How Much Tax?

One of those confluences of events merged President Bush's final State of the Union address with news of the Property Tax Reform efforts now underway in the Indiana statehouse. Both brought out the fundamental questions of taxes and government.

How much tax is enough?

How much government is really needed?

The consistent theme on taxes both nationally and locally clearly breaks along party lines. Democrats fret that lower taxes must translate to fewer government services. Republicans maintain that government is bloated and is overdue for some belt-tightening, plus taxpayers who get to keep more of their own money will use it to grow the economy.

Property Taxes went through a reassessment, which increased the tax bill for every property owner. Some poor homeowners were hit with new property tax bills double or even triple their previous obligations. Most everybody else saw increases of about one third. It resulted in a citizen tax revolt, which has driven Indianapolis mayor Bart Peterson out of office and threatens to do the same for a wide range of state and local officials.

So the Indiana legislature is working on a bill proposed by Governor Daniels to cap property tax rates at 1% for homeowners, 2% for landlords, and 3% for businesses. The bill looked like it would sail through until local officials began an impassioned opposition. They checked their budgets and found out their tax revenue would be reduced if this law is passed. That means they would have to cut their budgets.

It seems that those areas in the state hit hardest by the property tax mess were where school boards approved major construction projects without really considering the tax impact of those projects. It's a case of communities spending beyond their means for ostentatious school buildings. Now they're paying for their irresponsible decisions with an outraged citizenry.

Likewise at the national level, President Bush appealed to the congress to make his tax cuts permanent. Even though any serious analysis of the tax cuts has to conclude they were very effective in the very strong economy the country has enjoyed for the past seven years, Democrats made their intentions clear. The Democrats expect to control the government beginning next year, and have made it clear they not only plan to cancel the Bush tax cuts, but also plan to increase taxes.

Government is inherently an inefficient provider of services. The Federal Government consists of huge and cumbersome bureaucracies that would not survive the first month if their services were offered for profit in the private sector. Bureaucrats build empires that accomplish little and are not held accountable for results.

If the government, whether federal or state, really wanted to serve the public, they would eliminate earmarks and political favors and patronage. An even better idea would be to require every social program cooked up by politicians to prove every 5 years that they are meeting their mission, or the program will be defunded.

Maybe instead of spending so much time talking about how much tax should be paid by the "rich", the focus should be more toward what can we accomplish with the limited resources available to government?

If only.

New Perspectives on Healthcare

Last week was spent working with a group of people who work for a healthcare organization in Canada. Although the subject of my visit wasn't related to healthcare policy, I was drawn into some interesting discussions on the topic.

As a group, the Canadians seem to believe every citizen should have access to healthcare. They have a sense of security in the fact that they will never have to face the possibility of being turned away from treatment for any illness or injury, since their government-controlled system will provide the care they need. The people I was working with are somewhat appalled at their media-induced vision of U.S. healthcare as available only to the rich and those lucky enough to be employed by companies who provide them with good insurance.

I explained that while it is true that a very high number of U.S. citizens are not covered by any sort of health insurance, that doesn't mean they all do not have access to healthcare. In fact, most places in the country are prohibited by law from denial of emergency medical treatment to anyone, insured or not.

Many uninsured simply pay for their own healthcare. Many providers offer substantial discounts to their uninsured customers who pay for their own care.

The poor are covered by the version of Medicaid provided by their state.

So those who are suffering the most right now are people who are not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, not quite wealthy enough to pay for their own care, and not employed by a company that provides them with good health insurance.

The problem for these folks tends to be that if they encounter a major injury or illness that requires surgery and hospitalization, they are effectively bankrupt as soon as the diagnosis is made. The doctors and therapists and radiologists and labs and hospitals will certainly sue them for payment of medical bills they cannot possibly pay. Therefore, they lose everything, go bankrupt, and must concern themselves with both their physical recovery and starting over from zero financially.

Personally, although I am paying huge premiums for a health insurance plan that has never contributed a penny of benefits, I fear even having the insurance will not protect me from bankruptcy if I become seriously ill or injured. Because such an event would mean I would be unable to work during whatever period of time I am undergoing treatment for whatever might occur, which after some period of time would find me bankrupt anyway.

But that does not mean I support the Democrat goal of socialized medicine. First of all, such healthcare is not "free". It will most certainly involve an increase in the percentage of my earnings confiscated by the government to pay for their grand industry takeover.

Next, the same goverment will seek to control costs by implementing several policies that will ultimately harm the patients they claim to want to help. They will arbitrarily reduce the fees providers will be allowed to bill for patient care, which will make such care scarce as the providers close or sell their businesses because they can no longer make a profit.

As healthcare providers become more and more scarce, access to those remaining will become increasingly difficult. Patients will be forced to wait weeks or months for an appointment. As we've found with the recent addition of prescription drug coverage for seniors under Medicare, bureaucrats will deny medications to patients based on arbitrary rules designed to save money.

Government control isn't the answer. I think the answer is only partially offered by Republicans, who continue to stress the expansion of healthcare savings accounts. Those are great for small business people or others who actually have the ability to save enough money to cover their care. But it doesn't help the bigger majority of uninsured, who just can't earn enough to save the kind of money they need for healthcare.

