caused Climate Change" Take-down

Dr. Richard Lindzen has posted an article at Quadrant Magazine Online that is one of the finest, best-researched, and well-spoken articles I've read in the last 10 years. I urge anyone who still has an open mind about anthropogenic climate change to read it.

Texas exempts 100% Disabled Vets from Property Tax

Got this from a former boss of mine. I'm passing it along just as I received it (but in lower font size).

VETERANS:

DO YOU HAVE A 100% DISABILTY RATING??
DO YOU OWN A HOME OR PROPERTY IN TEXAS??

Texas passed a law, House Bill 3613 in June 2009 which provides a Texas veteran who has a 100% VA disability, a 100% exemption for taxation on your resident homestead. or are considered individually unemployable by the U.S. Dept. of Veteran Affairs, THIS MEANS YOU NO LONGER HAVE TO PAY PROPERTY TAXES ON YOUR HOME! The legislation applies to taxes assessed by all jurisdictions.

The new law is effective now, starting in 2009.

To download the required form, go to: http://www.window.state.tx.us/taxinfo/taxforms/vetexempt.pdf

Exemptions will not be given automatically. Veterans must fill out and return new application forms to be eligible for the residential homestead exemption.

The veteran must fill out the application and attach a copy of the Department of Veteran Affairs letter documenting the disability percentage. It must then be delivered to the tax appraisal office in the district where the veteran resides.

HAYS COUNTY:
Hays Central Appraisal District (512-268-2522)
21001 N. IH 35. Kyle, Texas 78640

TRAVIS COUNTY:
Travis Central Appraisal District (512-834-9138)
8314 Cross Park Dr. Austin, TX 78626

WILLIAMSON COUNTY:
Williamson Central Appraisal District (512-930-3787)
625 FM 1460. Georgetown, TX 78626

Waxman/Markey and the destruction of capitalism

I wrote a letter to both my Colorado Senators earlier this week. I heard back from Michael Bennet. Mark Udall was "too busy" to answer, or even have a staffer answer. I'm not impressed with either Senator, but then, I didn't vote for either one of them when I had the chance. Michael Bennet is a replacement appointed by Governor Ritter when Ken Salazar was made Secretary of the Interior - another stab in the heart of freedom.

I did get an answer back from Senator Bennet. It was straight out of the Democratic playbook, but did address my concerns. I still wouldn't vote for him for dog-catcher in East Tincup, but that's another story. Here's his email and my answer. Also note you can't email the good Senator directly - you have to go through his front page, where you can easily be ignored.
====================================
Senator Bennet,

>Thank you for contacting me regarding our nation’s energy needs
>and energy legislation in the 111th Congress.

>As you know, America has an energy problem and the
>math tells the story: the United States consumes
>about one quarter of the world's oil, but has only
>three percent of the remaining total worldwide oil
>reserves.

The United States does NOT have an energy problem - it has a government problem, and a lawyer problem. There is plenty of oil. This government just won't allow any US company to drill for it. Even if the government were to allow some drilling, it would immediately be blocked by scores of "environmentalist groups" filing lawsuits in any and every jurisdiction they could reach. The NIMBYs whine and complain about everything and anything, forcing the cost of doing business to excessive levels.

>Our current rate of growth puts us on track to import 70
>percent of our oil in 2020, at costs even higher than today's.

Only because government at every level puts horrendous roadblocks in the way of companies to actually produce more domestic energy. If the United States government were to announce tomorrow that it was agreeing to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Bristol Bay, and anywhere in the Gulf of Mexico more than 30 miles from the coast, the price of oil would drop $30 a barrel overnight. That would not only make domestic energy cheaper, it would take billions from the coffers of our current enemies - most notably Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

>To achieve the goal of American energy independence, we need
>innovative, home-grown American solutions. First, we need to
>encourage research and development to improve efficiency and
>find ways to get more out of our existing energy resources.

To achieve the goal of American energy independence, we need the government to get out of the way. We need a mix of coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, and so-called "green" solutions (that mostly aren't). We've cleaned up coal to the point that our air is cleaner than its been since the 19th century - possibly before. As a historian, I KNOW how polluted the air was in the Northeast, in Britain, and in most of Europe just 100 years ago. We will continue to need coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear energy, and whatever water-generated energy we can capture. These will be our mainstays for the next 50 years, until we can develop replacements that will pollute less, provide reliable energy, and remain cost-effective. Wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, and all the other "green" solutions cannot produce the amount of energy necessary to replace other sources, cost more to operate, and cause as many new problems as they purport to solve (Hydroelectric dams are a good example - the problem of silt, of species migration, and several other problems we didn't consider when we built them).

>Second, we need to responsibly expand our domestic production
>options and invest in infrastructure. Finally, as billionaire
>oilman T. Boone Pickens has recently noted, we need new ideas
>and new markets if we are to solve our energy problem,
>including developing renewable energy resources that are
>abundantly available in Colorado.

The renewable energy resources in Colorado are not enough to supply the town of Trinidad. Tripling them still won't meet then needs of Trinidad.

>As you may know, lawmakers in Congress have been debating
>energy legislation that includes the implementation of a
>market-based cap-and-trade program. This legislation aims
>to improve air quality by requiring polluters to trade
>pollution allowances. The implementation of a national
>renewable electricity standard (RES), which requires
>electricity providers to produce a percent of their
>electricity from renewable sources, is also being considered.

Cap-and-Trade is a fiasco in search of the gullible. It pretends to solve a problem that doesn't exist. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ANTHROPOMORPHIC GLOBAL WARMING. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, it is not causing runaway heating, and it doesn't need to be regulated. The entire scheme is merely a means to exert more government control, raise the price of energy, and make a bunch of millionaires billionaires. Here are three (of hundreds) of links one of your aides can run down that show this to be true:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/
http://www.sepp.org/
http://www.co2science.org/

The only "proof" for CO2-induced climate change (since "global warming is so 20th century) are computer models - models that can't even verify the past, much less predict the future.

There is one good thing to come from all the "global warming" hoopla - we've finally taken a closer look at exactly what does affect our climate. Carbon dioxide isn't it - carbon dioxide levels have been 20 times higher than they are now, and it didn't destroy life on Earth. If anything, it made life better for all those that lived in those times. Much more attention is being paid to the role the Sun has in our climate - not only by the variation in energy produced, but by the effects of sunspots, solar magnetic field strength, solar wind, solar interaction with galactic cosmic rays, solar forcing from ocean heating and cooling, and dozens of other areas that weren't given much attention by the "climate change" crowd.

We still don't know everything we need to know. In some areas, we don't even know what we don't know. The relationship between the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the El Nino/La Nina Surface Oscillation, the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Surface Oscillation, deep-ocean current flow, seawater CO2 sequestration, the effects of all of these on weather (as opposed to climate), and more than a dozen other things are just beginning to percolate in our scientific community, and haven't reached the point where scientists can definitely say that two actions are linked.

If "climate change" is caused by carbon dioxide, then why have CO2 levels always FOLLOWED temperature increases in the historical record?

Just as an anecdotal comment, there is still snow on top of Pikes Peak. Ask some of the long-term residents how often that happens in mid-June.

A vote for Cap-and-trade is a vote to add an extra $1800 or more to the cost of energy for every American, a cost that will probably triple within five years. None of your constituents are going to be happy with that, and they WILL know.

>Cap and trade was proven effective in the United States
>in the 1990s when a similar program was implemented to
>successfully curb acid rain caused by sulfur dioxide (SO2)
>emissions. Through the trading of pollution credits,
>industries that could not reduce emissions were able to
>purchase allowances at a lower cost than the cost of
>reducing their emissions, and industries that reduced
>pollution earned revenue by selling extra allowances.

Cap and trade has proven to be an horrendous disaster in Europe, and the US law is based on the European one. Sulfur dioxide was a known pollutant, and caused a very significant problem (I saw some of the acid-rain-damaged forests in Europe when I was stationed there). Carbon dioxide doesn't meet that same standard - not by a long shot. Not many people exhale sulfur dioxide - EVERY ANIMAL on the planet Earth exhales carbon dioxide. Sulfur dioxide was reduced because the EPA established minimum release levels that all industries HAD to abide by.

>Colorado has been ahead of the curve when it comes to energy
>efficiency. In November 2004, Colorado became the first state
>in the country to pass a statewide ballot referendum
>(Amendment 37) requiring a renewable electricity standard (RES)
>that requires that a portion of retail electricity sales be
>supplied by renewable sources. The majority of states in the
>country have now adopted statewide electricity standards, also
>referred to as renewable portfolio standards (RPS).

Tell me, exactly how well has Colorado met that standard? I'd say that the amount of electricity generated by "alternate" or "renewable" standards is minute, the cost several times that for energy generated by any other source, and heavily-subsidized. The only renewable energy that is cost-effective is hydroelectric power. Ninety percent of that is probably generated by the station in the Grand Canyon of the Gunnison. There are a few places where geothermal power could be used to augment (but not replace) other sources of energy. A few people use wind power to supplement their power usage, but that's all wind will ever be useful for - supplementing existing sources. The same can be said for solar power.

France did quite a bit of experimenting with alternate energy sources in the 1960s and 1970s. They ended up opting for nuclear power as their primary source, with "alternate" energy sources for supplementation. We could learn a lot from the mistakes and miscalculations the French made before the settled down to their current system.

>There are still many details to address before the President can
>sign a final comprehensive energy bill. First, Congress must ensure
>that the bill does not cause a rise in consumer energy prices.

Impossible. ANY restrictions, additional regulations, penalties, etc., that result from cap and trade will be passed on to the customer. Just satisfying the paperwork requirements will raise prices. NOTHING Congress does happens without someone, somewhere, paying more because of it.

>Second, the legislation must be carefully drafted in a way that
>limits future legal challenges.

Again, impossible. You're expecting the most litigious society in the world to accept one of the most intrusive pieces of legislation in our generation to NOT find a way to sue someone because of it. It won't happen. The only thing to do is to try to ensure that the majority of those lawsuits will be rejected for failing to provide evidence of harm. The information I've seen on the current bill doesn't even come close to meeting that requirement.

>Third, the bill must be drafted in a way that stimulates, not hurts,
>the American economy.

Again, you're talking about limiting growth of proven energy-producing operations, replacing them with pie-in-the-sky "renewable" sources THAT DO NOT EXIST, and pretending it won't hurt the economy.

Before you vote on this monstrosity, I suggest you spend some time with a true Colorado resource, Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr. He is professor-emeritus at the University of Colorado. I'm sure you can find him easily enough. Spend a couple of hours with him. I think it will be well worth your time.

>Please do not respond to this email. To send another message please
>visit my website at http://www.bennet.senate.gov and fill out the
>webform for a prompt response. Thank you.

I have no hope that Colorado will be adequately represented by this individual.

About Those Tea Parties...

I have been pleasantly surprised by the turnout to the so-called "Tea Parties" around the country. It shows that people in this nation still care about the values on which this nation is founded, especially the issue of excessive taxation. But is that enough? What are the goals of the organizers of these "Tea Party" events? Are these events helping to move toward achieving those goals? Is there enough common ground that a Tea Party in Massachusetts, one in Missouri, and one in California will work toward the same goals? And, most importantly, will achieving those goals be truly beneficial?

I'm not being disparaging. A minimum amount of leadership and coordination can get the Tea Party process organized and on the street. It takes far more leadership and coordination to come up with common goals, common positions, and common approaches to what we the people want to achieve. Maybe that's working itself out in the background as these protests progress. I certainly hope so!

IMHO, the most significant goal any political/social/philosophical organization can work toward is the protection of individual freedom. All of our other freedoms hinge upon that. The more restrictions are placed on the individual, the fewer freedoms that individual has. The Bill of Rights was largely seen by the designers of our Constitution as the enshrinement of individual rights. That includes the right to keep more of the money we work to earn, as well as the rest of the litany of rights our founding fathers enshrined in our Constitution. A well-coordinated campaign against the actions of our government that infringe upon our individual liberties should appeal to all American citizens. And have no misunderstanding - the current government is definitely out to restrict the individual liberties of the majority of the citizens of this nation.

Tea Parties alone won't cause the government to even catch its breath. There has to be more - much more. With each additional goal the leadership of the Tea Party organization states, with each new activity they undertake, the government will work to demonize, demoralize, and disband the movement. Each action the Tea Party organizers approve of must be meticulous with being within the limits of legitimate legal discourse. Even one person working outside the legal limits of individual freedoms can bring an entire organization into disrepute. Tea Party organizers need to ensure that the goals of the organization are clearly stated, unambiguous, and legitimate. They must also be willing to forcibly eject from their organization any member that doesn't accept the restrictions the organization places upon itself, to stay within the bounds of legitimate opposition. Only then can these Tea Parties move on to more ambitious goals.

I'd like to recommend a few goals for the organization. My short list includes:

1) Education on the Constitution. You can't tell what rights you may be losing if you don't know what they are to begin with. You also can't identify behavior that is forbidden by our Constitution, or reserved for other than the Federal Government, if you don't know what our Constitution does and doesn't say. Our "public schools" do a very poor job of teaching both the letter of the Constitution, and "the rest of the story" - the Federalist/Anti-Federalist exchange of letters that helped form both the debate for acceptance, the huge public debates, and the thousands of letters that influenced the actual structure and content of the Constitution. I doubt more than one in ten-thousand US citizens has ever read ANY of the "Federalist Papers", although they're freely available online. They're just some of the historical documents that helped shape our fledgling nation that are stored at Thomas, the Library of Congress access portal.

2) Internal communication. An organization that can bring tens of thousands of signatures to a petition, or write tens of thousands of letters to the White House or Congress, or organize a demonstration of a half-million people can have serious impact on legislation, even in an all-Democratic Party government. That means developing lists of people, their home and email addresses, their telephone numbers, and what THEY WANT out of participating in this movement.

3) A list of well-defined, common objectives. There are a number of things that most Americans can agree on as legitimate objectives of both a political and a social organization such as the Tea Parties. My personal list would include:

• repeal of the 17th Amendment, returning power to the States to appoint Senators, instead of having them bought by the highest bidder.


• Elimination of several different taxes, including the Inheritance (or "death") tax, certain excise taxes, motor vehicle taxes, double-taxation on investment income and savings, etc.


• Elimination of about half the Federal bureaucracy, and the shutting down of "temporary" offices whose usefulness expired decades ago.


• Eliminating the power of unelected bureaucrats to institute new regulations and restrictions.


• The review, repeal, re-write, or re-examination of every single US law that is currently "on the books", and reducing them to the absolute MINIMUM necessary to maintain an equitable society.


• Term limits for members of Congress, the Senate, the Federal judiciary, and other elected or appointed positions.

I'm sure Tea Party members could add significantly to this list.

4) A program to get the attention of our "elected officials", including the President. That includes larger, noisier, and more robust (but orderly) Tea Parties, writing campaigns, public speaking engagements, involvement with local political organizations, and anything else that will eventually force those officials to respond. A sure-fire attention-getter is to hit politicians where it hurts them the most - in their wallet. Imagine the impact upon an elected official if there were a total boycott of one of the recipients of their "earmarks", including a daily picket line protesting the waste. Another excellent tactic is to find a major contributor to a particular candidate that has nationwide locations (Wendy's, JC Penneys, Sears, Allstate Insurance, etc - even Boeing or United Airlines), and organize a boycott of their products. The only three things that must be addressed first is a) whether or not the particular company is truly a prime contributor to the targeted candidate, b) whether the proposed boycott would have any effect (kind of hard to boycott the military, or have any influence when a particular candidate is running unopposed), and c) the legality of such a boycott.

5) Get more involved in the process of choosing candidates - at EVERY level. If enough people are involved, it'll be far more difficult to have a candidate forced upon the electorate that shouldn't be.

I'm looking forward to what the future brings. It promises to be entertaining, if nothing else.

The President of Big Media

There's no doubt that the so-called "Mainstream Media (MSM)" - newspapers, television, and to a lesser extent radio - were instrumental in ensuring the election of Candidate Barrack Hussein Obama as president of the United States. Suddenly, however, the MSM wants to distance itself from President Obama, as his actions and words cause concern not only among conservatives, but also among many of Obama's supposed partners in the Democratic Party. The newspapers are beginning to understand why it's not wise to elect a relative neophyte to such a high office, and are afraid the coming failures of the Obama Administration will implicate them.