If the government wants to help, they should address the root causes of our healthcare problems:

• Tort Reform
• Standardization of Electronic Insurance Claims & Payments
• Competition in Diagnostic Services
  
• Making Medical School less expensive so graduating physicians don't have six-figure debts to pay off
• Availability of affordable Major Medical insurance for the uninsured.
  
• Simple dollar-for-dollar tax deductions or credits for actual out-of-pocket expenses

I've always felt that problems should be understood before they can be solved. Pandering politicians want to fool voters into believing they can get free healthcare if they simply vote for the Democrat.

Wait until those people find out just how "free" their new healthcare program is.

Thoughts on Racism

Since there's been a lot of racial and racism talk lately because of the Martin Luther King holiday and the battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, it's given me occasion to think about the overall racism issue.

What is racism, who is a racist and who is not, to what extent does it remain as a social problem in the United States?

How about starting with the definition. Here's what I found at Dictionary.com

rac·ism /ˈreɪsɪzəm/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[rey-siz-uhm] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation –noun

1.	a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.

2.	a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.

3.	hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.

Based on the above definition, am I racist? Let's see: I don't believe that any one race is superior or has an inherent right to rule others, I don't support government systems that foster racial discrimination, and I don't find myself feeling hatred or intolerance of other races.

So I'm not a racist, right?

Well, there may be some who look at my actual political beliefs and say I am racist.

For example, I don't believe in affirmative action or racial preference programs in hiring, college admission, or government contracts. I believe such government policies actually violate part #2 of the above definition, because they place race above merit in such decisions.

The difference between my philosophy and those of our liberal folks is that I believe in equality of opportunity, while they hope to enact laws that seek equality of outcomes. Such policies don't work, but are still pursued with religious fervor by the Left.

Remember when the courts went beyond the very good civil rights laws that outlawed discrimination in education with racially segregated public schools to creating laws out of the ether for enforced desegregation through something called busing?

The theory was that if schools were desegregated, inequalities of outcomes between the mostly white suburban schools and the mostly black urban schools would be remedied. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. The actual result of this social experiment forced upon the population by liberal elites was a drastic reduction in outcomes from all of the schools. The inner-city schools got worse and the suburban schools got worse.

Those who could afford to left the public schools for private and parochial schools. Today it's hard to find excellence in public schools, which in many urban areas are not only poor performers but dangerous places for the students.

By the way, I'm not blaming any race for the decline. I blame the liberal establishment who enacted laws reflecting their well-meaning but misguided ideas about racial reconciliation. Racial peace can't be accomplished with heavy-handed court orders and legislation from elite ivory towers, but have to be accomplished by influencing hearts and minds of people of each race, one at a time.

Finally, would I vote for Barack Obama? No.

But the reason has nothing to do with his race. I'd actually prefer him as President to Hillary. Because even though I disagree almost completely with those policy statements he has made, I believe he's sincere and a genuinely nice guy. Does that make me a sexist? That's a question for another day.

Actually, I'd happily vote for a black presidential candidate. Tony Dungy could easily get my vote if he were qualified and running (by the way, I'm happy to learn he decided to come back for another season with the Colts after all). Condi Rice could get my vote (does that answer the sexist question?) I'm also a huge admirer of Clarence Thomas.

I can't tell what will happen in this year's Presidential campaign. But I do think the Democrats might be a bit overconfident in their belief that either Hillary or Barack will win easily. Half the country will never vote for Hillary, and her supporters might stay home if Obama gets the nomination. If the Republican nominee runs an effective campaign, I think he could win, although I'm not naive enough to predict it will be easy.

Defining Mental Illness

Picking up some groceries last night, I noticed one of the supermarket tabloids had a headline that was something like, "Britney's Mental Illness". It got me thinking, how do they know she's mentally ill?

Expanding on my line of thought, it seems that whenever someone exhibits aberrant behavior, everyone just assumes they're mentally ill. Perhaps it's a good assumption, but I wonder. In Britney's case, does her bizarre behavior indicate she has some sort of chemical imbalance, injury, or illness affecting her brain?

Or is it something much more simple? Could it be that Britney's simply a spoiled, narcissistic brat child who is acting out with a litany of bizarre behaviors just because she wants attention? Could it be that she's acting like the rebellious teenager who thinks she's punishing her parents and other adults who have placed restrictions on her?

Consider that her mindset might go something like this: My (parents, managers, etc) controlled every aspect of my life from the time I was ten years old. Now that I'm an adult and free to do whatever I want, I'll show them! No more wholesome, virginal Britney - I'll shock them! I'll shock the world!

Just wondering, is Britney, and by extension her friends and contemporaries Paris and Lindsey, simply a rich, spoiled brat who has made her own bad choices and should be allowed to suffer whatever the consequences?

I know the drugs can certainly contribute to an artificially induced mental illness, but it's temporary and can be overcome by simply stopping the drugs. Otherwise, I'm inclined to think she's not mentally ill, unless we decide that extreme narcissism is a mental illness.

Generally, my reaction to all the stories swirling around Britney and the other starlets is disgust. But I can see how they pull people in, sort of like rubbernecking a gruesome accident on the highway. You shouldn't look, but it's hard not to.