It's too late. The MSM cannot escape the reality of its extremely partisan behavior toward Barrack Obama, no matter how they conduct themselves over the next few years.

The same is true of the mainstream portions of the Democratic Party. They, too, endorsed a candidate they knew little about to a position that is the ultimate in the demand of personal trust - and at least a LITTLE experience in making difficult decisions. The election of Barrack Obama has led to the destruction of institutional trust between the President, Congress, and the People.

Both the media and the Democrats failed to "vet" their candidate, and today we have a person with NO executive experience in the most strenuous and demanding executive position in the free world. We have a president that doesn't really understand (or seem to care about) science, economics, general law, personal freedom, national defense, human psychology, or institutional or personal integrity.

It's going to be a LONG four years, not only for our nation and its people, but for the MSM and the Democratic Party. The failures of the Republican Party may spell its doom. For the Democratic Party, it might be success that destroys it. Either way, the MSM will be forced to shoulder a huge portion of the blame.

We need to have a realistic debate on "climate change".

"Our" government is once again proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are few intelligent adults among its members. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants to label carbon dioxide (CO2) a pollutant. If they succeed, perhaps we can convince all the employees of the EPA to stop breathing, since CO2 is a direct byproduct of that activity. In fact, a certain level of CO2 is ESSENTIAL to breathing, as its percentage of content in our lungs is what triggers exhaling.

CO2 is supposed to be causing runaway anthropogenic (man-caused) global warming. But there has been a net COOLING over the last ten years, even though CO2 levels continue to climb.

Man does belch a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere - but it only amounts to about 1.2% of the total atmospheric CO2. A little more than 55% of that is sequestered through various processes.

My chemistry and physics classes were long ago, but from recent readings has been somewhat refreshed. Accordingly, from what I've read various places, water vapor accounts for 95% of all greenhouse warming, with CO2 providing 4%, and all the rest of the greenhouse gasses making up the other >1%, dominated by methane (CH4).

Carbon dioxide, methane, sulfates (H2S, H2SO4, H2SO3), and in some cases aerosols (airborne particles) are constantly being emitted by volcanic action, among many other things. A large,lengthy volcanic eruption can put more of these greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in a matter of days than human beings can do in a decade.

Before the EPA declares carbon dioxide or methane, both natural byproducts of natural processes, pollutants, there needs to be a very vigorous, very extensive debate. Sixty days isn't long enough to even build a bibliography of all the data collected in the last 50 years on Earth's climate, much less how and why it changes. We see "through a glass, darkly" only a portion of the variables that can - and do - have an impact on the climate of the Earth, nor how all the different variables interact.

We have a difficult time predicting the weather three days in advance, yet "computer models" claim to be able to predict what will happen a hundred years in the future.

Until we know how the climate (not weather) is probably going to react to interacting variables such as solar forcing, cosmic rays, sunspots, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, changes in the amount of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and methane in the atmosphere (both natural and anthropogenic), and dozens of other variables, making monumental decisions that will affect every person on the planet, based on partial and poorly-understood "evidence", may very well do far more damage than doing nothing.

Excuses, excuses

As anyone who reads my blog has noted, I haven't been very productive lately. There are many reasons for that, from health issues to household changes to being the day-to-day "father" to a four-year-old (difficult at 40, even harder now at 62). I hope to get back to posting on a regular basis, especially with the current political, economic, and cultural environment.

Why the Attacks on Sarah Palin?

John McCain's pick of Sarah Palin to be his running mate sent shock waves through the entire United States. Not only did it energize the Republican base, suck independent votes from Barrack Obama, and stir pure hatred in the hearts of the mass media, it sent fear through the hearts of the Washington insiders from both parties.

You see, Sarah Palin means what she says when she says she wants to clean up politics. Most of the people in Washington, regardless of political affiliation, or even those without it, don't want anything to change. That might mean the end of their gravy-train lifestyle.

We can see that fear in their vicious, unhinged attacks on Sarah Palin now that the election is over (and was part of the unbelievable personal attack against her from within her own party BEFORE the election). We can see the "Powers that Be" trying to destroy a true reformer before she can build enough credentials to actually succeed the next time she runs. I expect a huge, outside-funded program of constant personal and professional attacks against her when (or if) she runs for re-election.

Sarah Palin has exposed not only the corruption within the Democratic Party, but that within the Republican Party as well. For that she MUST be destroyed, before the "little people" catch on.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Democrats

As an Independent, I have to judge who I vote for by the information I get from the sources I trust. This year, that's difficult to do. The Democratic Party continues to tell the largest whoppers in the fight to see who gets to control the purse-strings in the next administration. Here's one of their key pronouncements:

Obama camp suggests Palin has distorted record

"Since naming Gov. Palin as their vice presidential nominee, the McCain campaign has distorted, distracted and outright lied to the American people about her record in a desperate attempt to hide the fact that a McCain/Palin administration would be nothing more than a continuation of the failed Bush policies of the last eight years,"the memo read.

Huh? The FAILED Bush policies of the last eight years? What "failures" are those?

1. We have not been attacked on American soil since 9/11/01. Is that a failure?


2. There have been no MAJOR attacks against Americans abroad except those in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. Is that a failure?


3. The United States has destroyed the ability of Saddam Hussein and the people of Iraq to support terrorism abroad, especially in Palestine and Lebanon, where Saddam was most active. Is that a failure?


4. The Bush Administration created a single point of attack for the terrorists behind 9/11, the Cole bombing, the attacks in Kenya and Uganda, the murder of diplomats in several countries, and the first WTC attack, and crushed them. Is that the failure they mean?
   
5. There is currently a democratically elected government in both Iraq and Afghanistan - for the first time in the history of either nation. Is that one of Bush's failures?


6. The Bush tax cuts ended a period of stagnation in the nation's economy, and led to more than six years of constant growth in the GDP of the United States. Is that the failure they mean?


7. The Bush Administration has established strong, mutually-beneficial relations with India, one of the two most actively growing areas of Asia. Is THAT the failure they mean?

The only things I can see that this administration has "failed" to do is to kiss up to our enemies, or to become "more like Europe" (which has more failed or failing programs that I can document, such as 10% unemployment, "national health care" that takes ten times as long to get a referral than our "broken" system, and costs three times more, 15% or more of its population on welfare of one kind or another, military units that can't fight, and a stagnant or declining GDP, just for starters).

What do the Democrats have to hold up as successes over the last eight years? There has not been any major legislation passed by either the House or Senate in the last two years, but dozens of "investigations" have been launched with the sole purpose of finding a "gotcha" moment to hang around the necks of Republicans. The price of gas went out of sight - almost doubling in the last two years. The Democratic Party leadership decided it was more important to go on vacation than to address this issue. This one single issue has had the greatest impact on the average citizen of the United States, raising the cost of everything they purchase. The Democrats still refuse to allow environmentally safe drilling in two-thirds of the unexplored areas in the United States and its territorial waters.

There are plenty of pieces of evidence to show that alternative energy supplies are not capable of meeting current energy demands, yet these are the ONLY means the Democrats will allow to be pursued. There are several new products that help reduce the environmental impact of coal-fired power plants that could use some support, but these are ignored. The Democrats want to force the United States to recognize carbon dioxide as a "pollutant", yet plant life would be incapable of continuing for even a day without it. The Democrats claim that man-made carbon dioxide is changing the climate, making it hotter. This argument has taken a direct hit below the waterline from the failure of the sun to generate more than a single sunspot in the current cycle, and we've had the coolest summer in 30 years.

The Republicans were elected to office beginning in 1994 to clean up the mess in Washington, and instead began acting like Democrats. We don't need TWO Democratic parties, and the Republicans have lost ground in the fight. Yet the Democrats have done nothing to prove they have a workable plan for ANYTHING.

It's time for a sycophant press to pull its head out of the nether regions of their bodies and begin telling us the truth about both parties, and stop being an active participant in one of the campaigns. Failing that, this nation may end up in much worse shape than it's been under our current administration.

The words of Joseph Pulitzer apply here: "Our nation and its press will rise or fall together". The current behavior of the majority news outlets are destructive of our form of government and the people it supports.

An open letter to Governor Palin

Dear Governor Palin,

Congratulations on your pick to be the next Vice-President of the United States. You are the first "real person" I've seen in politics since I can't remember when.