I think she'll drop out of sight one of these days, when the media gets tired of covering her antics. Then after a few years, she'll reappear in a story that could go one of two ways: She's sent to prison or is found dead of an overdose, or she cleaned up and maybe found God and is working to start fresh on a new career.

Perhaps a law should be passed that forbids children from being used as movie or music stars. Most of their stories don't end well.

The Bogeyman

He is now very different, depending on each person's political beliefs and affiliations. Both sides have them, but neither has any in common.

Democrat Bogeymen:
Right-Wing Radical Christians
George W. Bush
Oil Companies
Corporate CEO's (Excepting some they like who happen to share their leftist views)

Republican Bogeymen:
Radical Islamic Terrorists
Iran and Ahmadinejad
Communists (often a synonym for Democrats)
Hillary Clinton (hmm, would that be Bogeywoman?)


Whom do you fear the most?

Just saying -

Which group has killed more innocent people in the last 10 years? Islamic terrorists or Right-Wing Christians?

Yeah, I'm frustrated by high gas prices too. But what is it Democrats want to do about it? Levy punitive taxes on Oil Companies, as far as I can tell. So that brings my gasoline prices down exactly how?

Hillary or Bush: Who would be the worse President? Does it frighten you that we might actually get to find out? Sorta scares me.

Just wondering about the whole rich leftist thing. So actors who make millions of dollars per movie - should they pay more, less, or the same taxes as the evil corporate CEO's the Democrats are so ready to punish? Let's put it in real terms:

A CEO and movie star both make $10 Million in 2009 after Hillary becomes President. How much Federal Income Tax should be taken from them? Following the rhetoric of the left, I'm guessing the CEO will have about $7 Million confiscated, but the Democrat movie star who gave a bunch of money to Hillary's campaign would only pay, what, about $2 Million?

See, back in the dark days of Jimmy Carter, which amazingly seem to be the golden age by Democrats, the $7 Million number is exactly what would have been taken from the CEO and the Hollywood actor. Unless, of course, they found a loophole in the tax code that let them hide some of that money. Democrats back then thought that was perfectly OK - their argument was something along the line of, "3 Million is plenty of money! Allowing anybody to have 10 Million dollars is just obscene and unfair."

The idea is that anyone who earns that kind of money, no matter how they did so, can't possibly deserve it. They must have cheated somebody or paid underlings slave wages to get it. So they deserve to have it taken away from them by the benevolent government to give to some poor person. Said poor person theoretically is so grateful to the government for the handout, they become a life-long Democrat voter.

If we're headed back to a repeat of the Jimmy Carter era, I just have one request: Please wait just a few more years until I retire. Then I'll let you pay me to sit at home and live off your Social Security benefits and let somebody else struggle to find a job and make a decent living off their after-tax income.

Coach Dungy Retiring

It's not official yet, in fact the last report said an announcement would be made on Monday. But reports are out already with the news that Tony Dungy is retiring.

There have been previous reports that his children have already been enrolled in Tampa schools, which made it seem pretty definite that Tony was going to go ahead with his retirement. Colts fans can hope the report is false, but it seems more likely to be correct.

Apparently the Colts have already decided to name the assistant head coach Caldwell to replace him. That would seem to provide continuity that may not shake up the team as much as hiring a new head coach from outside who might bring in a brand new staff.

That makes two very disappointing events for Colts fans this week. They blew the game against the Chargers, then lost perhaps the best human being in the league with Dungy's retirement. If nothing else, he will be missed as a beacon of light in an otherwise disappointing world of drug abuse, cheating, felons, and miscreants.

Tony Dungy did it right.

So long, coach. Happy Retirement.

Sticky Internet Issues

Lately the significant and growing issues with the internet have become hot topics, both in news reports and personal experience. The benefits of the internet, which has given the world so much in terms of communication and access to information, carry a heavy cost and many serious problems.

Recent news stories have highlighted efforts to solve the problem of sexual predators lurking in social networking sites. Some are introducing legislation that would attempt to deny access to those sites, or perhaps even the internet itself, to convicted sexual predators.

Scammers and spammers have grown to epidemic proportions. The personal impact of this hits me every day, with two of my email accounts filling up with hundreds of spam emails every week. My email accounts segregate what spam they can identify into a separate folder I can clear, but many make it through to my inbox. My daily ritual now begins with deleting all the spam so I can read the "real" emails.

There is one email account that is heavily filtered, in which I have never seen a piece of spam. But that's a mixed blessing, because I often hear from clients who wonder why I didn't respond to an email I never actually received. Aggressive spam filters often end up blocking legitimate email messages.

Companies are building highly restrictive firewalls that trap their employees from being able to access the web. A paranoia at many companies over the potential of an employee visiting a site that could infect the network, plus the assumption that employees would waste valuable work hours surfing the web, have virtually locked employees out of important and helpful internet resources.

Today, part of the reason I'm posting is my web-based training class had to be cancelled. Half of the students scheduled to attend my online class were unable to access the training site, and were unable to find timely IT support to solve the problem. So we rescheduled today's session for Friday.