I'm sorry to hear that your daughter has to grow up faster than what you'd wished for her. At least you and your husband will be there to help her and her new husband adjust to life as parents - even if it's by long distance. The enthusiastic help of grandparents will also be a major help to your daughter - I'm glad they're willing. I'm also very happy that the father both acknowledges the child, and wants to fill the role of father and husband. Too many young ladies today don't have that kind of essential support.

I know how it feels when your daughter tells you she's pregnant. We went through that 20+ years ago. It's rough on everyone in the family, but working it out together can be extremely rewarding.

I'm also proud of you for your love and care to your Downs-Syndrome son. Having reared a disabled child, we know how hard it is. Our son was inflicted with severe brain damage as a child, before we adopted him. You can't help but love them, but sometimes the demands seem overwhelming. I think you have the right stuff, and the right support group, to handle the many problems you and your son will face in life.

Give my highest regards to Track, and tell him I wish him nothing but good as he helps defend this nation against its enemies. As a military veteran, I know how rough military service, especially foreign service, can be for young people away from home the first time.

I, and my wife, will pray for you as you go through this Convention, and through the grueling political campaign ahead of you. I know the Left will do anything and everything to keep you from getting your message out. Know also that their doing this is a sign of their desperation. Stay strong, and keep forging ahead. I firmly believe you will be victorious in the end.

By the way, I am NOT a Republican, but an Independent.

Our sincerest Regards,

Hammering Russia for Hammering Georgia

What the United States can do

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Charles Krauthammer had an interesting article at Town Hall today about the same subject. While I agree somewhat to what Charles has written, I find it doesn't go far enough. Here are Prof. Krauthammer's. proposals:

We are not without resources. There are a range of measures to be deployed if Russia does not live up to its cease-fire commitments:

1. Suspend the NATO-Russia Council established in 2002 to help bring Russia closer to the West. Make clear that dissolution will follow suspension. The council gives Russia a seat at the NATO table. Message: Invading neighboring democracies forfeits the seat.

2. Bar Russian entry to the World Trade Organization.

3. Dissolve the G-8. Putin's dictatorial presence long made it a farce but no one wanted to upset the bear by expelling it. No need to. The seven democracies simply withdraw. Then immediately announce the reconstitution of the original G-7.

4. Announce a U.S.-European boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympics at Sochi. To do otherwise would be obscene. Sochi is 15 miles from Abkhazia, the other Georgian province just invaded by Russia. The Games will become a riveting contest between the Russian, Belarusian and Jamaican bobsled teams.

The most crucial and unconditional measure, however, is this: Reaffirm support for the Saakashvili government and declare that its removal by the Russians would lead to recognition of a government-in-exile. This would instantly be understood as providing us the legal basis for supplying and supporting a Georgian resistance to any Russian-installed regime.

These are all fairly good steps, though not strong enough. We should immediately work with our allies to freeze Russia's ability to actively participate in EVERY international organization they and we belong to. When they veto that resolution in the United Nations, we simply pull out of the United Nations completely, leaving it a hollow shell of dictators and tyrants, capable of doing nothing.

Instead of boycotting the 2014 winter olympics, we should render Russia's membership in the Olympic Games null and void, with the ability to reconsider in 20 or 30 years.

Place a 100% tariff on ALL Russian goods, services, or raw materials. This will make them so expensive they won't have any buyers, even China.

Build a new pipeline from Iraq through Turkey to the Mediterranean. This will really put a crimp in Russia's shorts, as it will open up a new path for oil to flow that Russia will have a hard time controlling. Assist the Turks and Iraq in controlling the PKK, the Russian tool on the Turkey/Iraq border.

Agree to assist every nation in NATO to upgrade their armed forces, and to create a "resistance army" should Russia attack them.

Return to the Moon in force - not to militarize it, but to ensure that no other nation does (especially Russia and China).

Reduce Russia's ability to influence European decisions by helping Europe reduce its dependence on Russian oil and gas. Do that by expanding production in the United States, especially of natural gas, to the point where there is a surplus that can be exported to Western Europe. Increase domestic production of electricity from nuclear energy, renewable energy, and clean coal, and reduce the use of natural gas to generate electricity. Reducing our demand for imported energy would allow more oil and natural gas to be diverted to European countries.

Rebuild our military to 16 Army divisions, 6 Marine divisions, and whatever Air and Navy assets are needed to support them. Our reduction in force following the collapse of the Soviet Union gave the world the idea that the United States was weak and an easy mark. Georgia is paying part of the price for that draw-down. Rebuilding will take time, but it's necessary.

Teddy Roosevelt had the right idea: in order to get people to listen to you, speak softly, and carry a big stick - larger than the one they have. Unsupported words accomplish nothing.

A Signal of What to Expect

Both John McCain and Barrack Obama have weighed in on the troubles in the Republic of Georgia, and it doesn't take a genius to determine which person would be the best leader in such a situation.

McCain came right out and said that the Russian invasion of Georgia would have "significant consequences" for Russia. Short of actually bombing Russia into the past, there isn't much that the United States can do militarily. McCain knows that, both from a military and from a congressional viewpoint. He also knows that there are indirect ways to curb Russia short of all-out war. He knows how to push, and where to push. There ARE a few things - military things - that can be done, but those are best left unmentioned - either in this blog or from the lips of either contender. John McCain knows that. I doubt Barrack Obama could even come up with the same kind of ideas.

Barrack Obama has done what he does best - talk. Not only has he talked, he's pushed for a solution that is based strictly on talking. Diplomats encourage matters be handled by talks, because that's all they know or understand. Talk by itself is worthless: it requires some form of power behind the talk to ensure that talks happen, and that they achieve some results. Somehow, Obama believes that if we all get together and talk the issue out, things will be peachy keen. Neville Chamberlain tried that with Adolph Hitler. We all know how THAT turned out. On the other hand, John Kennedy used both diplomacy and military force, called Russia's bluff in 1962 over missiles in Cuba, and Russia backed down.

I'll still have to wait and see what happens, but I doubt that any amount of rhetoric will cause Russia to pull out of Georgia. Russia MUST be made to pay for their blatant aggression, but there are more ways to achieve that than military confrontation. It's going to have to take a serious counter-threat - such as the banning of all Russian-made products in Europe and the United States, ejecting Russia from the Group of 8 (and maybe replacing them with India?), or some equally effective economic and/or political activity - to get Russia to back down. Without the ability to confront Russia militarily, collateral action is all that's possible, but it still can cause the Bear to feel some severe pain.

Why the Democrats are Stupid

Amanda Carpenter, Town Hall's political correspondent, has a great article today, Pelosi Reacts to GOP House Protest. It opens with:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) issued a curt retort to House Republicans staging a week-long protest against her decision to unceremoniously adjourn the House last week.

“While a very small band of your colleagues remain on the House floor to discuss gas prices, their constituents deserve to know why their representatives in Congress have failed to support serious, responsible proposals,” she wrote in a letter to GOP Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner (Ohio.).

“We cannot drill our way out of this problem,” she said.

This is a typical Democratic Party straw man. The Republicans don't want to "drill our way out of this problem", although one aspect of what they do want to do is to drill. It's only one of a host of recommendations made in the current energy bill Nancy Pelosi is afraid to bring to a vote.

The Republicans are pushing for a broad, inclusive energy bill that includes a mix of expanded conventional energy production, new development, research into alternative energy applications, and much more. On this issue, the Democrats are out of touch with the rest of the nation, and are doing their best to push this country into a major recession - possibly into a depression as great as the Great Depresssion - also brought on by a Democrat.

There is no outlook for a drop in demand for oil and gas over the next 50 years. That means that unless there is more oil brought to the market, the price will continue to rise. If the United States were to enact a truly comprehensive energy bill that contained virtually every option available to us, it would have an IMMEDIATE effect on the oil market by telling the world that supply WILL increase - maybe not in the immediate future, but soon. That would automatically drop the price of oil as much as $30-$50 a barrel. That would provide the majority of Americans with much-needed relief from the current high cost of energy. In the meantime, this nation could begin to do the many other things that will eventually reduce or end our dependence upon oil - especially foreign oil.

What things are needed in a comprehensive energy bill? Here's MY laundry list:

1. Remove the obstacles to drilling for domestic oil within the Continental United States, both on land and offshore.


2. Repair and upgrade the energy infrastructure of the United States, including pipelines to transmit oil and gas, rail and road transportation infrastructure, and transmission lines to transmit local surplus electrical production to areas that need it.