The internet has become both an invaluable resource and a dangerous path through a medieval forest full of marauders who will steal your identity and your money, vandalize your computer and enslave it to vandalize others', surreptitiously install software on your system to spy on everything you do, and flood your email with unwanted advertisements and pornographic materials.

Legislatures don't seem concerned about solving the real problems of the web, but rather seem more focused on finding ways to tax our use of it and protect the movie and music industries from internet-based copyright infringement. A cynic might suggest that congress is doing their best to arrest 17-year-olds for downloading a music file while ignoring the pedophiles who entice children to meetings that will end up scarring their psyche forever.

But what can really be done? I have some ideas.

Rather than looking to the government to solve the problem which always seems to result in high taxes, bureaucracy, and loss of freedom, why not let the users of the internet solve the problem? Here's how:

1. If you are sending advertising email, you must register with an internet-based clearinghouse. If you are not registered, your email will be flagged as such when it is sent through the web to the recipient address. The flag can then be read by the receiving email program, which can be configured to reject or segregate those emails as spam. This way, no unwanted or unsolicited email has to ever make it through.
2. With registered advertisers, consumers have the ability to easily report them as spammers. This would result in a rating that is also placed in the emails sent from the advertiser, say 1 to 5, where 1 indicates little or no spamming complaints and 5 indicates this is a major spammer. Email systems could be configured to accept or reject these emails based on the rating.
3. Users of social networking sites can already simply report those they suspect of being predators or of misusing the site. The site managers can then act on those reports by suspending access to the predators.
4. Companies should loosen their restrictions on employee web surfing. There's nothing wrong with an employee reading a news site in the morning or shopping on ebay during their lunch break. If an employee is wasting valuable work time surfing the net, that's a management issue that should be addressed by the supervisor with the offending employee. Shutting down internet access for employees simply equates with lazy managers who don't want to deal with the problem directly.

I think that if everyone who uses the net has the opportunity and ability to stop abuse with an easy reporting mechanism, we could all solve most of the problems ourselves.

Two Worldviews

The striking thing about watching the debates with the presidential candidates is the very different worldviews of the candidates from each party. It seems after watching the Democrats debate, then the Republicans, that there are two different countries electing a president.

In the Republican world, the most important issues are national security, the economy, taxes, and illegal immigration.

In the alternative universe occupied by the Democrats, the most important issues are healthcare, foreign policy, and absolute destruction of George W. Bush.

I've been struck by the misleading simplicity of candidates' so-called "solutions". On the GOP side, candidates play king of the hill trying to prove who will be the toughest in solving the illegal immigration problem. The problem is, from McCain to Giuliani to Romney to Huckabee, most of them have identifiable past records that belie their newfound commitment to the issue.

On the Democrat side, the success of the Iraq Surge has them looking rather foolish in continuing to promise to destroy that success with an immediate and abrupt withdrawal of troops. Or is that really what they plan to do? The front-runners, Hillary and Barack, actually have indicated they wouldn't abruptly remove the troops. So they're lying about it one way or the other - we just can't tell which way.

But I'm especially disturbed by the demagoguery of Democrats on Healthcare and economic policy. They either aren't smart enough or are too power-hungry to recognize that a federal government takeover of healthcare would be disastrous; I'm the first to admit that healthcare is a major problem for the country, but simply funding it for everyone through taxation and government micromanagement won't solve it.

Their economic policy seems to be little more than punitive. They appeal to the masses with their class envy message that the "rich" have had a free ride for too long and need to be punished with much higher taxes. The logic-defying approach goes like this:

Oil companies are making billions of dollars and deserve to be punished with a Jimmy Carter style "windfall profits tax". OK, so how is it exactly that an attempt by the government to confiscate a major percentage of profits from global oil companies going to lower gas prices at the pump? Better yet, since Jimmy Carter tried it back in the 70's, how did that work out?

Not well, as I recall.

There are very simple choices coming up in this presidential election.

Vote for the Democrat (Hillary or Barack, there's not much difference) if you:
Think Christians are a major problem in America whose influence needs to be lessened or eliminated,
Think it's a great idea to tax rich people, defined as everyone who makes more than you do. I wonder, how much should they pay? The 70% they paid under Jimmy Carter? How much should the government confiscate from Americans?
Think the only solution to the healthcare mess in the country is government-run healthcare paid for by taxes levied on everybody who makes more than you do. I wonder, how do you feel about a bureaucrat in Washington, DC deciding whether or not you need a certain surgery or treatment or prescription drug instead of your doctor? How would you feel about fat people and smokers being denied healthcare entirely because of their unhealthy behavior (This is actually being proposed by some on your side).
Think that we should just pull the troops out of Iraq, and probably Afghanistan as well. Then let the new Democrat president work his or her magic through negotiations and diplomacy and the United Nations to achieve world peace. While we're at it, I've got a bridge in New York I can sell you - hurry before somebody else jumps on this deal!

Vote for a Republican if you:
Think the status quo is best and don't want anything changed substantially in government.
Think healthcare is fine as it is and doesn't need any solutions.
Think free trade is the single most important value to be protected by government; even if it entails importation of foreign workers, legal and illegal, and indiscriminate closings of US-based businesses to move the operations to a third-world country where they can make their products much more cheaply.