3. Design, build, and bring online 150 new, safer 2000MW nuclear power plants, and upgrade existing ones. At least a third of those should be fast breeder reactors that produce as much fuel as they consume.


4. Design, build, and bring online 200 additional 1500MW coal-fired power plants to provide additional capacity while we're waiting for those nuclear plants to come online, and to use during peak demand.


5. Increase research into biofuels, especially into feedstocks that don't include grains that are normally grown for human and livestock consumption.


6. Increase research into other alternative energy sources, specifically wind, solar, tides, geothermal, and hydrogen. Require an in-depth cost/benefit evaluation of any alternative energy source. Such evaluations should include the impact of implementing alternative energy programs, and the positive AND negative effects that implementation has on the energy market, on the environment, and on the people.


7. Bring online any energy source (especially alternative energy sources) that is commercially feasible, and connect the sources to the expanded and modernized national power grid.


8. REQUIRE oil and gas companies to upgrade, modernize, and expand current domestic oil refineries, and build at least 20 new ones across the nation.


9. Pass legislation that limits "environmental" lawsuits, and force "environmental" groups to post bond equal to the potential lost investment their lawsuits cost energy production companies.


10. REQUIRE THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (EPA) TO PROVE, scientifically, that their limits and restrictions are necessary (not "potentially" necessary) for the preservation of species, and to limit damage to the environment.


11. Require a complete cost/benefit analysis of ALL energy legislation passed into law, all regulations imposed by any government agency (at any level), and all "supporting" laws and regulations, determine the success or failure of those laws and regulations in achieving the goals set by them, and evaluate their costs/benefits to the nation, its people, and its security. Eliminate, combine, re-write, or replace those that provide limited or no practical benefit to the nation and its people as a whole.


12. Increase coal production, both for export and for domestic use.


13. Allow increased exploration, development, and transportation of nuclear power plant fuel stocks.

Nancy Pelosi's "we can't drill ourselves out of this problem" is a smokescreen for doing nothing. Doing nothing is no longer a viable option.

Taking the vacation I can't afford to...

Congress adjourned last week, and the Democrats especially left town in a hurry for their five-week August vacation. A strange thing happened, though - about 40 Republicans stayed. They said something about not leaving until the work was done. I can understand that! Many times when I was on active duty in the Air Force, we "stayed until the work was done". Sometimes, that was days, not hours. That was what the job was all about - doing what had to be done. Apparently the Democrats don't believe that.

Right now, gas in Colorado Springs is around $3.79 a gallon, depending on where you buy it. I know from past experience that if it's $3.79 here, it'll be $3.89 in Trinidad, Colorado, and anywhere from $3.80 to $4.15 between there and Dallas. The high cost of gasoline has raised the price of everything else along my route (I-25 to Raton, NM, US 64/87 from Raton to Clayton, NM, US87 from Clayton to Dalhart, TX, US287 from Dalhart to Decatur, TX, US 380 from Decatur to Greenville, Tx, US69 from Greenville to I-20, and I-20 to Ruston, LA, where my father-in-law lives). Total miles: about 1100 one way, 2200 round trip. Since my wife and I are both in our 60's, we don't push it. It usally takes us two days to make the trip. Our 1996 Dodge Caravan (fully paid for) gets about 23 miles per gallon on the highway, a little less on some of the local highways we drive. That means we'd have to buy at least 95 gallons of gas to make the round trip, plus whatever visiting we'd do once we got to where we were going. At an average price of $4 a gallon, that's $380. Add in another $200 for food, another $250 for lodging, and the cost of just getting there and back is over $800.

I get an Air Force retirement check, VA disability (70%), and Social Security. That's pretty fixed. My local bills haven't been fixed, and the $1500 we'd set aside to go to Louisiana this August/September for the annual family reunion had to go elsewhere. I'm staying home this year, even though we have something special we want to share with the family. We just can't afford to make the trip.

What's that got to do with Congress taking a vacation? A lot! The reason my bills have been so high is because the cost of a barrel of oil has shot up from $65-$70 a barrel to $120-$145 a barrel. Just about everything in most towns in the United States is delivered by truck or train. Both use oil products. If it costs more to move products, the price goes up. That goes for gasoline, food, and just about everything else. The linens in most motels are picked up and returned by laundry trucks, or washed locally. They require hot water, which is heated mostly by natural gas, whose price has gone up along with oil.

People who bid on commodities hoping to sell them at a higher price later and make a profit have seen that there's a greater demand for oil and gas than there's a supply. The old law of supply and demand has kicked in, and the price of oil and gas has doubled in less than a year. The people in the US have reacted, driving less. The price came down $.10 to $.20 a gallon, but that's about all it's going to drop from conservation. The only way prices are going to go down to the $2/gallon range (or less) is for there to be a major increase in production. There's little hope for increased production elsewhere - not with the people who control that oil becoming addicted to the higher prices. About the only place that production can be increased in such a way as to lower prices is to drill locally - along the US coasts, in Alaska, in untapped formations in the lower 48 and in Canada. Two things that stand in the way of that happening are the Democratically-controlled Congress, and several thousands of pages of unnecessarily stringent environmental regulations backed by lawsuit after lawsuit brought by the majority of "environmental groups" in the United States and Canada to delay, to increase costs, and to hamper any hope of energy independence for this nation.

There is legislation that was brought before Congress this year to ease the restrictions, open up areas known to contain large quantities of oil and gas to development, and to move the United States forward toward energy independence - or at least to reduce the level of dependence (and the cost) that we're currently held hostage to. The Democratic leadership, instead of bringing this legislation to the floor, discussing it, and voting on it, decided to stonewall the legislation and go on vacation.

It's time to hold those accountable who stall, sabotage, and subvert the will of the people for greater energy independence. It's time to hold those accountable who make it impossible for people like me to take a vacation, while they run off with work left undone. If I'd done that in the Air Force, I'd probably have been court-martialed. The least we can do for those that put pleasure before the work they're paid to do is to fire them. It's very easy - instead of voting for the Democratic candidate, choose someone else - anyone else. Unless they're a member of the "Green" party, they can't do any worse at the job than Representative Nany Pelosi, who uses her power and position to stiff the rest of us, or Senator Harry Reid, who is just as feckless about obeying the oath of office he's repeated enough times to know it by heart.

NOTE: Republican Representative John Bohner has created a live-action blog where you can post your comments for the Republicans remaining in DC to read. Check it out, and share your ideas.

Speaker Pelosi, tear down the stonewall

The Democrats in Congress, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority leader Harry Reid in particular, have built a wall of refusal and denial against drilling in the United States and its territorial waters. While President Bush has revoked an executive order against offshore drilling and tapping other areas, Nancy Pelosi has refused to allow a bill to drill in offshore areas of the United States come before the entire house for a vote. Why? Because she knows it will pass.

My own senator, Ken Salazar, says he is against tapping Colorado's oil shale, regardless of what the price of gasoline rises to, even $10/gallon. Maybe the senator doesn't have to worry about paying $50 to fill the tank every week, but those that live here in Colorado certainly do. Those of us like me, who are on a fixed income, are paying the price for Sen. Salazar's conscience. Thanks a lot, Senator.

It's not just the price of gasoline that's going up. Anything that has to be shipped more than a mile has gone up in price, mostly because the price of gasoline and other petroleum-based fuels (almost all of them) has made shipping more costly. Add to it the stupidity of turning food into ethanol to burn, and you've got a price spiral that is hurting everyone but the very rich. Why is all this happening? Look no farther than Congress and the nation's "green" brigades.

We need to build 70 additional nuclear power plants in this country, but there hasn't been one approved in 35 years. The "environmentalists" have used every trick, legal and illegal, to prevent approval, construction, and operation of additional nuclear plants economical suicide, even though nuclear power is the cleanest, and the safest form of generating electricity we have.

This nation need at LEAST ten additional oil refineries, and virtually every single older refinery needs to be upgraded. Approval can take 30 years and billions of dollars in legal fees, if it's granted at all. Why? Mainly because Congress, through the Environmental Protection Agency makes it all but impossible to do so. Why would Congress do that? Because they are bought and paid for by the major "environmental" groups.