Sorry, you don't have any candidate to vote for if you:
Think illegal immigration is a major problem and needs to be solved through aggressive border enforcement and deportations.
Think terrorism is a real threat and rogue nations developing nuclear weapons must be stopped before they detonate one in Israel, Europe, or here in the US.
Think the tax code is outrageously corrupt and should be scrapped and rewritten based on a simple law: No tax can be levied unless it applies to everyone - no exceptions allowed.
Think fiscal responsibility and openness is important, and the practices of earmarks and political payoffs with taxpayer funds should be eliminated.

Sorry, the best presidential candidate will never be elected. There are too many people with too much power and money because of the current system who will never allow it.

More Football

Can't help myself; I'm just a fan.

The NFL is shaking out toward the interesting playoff weekend, with the intriguing questions to be answered:

Do the Jaguars have a prayer of knocking out the perfect Patriots in bad weather in Massachusetts?

Can the Chargers knock off the Colts in Indy? Was their victory over Indy in San Diego an indicator of what could happen this weekend, or did the Chargers simply catch a battered Colts team after their physically and emotionally damaging loss to the Patriots less than a week before?

Can the Seahawks follow up their pounding of Washington to upset Brett Favre and the Packers? Have the Packers been slumping with late-season losses, or were they just keeping their powder dry for the playoffs?

Are the Cowboys still the anointed favorites of the NFC for the Super Bowl, or are they vulnerable with a missing or weakened T.O.? Can anything be made of the Cowboys' late-season slump and the corresponding Giants surge? Can Eli Manning play well enough to beat the Cowboys in their stadium?

As a fan, I'm hoping for a Colts-Packers Super Bowl. Barring that, I could also enjoy a Colts-Giants Super Bowl with the Manning brothers in a repeat of the season opener.

The worst case scenario is the Patriots and Cowboys, as far as I'm concerned. Even though the national sports networks might view that as the dream matchup, I'd be extremely disappointed to see it come about.

I think the Colts will have little trouble with the Chargers, and will most likely have to face the Patriots for the AFC Championship. The Colts have a chance to beat the Pats, but they will have to play their best game of the year to do so. I think the Colts beat the Chargers about 28-13.

I think the Patriots will beat Jacksonville, but in a very close game. My prediction is a fourth-quarter touchdown drive engineered by Tom Brady to come from behind to beat the Jags. Score in this one I think will be 21-17.

I don't think the Giants will have enough firepower to beat the Cowboys, as much as I'd like to see it happen. It could be a close, low-scoring game. Score 17-14.

And I'm counting on the home-field frozen tundra advantage to propel the Packers over the Seahawks. If the weather's bad, I think it will be 20-10.

We'll see how my predictions hold up this weekend.

And the Winner is ... Oprah?

As I watched the results from the Iowa caucuses last night, I just found it interesting that Obama broke away from the 3-way pack to win over Edwards and Hillary. I figured he must have had a good campaign in Iowa to get so many to support him over the other two Democrats.

After all, Edwards has virtually lived in Iowa the last four years, and it seems in that time he must have met virtually every Democrat in the state. And Hillary's formidable machine with its inexhaustible millions from MoveOn and China would seem to have made her inevitable.

But then I heard something that explained it all. Who came out to the caucuses in Iowa in record numbers? Middle-aged women. As I understand the story behind the Iowa caucus story, the Democrat caucus sites were jammed with unprecedented numbers, almost all of them 50-60 year old women.

What could possibly have motivated so many middle-aged women to turn out in such record-breaking numbers to support Barack Obama for President?

Oprah, of course!

Middle-aged women watch Oprah. They love Oprah. They watch her TV show. They subscribe to her magazine. Those who read buy the books she recommends.

So, when Oprah tells them to get out and vote for Obama, what do these women do? See Iowa.

Think Rush Limbaugh is the most influential Republican? Nah, he doesn't even like Huckabee, who won big in Iowa. He can't hold a candle to Oprah.

Could it be, that our next president will be chosen by a TV talk show host?

Interesting. And a bit frightening.

Yin and Yang for President

It seems that some of the presidential candidates are almost mirror opposites of each other, which gave me the idea of Yin and Yang.

Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, for example. They're both wild-eyed little guys who represent the outliers in their respective parties. Although Paul isn't really representative of the Republican party so much - he's actually a Libertarian. They would both agree on immediate abandonment of Iraq, although for very different reasons. Admittedly, Ron Paul has much greater support than Dennis Kucinich will ever get, but I still think they might be the best yin-yang combo in the field.

Next I'll pick Mike Huckabee and John Edwards. Two populists, and two sides of the same coin. They market themselves to the masses, telling people they're just like them. They seem to understand the worries and problems of ordinary people that the rest of the politicians seem to ignore. Personally, I've got to admit my amazement that Edwards' supporters have actually fallen for that, as Huckabee seems at least more believable.

Then I'm going with Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Both are camera-friendly, smooth operators. At the same time, both are a bit hard to pin down on where they really stand on certain issues. There is a contrast, in that Obama hasn't got much of a record that allows definition beyond his own stated ideas, while Romney has had to do a makeover to morph from a Massachusetts liberal governor into a conservative reincarnation of Ronald Reagan. Both are battling voter consternation over their religion, with Obama dogged by whispers that he might actually be a Muslim, and Romney by those who suggest he belongs to a fringe Christian cult.

In the biggest stretch on my yin-yang comparison, there's Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton. They're both popular New Yorkers, even though Hillary's actually a carpetbagger. They both have reputation as tough, take-no-prisoners politicians. One thing that can be said about the general campaign is that it could be the most fascinating matchup between the two candidates least likely to play nice or fair.

My last comparison is between Joe Biden and Fred Thompson. These are the two guys who have the best party credentials and are most focused on policy. They're the straightest talkers in the race on each side, even though they're diametrically opposed in their policy ideas. They both seem to get lots of respect from their traditional party bases, but can't get arrested in the press.

I just find it interesting. Picking the winners for this year's general election race feels a bit like picking the winners in the NFL playoffs. How about my comparisons between the NFL teams and the candidates?

New England Patriots = Hillary Clinton. Evil but widely picked to win it all.
Indianapolis Colts = Barack Obama. Looks good, but good enough to get to the Super Bowl?
San Diego Chargers = John McCain. Slow start, but surging.
Pittsburgh Steelers = Joe Biden. Struggling
Jacksonville Jaguars = Mike Huckabee. Surprising dark horse.
Tennessee Titans = Chris Dodd. No chance.
Dallas Cowboys = Rudy Giuliani. Super Bowl Favorite, but with challenges.
Green Bay Packers = Fred Thompson. Sentimental favorites.
Washington Redskins = John Edwards. Flashy but lacking winning talent.
Seattle Seahawks = Bill Richardson. Also-ran status.
New York Giants = Tom Tancredo. One-dimensional.
Tampa Bay Bucs = Ron Paul. Can't get to Super Bowl, but have devoted fans.

Using or Abusing Science

The political Left has been laying claim to science as the basis for much of their agenda, but I've been doing some reading over the holidays that suggests otherwise. In fact, the science they're so openly promoting is mostly in the realm of "junk science" rather than the actual scientific method.

Darwinian evolution is one example. In an interesting case of projection, there's a zeal that seems almost religious by those most intent on imposing the idea of evolution providing the unquestioned proof that all life evolved from single-celled organisms. The problems remain that there is no clear evidence of any interspecies evolution in an extensive fossil record, and the fundamental question of the origins of all things remains a scientific mystery.

Not that I would make an argument for teaching "Intelligent Design" in schools. Religion doesn't belong in a science classroom. What I would argue, however, is that evolution be taught honestly, including the areas of the theory that are observable as well as those areas that remain questionable and unproven.

The coordinated silence and misinformation on the actual science of abortion is troubling. Abortion has been clearly established as a strong cause of breast cancer among women, but that information has been suppressed by abortion-rights advocates with the willing assistance of media and the government. Demonstrable impact on the mental health of women who have exercised their "choice" is also swept under the rug.

With advanced technologies, we now know much about the development of the fetus in the womb. The fetus can no longer be honestly characterized as just some tissue that can simply be removed before an actual human infant is formed.

An amazing program of propaganda has successfully obfuscated all science on the causes of homosexuality. Most people believe in a "gay gene" that doesn't exist, but has been successfully spread by dishonest, agenda-driven advocacy organizations that set out to "prove" something that doesn't exist.

The simple facts of serious and unbiased studies on the subject universally show that homosexuality is a result of a number of environmental factors. There is no "gay gene". Studies that make the gay advocacy community most angry have found that those who receive proper treatment can actually change their attractions and successfully form strong heterosexual relationships.

Also swept under the rug are the important facts that homosexual behavior includes extremely high risks of a wide range of diseases, above and beyond the most prevalent and well-known HIV/AIDS.

Then there's the overall epidemic of STD's. How many Americans actually know there's an epidemic of STD's? Not many, I imagine. The numbers are staggering. The infection rates for the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) alone are so high that an entire generation may find themselves dealing with the consequences over the next 20-30 years.

What made me angry were the recent commercials touting a treatment for HPV to prevent cervical cancer for women that never once mentioned what HPV is, or how it is contracted. Even when the government tries to act on the public health issue, they can't bring themselves to be honest about what causes the disease.

Finally, of course, there's Global Warming, which has now been renamed Global Climate Change. The political juggernaut led by Al Gore is unstoppable, as serious scientists who dare to refute any part of the religion of Global Climate Change are censured, denied tenure by their universities, and in some cases, fired.

Want a reason to be skeptical about Global Climate Change? Just look at the facts:

Those who lead the movement actually leave a "carbon footprint" hundreds of times bigger than those of use who will suffer under their heavy-handed "solutions".

The "solutions" Al and his friends at the UN are proposing have little or nothing to do with reducing emissions, but a great deal to do with taking money and sovereignty away from Americans and giving it to the rest of the world.

All I ask is honesty. For all of us, a healthy skepticism is not just advisable - it' a requirement. Otherwise, those who would force us all into submission for totalitarianism will use their pseudoscience to fool us into accepting their grab for power over our lives.