We have the largest proven coal reserves in the world, yet getting another coal-fired power plant built requires jumping through so many hoops Barnum and Bailey Circus couldn't outdo it. Today's technology has all but eliminated harmful emissions, yet the "green" team does everything possible to keep new plants from being approved and/or built. The entire "global climate change" bruhaha is a scam to keep the United States from expanding its electric energy base. Al Gore's "inconvenient truth" is nothing but an irresponsible lie.

It's time Congress is called to task and those that support keeping us dependent on foreign oil, that refuse to allow the United States to develop its own resources, that force the price of expansion of nuclear power, oil refineries, and clean-coal power plants so high they become impossible to build, and keep the prices high to "force us to conserve" are thrown out of office. It's also time for the Executive branch of the government to curtail the corruption of power blatant among so many bureaucratic functions, especially the EPA.

I won't hold my breath...

Another Timmy Update

We went to court on Tuesday, July 1, for a hearing and disposition of Timmy's case. We were given permanent custody of Timmy at the hearing, and George and Elaine, Timmy's "other" grandparents, were given bi-weekly visitation rights. We can now make some long-term plans for Timmy's care and development, get him enrolled in DEERS, and do some other things. Timmy's hearing capped five days of almost non-stop action with us, and we're finally getting to the point where we've recovered.

June 28th was our second annual 497th Reconnaissance Technical Group Springs Fling at the Air Force Academy. I'm pretty sure everyone had a good time - I know I did, until my back started acting up. I think Charles Sakai is already planning next year's extravaganza.

Mike Prahl, a long-time and close friend, visited us, part for the Fling and part to do some serious stamp trading and catching up. Our picnic Saturday had an unexpected twist for him - he met a fellow Church member from Wiesbaden he hadn't seen in decades.

497 RTG Reunion in two weeks!

We just finished up the last planning meeting before the second annual 497th Reconnaissance Technical Group's Colorado Springs reunion earlier this afternoon. Everything seems to be well in hand for Saturday, June 28th, at the Air Force Academy picnic area. I've promised to bring my copy of the 497th RTG "A Look Back - 30 Years on the Rhine" booklet and medallion. There will be lots of food, probably some photos, and good times with good friends. Anyone associated with the 497th, or any member of any Recce-Tech, is invited to attend. I'll be looking forward to seeing a lot of familiar faces.

Let's talk Congressional Reform

Both parties are under fire for the way they're conducting what is supposed to be the Nation's business, but what has become nothing but a partisan "Gotcha" game. It's time for our duly elected representatives to put their childishness behind them, and prove to us they're actually adults.

There's a lot Congress can do. Changing the weather isn't one of them. There is little doubt now that those that push "anthropogenic global warming" have little in the way of facts to back their claims. There are growing mounds of evidence that water vapor, the sun, and a dozen other factors play a greater role in global climate change than anything mankind has been able to do. Yet Congress, after being petitioned by 31,000 degreed scientists, continue to push to correct a non-problem. It's time to stop the nonsense.

The oil market is going crazy. Demand has finally outstripped available supply. Yet the United States sits on billions of barrels of oil that isn't being tapped, because a few people are against it, supposedly for environmental reasons. The "Environmentalists" constantly scream about "polluting unspoiled natural beauty", while the rest of us are screaming about $4/gallon gas. It's time to tell the environmentalists to shove it, and begin exploiting the resources we have. There are plenty of protections in place that have proven their usefulness in minimizing ecological damage, and no good reason NOT to open up these areas for production.

We also need to build at least five new refineries in the United States, as well as upgrade, expand, and modernize the ones we already have. Those refineries need to be built close to where the people are, to cut down on transport costs and the potential for spills that would endanger the environment. The same people that don't want us drilling for new oil also don't want us to build new refineries. How did such a small minority gain so much power, and why is Congress surrendering to them? Maybe the rest of us need to get organized and start putting our own pressure on Congress.

Americans are a mobile nation. Congress has taken a giant step in trying to curtail our mobility. Most Americans are going to be angry unless this self-inflicted injury is set to right. Most Americans are also intelligent enough to point the finger at the true culprit, not the "greedy oil companies" who make about a quarter as much as the government gets on each gallon of gas.

The ethanol nonsense is an excellent example of the law of unintended consequences. By mandating (and subsidizing) that a certain amount of ethanol be distilled and added to gasoline, Congress has had a major hand in raising food prices for the rest of us. While I'd love to see the demise of high-fructose corn syrup being added to everything, whether it's needed or not, that's just a small part of the problem with burning food. Corn is both a food for people to eat in itself, and is used as feed for beef, poultry, hogs, and dozens of other animals that end up as meat on our table. In fact, the entire farm subsidy fiasco is long overdue for a major overhaul, if it isn't ended completely.

Congress is also trying desperately to force another defeat upon the American military, simply because of their unreasonable hatred for George Bush and everything connected to him. The lies told about this administration would have everyone in Congress with noses twelve feet long, if they had the same response to telling untruths as Pinocchio did. When the history of this era is written by totally unbiased historians fifty or seventy-five years from now, it will be Congress, not the President that will be painted in the most unflattering terms. In this Internet age, it's virtually impossible to rewrite the present and get away with it. Too many people have the ability to confront and challenge those who will try to shade the truth in their favor.

Well before either party has held their formal caucus to announce their presidential candidates and the platform those candidates will run on, one fact stands clear - the Democrats are bound and determined to raise taxes. They try to hide the fact by saying they only plan to raise taxes "on the rich", but they intend to soak us all. They intend to ensure that the "Bush tax cut" will expire, generating one of the largest tax hikes on the American citizen that has ever been imposed. They also plan to tax anything else they can find a way to tax. This will trigger the biggest recession this nation will have seen since the 1930's - something else a Democratic president mucked up. That last president was "rescued" by a world war. The sitting president when those tax hikes kick in will be a dead duck, no matter who he is. So may Congress. That kind of a blow to the US economy may be the trigger event that sees Congress tarred and feathered, and run out of Washington on a rail. Americans rebelled once before because of an unjust tax system. We have every right to do it again.

There are countless other places the Congress has helped set us up for a whopping loss of purchasing power and income. Something is going to have to be done about the solvency of Social Security, and it's going to have to be done soon. In fact, all the "entitlement" programs that have been created are about to overwhelm the government that created them, and refused to properly manage them. No matter what Congress does, and even moreso if it does nothing, the American people are going to get VERY angry at the shortsightedness of our politicians. Voting them out of office may be the most gentle and least used method angry Americans may employ.

This may be the last free-spending congress to be elected. Most Americans are also frustrated and angry with another pet fiasco of politicians - the "earmark". These are items the congresscritter slips into bills to benefit their district, and frequently their major campaign contributors. The rest of us would call these by their true name - bribes. You have to be a pretty p-poor Representative or Senator if you have to bribe your constituency to re-elect you. Whatever use earmarks are applied to, the practice needs to end - immediately.

Congress has pointed fingers at President George Bush, calling him the worst president ever, based on very low opinion poll results. Those same results show Congress' rating to be half that of the President's. What does that make them - the worst Congress ever? Maybe not the worst, but in my opinion, they're certainly in the bottom ten!

Energy prices may lead to another Revolution

I filled up the gas tank yesterday - $51 for 14+ gallons of gas. Last summer, I could fill the tank for $30 or less. Some people are saying demand has increased far faster than supply, driving up the price of an ever-scarcer commodity. Others are blaming the increase on the falling value of the dollar in world trade. Still others are blaming "greedy oil companies" for making"outrageous" profits, of OPEC keeping a lid on production to drive up prices, and the US filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve reservoir. While all those factors contribute to what's going on today, it's actually much more complex than any of this.

It's true that demand has increased significantly. It's also true that there have been some major discoveries recently that, if brought online, would greatly increase supply, and offset the increased demand. There have been new oil and gas fields
discovered in Brazil, Chad, Sudan, Siberia and the Gulf of Mexico. It's going to take from five to ten years for those fields to come fully online, however. In the meantime, oil and gas prices are going to remain relatively high. Here are some of the reasons output cannot immediately grow to meet demand:

1. . Oil and gas production in many areas are threatened by war or political unrest. There is a growing revolution in southern Nigeria that has significantly reduced production from that African nation. The situation for nations around the Persian Gulf is in a constant boil, with war in Iraq and terrorism or the threat of terrorism affecting most of those nations, and Iran's attempt to change the Persian Gulf into an Iranian-controlled lake. Most of the petroleum reserves in Chad and Sudan are in the Darfur region, currently the scene of genocidal murder. The situation in Angola and several other West African nations isn't very attractive to foreign investment - investment that is essential to develop the oilfields there. Venezuela's behavior - confiscating or forcing out foreign investment - has resulted in a net decline in overall output. Iran is just one of several countries that has put off maintenance for immediate profit. That, too, has resulted in a decline in production.