Huckeby Saga Draws to a Close

The Barry Huckeby story is ending quietly, with the recent news that he's reached a plea agreement with prosecutors. Basically, he's pled guilty to a lesser charge, something along the lines of mishandling of public funds. The theft charge is being dropped, and his sentencing will be in February.

This isn't particularly surprising, given the facts of the investigation by the State. The findings of the investigation, as I detailed in my previous post (See December 4th), seem to indict the school administration for gross mismanagement as much as it did Huckeby.

So I suspect the school administration want the whole thing to just go away. I sent a letter to the School Board President, Ms. Pia O'Connor, expressing my concerns about the mismanagement and unforgivably poor controls by the Columbus North Athletic Department. She responded in general terms that she is now satisfied that proper controls have been implemented there. Lacking any specifics or independent confirmation, I must admit to being more than a little skeptical.

Either way, the story is coming to an end very quietly. Barry Huckeby will move on with a small blemish on his record, and although he could do a month in jail, I doubt that will happen. Perhaps he'll get a new chance to coach basketball at another high school; that might even work out fine, as long as the new school keeps him far away from any money-handling responsibility.

It remains regrettable that the people who created the environment that led to this mess will escape the scrutiny they deserve.

Merry Christmas

My best wishes to everyone for a Merry Christmas!

Things are winding down quickly, as today I've seen my email and voicemail and telephone messages trickle to a near dead stop. Everyone is in the holiday mode, some taking off early for their Christmas celebration and others spending time in office parties or just goofing off as the week winds down.

Naturally, the whole thing stems from the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ something over 2,000 years ago. Today we have a large and vocal group of atheists who may like having the time off, but rail against the remembrance of the birth of this founder of the Christian faith.

Unfortunately, today we also have a large and growing number of church leaders who seem to be joining the atheists in equivocating or denying the fundamental stories so important to that faith in the divine who became human to teach us humanity and thus save us from darkness.

Ours is a faith of simplicity and poetry on the surface, but to those who choose to study in greater detail, an amazing continuity can be found with the ancient monotheistic God worshipped by Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike.

Back to the simple: Jesus was miraculously conceived by the virgin Mary or he was not. He performed hundreds of miracles during his roughly three and a half decades on earth, or he did not. He gave a number of inspirational sermons to thousands of people, mostly on the themes of loving and caring for each other, or he did not. Finally, and most importantly, he was viciously tortured and killed in a most barbaric practice known as crucifixion, was buried in a garden tomb near Jerusalem, and physically returned to life three days later. After which he was seen and preached to hundreds of people until he was whisked away on a cloud. Or none of that happened.

Nobody's ever observed a virgin birth. Nobody's ever seen a person that was dead and buried for 3 days return to life (unless you count the biblical story of Lazarus in addition to Jesus, of course). Most have never seen a miraculous healing without the use of science, whether sight or hearing or deformity or leprosy. Therefore, many simply refuse to believe any of that actually happened.

Sure, it is very hard to believe all that based simply on someone else's word. But Christians don't believe all this because of some sort of brainwashing or coercion. Most believe because of their own life experiences, in which they found that faith in the story of Jesus Christ with the study and commitment to following his example leads to inner peace and contentment and the belief it will all lead someday to a joyful reunification with Christ and the loved ones who passed on before. Many also believe because of the example of Christ's apostles and members of the early Church. If His story wasn't true, would it not seem logical that at least one of his disciples would have renounced it, rather than suffer abuse, imprisonment, exile, torture, and death? The disciple called John was the only surviving member of Christ's inner circle who was not killed for spreading the story to everyone who would listen.

If the story of Christ is not true, then all those disciples died for nothing. All the Christians that have been jailed and killed for nothing more than their faith over the years, even today in the Middle East, died for nothing. All the priests and religious who voluntarily chose to abandon normal lives for poverty and chastity to help the faith wasted them. Anyone who shows charity and kindness to others and tries to share their faith is wasting their time. Because, if the story of Christ is not true, then there is no reason for people to love each other, be compassionate for the needs of others, or help each other. Because if there is no God, and Jesus was just an ordinary man, then our lives are meaningless. Therefore, if our lives are meaningless, then we should get everything we can while we live so we can at least enjoy ourselves.

Unfortunately, that seems to be exactly where most people are these days.

To those who want to outlaw Christmas and stop people from this annual celebration of the faith, I'd like to offer my humble request: Go ahead and regard us as a bunch of ignorant superstitious fools if you like, but do we not have just as much right to believe as we choose as you have to believe in your own gods? (because as far as I can tell, you're not really an atheist, but worship things like animals and the environment, and ideas like Darwinian evolution and Socialism and the Big Bang.)

Once again, Merry Christmas to All! May your Christmas be everything you hope it will be.

Mounting Evidence of a Broken Government

Things continue to get worse in Washington. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that next year's elections will make any difference.

After wasting most of the past year in endless investigations of the President and continuous attempts to de-fund and undermine the Iraq war, the Democrats have finally gotten something done. It's hard to decide which is more discouraging - the fact they've passed some of their socialist legislation, or the fact that Republicans and the President have helped them do so.