2. . China and India are rapidly modernizing. This is taking a larger and larger amount of energy, much of which comes from oil and gas. At the same time, neither of these nations has a significant enough internal source of oil and gas, forcing them to import it from elsewhere. With a virtually stagnant output, the increasing demand is pushing prices higher.



3. . The US dollar has long been the "currency of choice" for oil and gas deals. The US dollar has significantly lost value over the last couple of years relative to currencies from other nations, especially the Euro. That, too, has contributed to the rising cost of all commodities imported into the United States, especially oil.



4. . There are only a few economically sensible alternatives to oil and gas, and most of those are under-utilized. Nuclear energy could replace some of the use of oil and gas in the production of electricity. Solar,wind, biomass, tidal and geothermal energy production can help, but only to a limited degree. These "alternative energy" options just aren't economically feasible - and frequently aren't even mechanically possible. Making electricity cheap enough to replace oil and gas home heating would help with the overall program, but only to a small degree.



5. . "Greedy oil companies" make far less profit on oil and gas than the Federal or State governments takes in taxes, and even less than what it costs in regulatory over-kill to produce useful products. Government intervention is far more of a problem than it's a help.



6. . The high cost of environmental activism significantly adds to the plight of the "common people". Environmental activism has kept the United States from building a single new refinery, adding a new nuclear power plant, opening new oilfields to production, increasing and modernizing the delivery network for oil and gas, and instituting many, many other possible solutions to the current problem. At the same time, they have successfully diverted tens of billions of dollars into uneconomical, impractical, and downright harmful "alternative energy solutions" that will never be more than minor contributers to satisfying our energy needs.
   
   
7. . "NIMBYism" is alive and well, and also significantly contributing to today's energy crunch. "Not in my back yard" means "not in my town/county/state" for a lot of people. It keeps the United States from drilling for oil and gas in many locations in the Gulf of Mexico, from building nuclear power plants where they're most needed, from building or modernizing refineries, and more.

I doubt the United States could ever be totally "energy independent". We have too many links to Canada and Mexico, and a very high demand. At the same time, we could greatly reduce our dependency with a little bit of common sense.

1. . We need to open up known reserves for production. That includes the coal reserves in the hastily and ill-advised Escallante/Grand Staircase "national monument", oil and gas fields in the Alaska Wildlife Refuge, the Naval Petroleum reserve, the Gulf Coast, and offshore on both the Atlantic and Pacific coast, developing what geothermal production areas we have, and updating and expanding the national energy distribution networks.



2. . We need to build at least six new refineries, and upgrade and enhance the capabilities of at least 2/3 of existing ones.



3. . We need to increase the percentage of electricity generated by nuclear power to where it accounts for 25% of our electrical output. France gets almost half of its electricity from nuclear power production. I'm sure we could easily reach a goal of 25% within ten years.



4. . We need to review ALL government rules and regulations regarding energy, keeping those that are beneficial and getting rid of those that aren't.



5. . We need to look at our environmental track record, see what works to both support our energy development and protect our wildlife resources, and scrap the rest.



6. . Eliminate "alternatives" that cost more than they'll ever be worth. The money to support these "alternatives" could better be used to study ways to make both energy production and energy use more efficient and cost-effective.



7. . Put an end, once and for all time, the stupidity of "Anthropomorphic" or "catastrophic" "Global Warming", and the destructive forces inherent in "addressing" this non-problem. We don't know enough about how the complex interplay between sun, water, wind and land affect overall weather patterns, or what contributes to changes. Until we do, it's impractical to implement costly and dangerous "remedies" that may cause more harm than help. At the same time, increase the study of atmospheric sciences so that real data, instead of misleading, "cherry-picked", or downright fraudulent "data" (hockey stick, anyone?) is used to make sensible, cost-effective, and workable decisions about the future.

There IS an energy crunch. A lot of it is self-inflicted, not only for us, but for the entire world. The way to make it through that crunch is to implement what will help, and quit trying to strangle or destroy the means of eliminating that crunch. This needs to be the top priority of every lawmaker in the United States, not cosmetic band-aids that do no good. If gas gets to even $5 a gallon, a lot of people are going to be very upset. It didn't take much to bring about the American Revolution of 1776. High energy prices could well be the trigger for another one.

Junk email.

Sigh...

Seventy-five percent or more of my email is SPAM that gets by my SPAM filter. A lot of it comes from spam-bots digging email addresses from this and other websites where my email address is posted. This is a bleg - please stop.

I'm 60+ years old, physically disabled with a bad back and other problems, and don't need a job. I'm not looking to "strike it rich", and I don't play the lottery (If you don't play, you can't win, so all that crap about I've won this or that is just bunk). I retired from the Air Force after 26 years' service. That means I have the best socialized medicine in the United States, that my prescriptions cost me either nothing or a very small co-pay, and I don't need to "shop in Canada" for them.

I've been happily married to the same woman for 42 years, and don't need a date, dating service, or "horny girls" from ANYWHERE. I'm perfectly capable of having sex as often as I can physically perform, and don't need Viagra or drugs for "erectile disfunction". I have a separate, unpublished email address for Paypal, Yahoo, my bank account, and anything else I do on the Internet, and it's SECURE through a very nice security system. I don't sell anything on eBay, and only buy from a half-dozen dealers whom I know well and are happy with.

I've been working with computers since 1966, and am Internet-savvy enough to not fall for any of the Nigerian scams or their derivatives. If you want to send me money, make it a check payable to me: my mailing address can be found on my website. If you're someone who has a legitimate reason to get in touch with me, make sure you list it in the "Subject" line of your email, otherwise I'll delete it.

For the rest of you, just STOP.

The Stupidity at Berkeley

The City Council of Berkeley, California, has voted to ban the Marine Recruiting Station from the city because the Marines refuse to enlist gays. It's immaterial that the local recruiting office has no say over the matter, or that there are ample, excellent reasons to NOT enlist active, open gay men and lesbian women into the military. The City Council of Berkeley believes it knows how this nation should be run, and demands that IT, not the Constitution, nor the Congress, or even the President, should have a say in the matter. Nor do they care whether non-gay men and women are interested in joining the Marines. The City Council has SPOKEN, and MUST be obeyed.

The military is one of several functions that are given to the Federal Government in the Constitution. Article 1, Section 8, clearly states that "The Congress shall have the power

(12) To raise and support armies...
(13) To provide and maintain a navy;
(14) To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;

I don't see anything in there about needing the permission of the City of Berkeley to do any of these things.

"Collective punishment" is a catch-word for the looney left, yet the City of Berkeley is collectively punishing the Marine Corps for the decisions made by the Congress, the President, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Berkeley has no authority to determine what federal offices will open in their jurisdiction. Six (seven?) of nine members of the Berkeley city council have decided they know better how to run the US military, and are attempting to "wag the dog" by passing a binding resolution demanding the city attorney look into ways of expelling the Marine Corps recruiters from their fair city.

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-SC, has taken it upon himself to present a bill to Congress to remove all earmarks (illegal spending, under any circumstances, since 99% of it is never PASSED by Congress, as the Constitution requires) to the City of Berkeley and any non-federal functions or facilities within that City. This is getting extreme howls from both the City of Berkeley and its congressional representatives. The City Council of Berleley seems to believe they have the option of "opting out" of any federal responsibilities they may have, while still sucking on the pork tit.

I explained to my children long ago that they have the option of doing whatever they choose. They also have the concurrent responsibility of accepting any consequences that go with those choices. There are three kinds of consequences - positive consequences (you do exceptionally well at work, and get a promotion), neutral consequences (you run a red light in the middle of the night, and no one sees you), or negative consequences (you put your hand on a hot stove, and burn it). If you commit a crime, you are (usually, except in the Liberal world) going to receive consequences. If you do something stupid, there may be grave consequences.

Berkeley wants to live in a consequence-free world. No such thing exists.

ABM - "Anybody but McCain"

My favored political candidate, Fred Thompson, has dropped out of the race. So have the two people I was most likely to support if Thompson quit - Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo. Now I'm stuck with choosing among a field of "lessers" - McCain, Romney, Huckabee, Guilliani, Paul, Clinton, Obama, and Edwards.

Forget the Democrats. There hasn't been a Democratic contender I'd be willing to vote for in the last four Presidential elections. I'm not too happy with the Republican candidates, either. In a time when we need a Madison, Lincoln, or Truman, we get McCain, Romney, and Clinton II. What a trio of buffoons.

I'll probably end up voting for one of them - the lesser of two bad choices, as I've had to do in all but a couple of elections since I first cast a ballot 42 years ago. The lesser of two bad choices is still a bad choice. We can only hope that it won't be so horrible a choice we'll have to resort to force to undo the mistakes that person makes. That brings us to John McCain.

McCain has proven over and over that he is the "candidate of mistakes" - McCain/Feingold, immigration, judges, tax cuts, and a half-dozen other major issues where he's been on the wrong side. If there's an option, I'd prefer Romney over McCain, and any Republican over either Clinton or Edwards. I don't have a good feeling about Barrack Obama, either, but I don't know enough to weigh his negatives, other than he's an idiot on foreign policy, and not too sharp on domestic policy.

This nation has failed, over the last decade or two, to attract and support top-level political leadership, especially for President. I fear we will face some truly difficult times ahead because of that failure.

"A German's point of view on Islam"

I received this from a friend of mine two days ago, and wondered if I should post it. After careful consideration, I decided I could not NOT post it and be true to my own beliefs. I wish I had a link, but so far I haven't been able to find one.

by Dr. Emanual Tanay, Psychiatrist

A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War ll owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.

'Very few people were true Nazis 'he said,'but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.'

We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectra of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history.

It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is that the 'peaceful majority', the 'silent majority', is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China 's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.

The average Japanese individual prior to World War ll was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.

And, who can forget Rwanda , which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'?

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany , they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghanis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.

As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts: the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

Lastly, at the risk of offending, anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes this email without sending it on, is contributing to the passiveness that allows the problems to expand. So, extend yourself a bit and send this on and on and on! Let us hope that thousands, world wide, read this - think about it - and send it on.

This is all over the Internet, but I can't find a source for the original information - the original German quote. Dr. Tanay is indeed a noted psychiatrist, and even won a very prestigious award in 1984.

In the beginning, God...

Genesis 1:
1. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.
2. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Thus begins the saga of how God created the universe, and all that is within it. What few Christians, and almost all non-Christians, refuse to admit is that God DID create ALL the universe, and all that is within it. That means many different things that few today acknowledge, but that Solomon understood and admitted to in Ecclesiastes.

3:14 I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before him.
3:15 That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past.

8:17 Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun: because though a man labour to seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea further; though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it.

I don't consider myself a wise man, but I do consider myself a child of God. I have asked God to explain to me what is true, and right. I feel I have received an answer, which I will put forth here. I don't expect or require that any man agree with me, but to ponder, and ask God if this is right and true, and listen for God's answer.

Two problems exist: the first is that Mankind assumes that the times referred to in Genesis are Man-time, instead of understanding that it is God-time, which is something quite different; and the second is that there is little difference between what we call "religion" and what we call "science". Let me try to explain what I mean by these.

God is Eternal. He has no beginning, and no end. Also, as Solomon so wisely stated, for God, all things are NOW (literally, "That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been;"). God-time, then, cannot be related to Man-time. For God, a second could be equal to half of eternity for Man, or half of eternity could be equal to a second. We all need to understand that, and understand that God works SOLELY on God-time.

When God dictated the Bible to man, he did it to pre-industrial, almost pre-agricultural nomadic herders. If God had tried to explain to them particle physics, the Big Bang, and quantum mechanics, guess how far He'd have gotten. Instead, He used terms that the authors could understand, and could relate to others. "Fundamentalist Christians" demand, however, that we equate the works of Genesis not in God-time, but in Man-time. The patent absurdity of this is found in Genesis itself, where planets and moons were not created until the fourth day.

God created the entire universe. That also means that instead of chaos, His creation is an ORDERLY universe that obeys the "natural" laws He created to operate in it. This brings us to point two above, that "religion" and "science" are but two sides of the same coin. "Religion" attempts to establish "who" and "why" the universe was created, while "science" tries to discover "what", "where", "when", and "how". Neither should (or can) distract from the other, for both magnify the glory of God's creation. The more details we learn about the events that led to our presence here today only go to prove what Solomon said: "Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun: because though a man labour to seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea further; though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it.".

No single scientist, no group of scientists, can know ALL that God has created in this universe. There will always be things that bedazle and amaze us, and pique our interest to learn more. Our knowledge shouldn't cause us to reject God, but to understand more fully His omnipotence - and attention to detail. Nor should anything Man learns force us to "choose between God and Science", because both are one: God created ALL "scientific principles" when He created the universe. Just because we learned about God first, and we're a bit slow picking up the physical manifestations of His handiwork shouldn't detract from the fact that they are His creations.

Nor should scientific explanations of our world's past cause us to be forced to choose between God and Man: the universe is probably 16.5 billion Man-years old, and that doesn't change the fact that it was created by God in six God-days. The two have nothing in common. One is a measure of how WE, the inhabitants of this piece of real estate, measure time: the other is how God defines the processes of His actions. Remember again Solomon's words: "and God requireth that which is past.". The history of our universe, and our planet, are "required by God".

Everything God does has a progression. Nothing was created before its time. Everything built toward where we are today. There would be no oil or coal for man to use if God hadn't created it over a long period of time, beginning millions and millions of years ago. The more we learn about our universe, the more we see an orderly progression from very minute sub-atomic particles to very complex systems including billions of galaxies. This is all the handiwork of God, and the more we know about them, the greater should be the awe of His magnificence.

A Timmy Update: December

Timmy is still with us, and will remain with us at least until February 20th, 2008. He's still about six months behind in most of his development, but is improving every day. His vocabulary has grown to about 600 words, although he won't always say more than two or three at a time. This worries me a bit, because that's a symptom we saw in our son Joe, who also suffered from brain damage done before he was adopted. Hopefully we'll have him in Head Start after the first of the year, and the competition will encourage him to talk more.

The last information we received from the courts indicated that Timmy will either be returned to his birth mom, or will be placed permanently in our care. That decision will be made no later than May 8th, 2008. So far, no other placements are being considered. Rose has satisfied some of the court-ordered requirements, but not all of them. She still refuses to believe that Timmy was deliberately injured. I would encourage any of you who read this to pray that the courts will make the best choice for Timmy, regardless of what anyone else wishes - including us.

Having Timmy has been a blessing for my wife and me. It's encouraged us to become more involved with the world, instead of withdrawn, as we had been before. Regardless of the court outcome in Timmy's case, Jean and I plan to work with a few agencies in the city to continue our involvement with children that need a safe place while the courts decide their future.

Back in February, I prayed to God to give us a mission that wouldn't involve any of the local churches. I want to tithe to God, but not to some local church that's going to use it for their benefit, not the benefit of God. I was willing to give both time and money to whatever cause God asked us to contribute to. Within a month, we had Timmy. God answers prayers, but in His Own way, and in His Own time. Timmy i with us on a "kinship" placement, which means we're considered of a member of his extended family, although there's no real relationship other than friendship between Rose and our youngest daughter, Anna. It also means that we don't get paid for providing foster care for Timmy. Taking care of this beautiful, wonderful little boy has been worth anything it might have cost us, and we're thankful to have him!

Merry Christmas!

Life is hectic when you're a parent, and the past two months have been even more hectic than average. Before we get distracted with the Christmas shopping, getting the tree up, wrapping presents, cooking, and all the other myriad ways of preparing for Christmas, we want to stop and wish all our friends a very Merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year.

497th Reconnaissance Technical Group 2008 Reunion

Those of us who are both alumni of the 497th and live in Colorado - and enjoyed the 2007 reunion - have decided that a reunion next year, in 2008, is a great idea. Charles Sakai is in charge of planning the event. You can also leave comments here, and I will forward them to Charles. We hope to have an even greater attendance than last year.