All you folks out there who voted the bums out in 2006, handing control of congress to the Dems: What were you upset about? Sure, many thought the Iraq war was a mess. But most of you were frustrated at the lack of action to stop illegal immigration. Angry about irresponsible pork-barrel spending. Frustrated by the failure of elected representatives to care even minimally about the true needs of their constituents.

So how did that go?

Well, despite all the efforts of the Democrat congress, Iraq's turned around and is winding down on its own. But that's the only good news.

What has our government done about illegal immigration? Nada. In fact, they just slipped into their latest spending bill a significant backtrack on the famous border fence that still isn't being built.

What about pork-barrel spending? Think Dems are more responsible than the GOP? If you thought they would be, the joke's on you! The latest spending bill has as much or more pork in it than the worst of the GOP's bills. It's just that the earmarks in this one are designed to help their newest Democrats bring enough bacon back to their districts to entrench them for next year's re-election. Our's is included: Baron Hill won his seat back from Republican Mike Sodrel, and has been rewarded by millions in special funding for his district awarded by his party to help him keep his seat next year.

Then there's the Energy Bill. What an obscene, patently obvious sop to Democrat special interests that travesty represents! How does mandating 35 miles per gallon from the auto industry help energy or the environment? NOT AT ALL! It simply creates artificial shortages in the market for trucks, vans, and suv's. What gives any government the right to tell anyone what they can drive? This government does so by telling the auto makers what they can sell.

Add to that the Bali conference on "Climate Change". Notice they aren't calling it "Global Warming" anymore, because the science on that isn't as settled as Al Gore would have us believe. Is anything the conference is doing going to improve the climate of earth, give us more clean air or clean water, eliminate droughts and blizzards and hurricanes and tornadoes? There's another big joke being played on the ignorant populace. NOT AT ALL!

What Bali's really all about is globalism, socialism, and taking the USA down a notch or two. These guys want us to give them the right to tax us! That's right, they want to tax American Citizens for our wicked and unfair consumption of much more than our share of the earth's resources, and give the money to, well, them! Just forget about the earth and climate and the environment - the whole thing is a scheme by people in the UN to get rich off taxing Americans for their use of energy.

It's so frustrating, all the more so that there's so little I can do about it. Common sense has been co-opted by special interests, whose main special interest is in getting rich. And in return for making them rich, they offer our politicians the kick-backs they need to keep their misleading campaign ad machines running so they can stay in office and continue serving their wealthy minders.

Want a good energy policy? Lease ANWR to the highest bidder to extract the oil there. Open the continental shelf to exploration. Build nuclear power plants. Encourage an increase in refinery capacity. Stop the madness on ethanol - an inefficient fuel made from food is about the dumbest thing I think we can do. Go ahead and continue development of alternative energy technologies - sponsor contests, give tax incentives, and all that to encourage inventors to find ways to power cars with hydrogen and generate electricity with wind and solar. But stop acting as if those alternatives are already fully viable, because they are far from that!

I want them all gone. Senators Lugar and Bayh need to go. Congressman Hill needs to go. But they need to be replaced with sensible people who cannot be bought, and that's the hard part.

More Football

The Colts and Patriots have wrapped up the top two spots in the playoffs. As of this weekend, nothing can change the fact that the Patriots are seeded first and the Colts second. Which means both teams get to await the winner of the first round of AFC playoff games in the semifinal.

Most expect the "real" Super Bowl this year will be played in Massachusetts in the dead of winter between the Colts and Pats. Yes, the Jags and Chargers have been playing pretty well lately, and the Steelers are always a threat despite their recent stumble. But the Colts and Pats still look like the two best teams in the entire league.

It seems the Colts may have learned a hard lesson two years ago, when they wrapped up the first seed early in their exceptional season. They pulled the starters and let backups get knocked around at the end of the season, which meant the starters didn't play in a real game for about a month.

That showed, with a rusty Colts offense taking a bit too long to get things untracked against the Steelers, who of course went on to win the Super Bowl that year.

This year it could be tempting to sit Peyton and Joseph and Dallas and Reggie. The idea would be to make sure they don't get injured, and keep them fresh and well-rested for the playoffs. Maybe it would be OK to pull them in the fourth quarter of their last two games, but hopefully Tony and the coaching staff learned their lesson. It's important to keep them playing and keep them sharp going into the playoffs.

One could wonder about the Patriots, and whether they will take the opportunity to protect their starters in their last two games, which also are meaningless except for the chance to go undefeated. The reputation of the Patriots would seem to dispel any thoughts of resting starters. They've been known for running up the score on weaker teams throughout the season, leaving Brady and his cast on the field even after building insurmountable leads.

It's playing out as the good guys (Colts) against the bad guys (Patriots) for the Super Bowl. If the Colts are able to get everyone back from injury, it should be a great game. The winner is expected to get the Cowboys or Packers in the Super Bowl. Everyone who's not a Cowboys fan is rooting for Brett Favre to make it back to the big game.

I'm just a fan coming along for the ride.

Christmas Thoughts

Here we live in a time that has unnecessarily complicated Christmas. It has become a stressful holiday for many, who become obsessed with making the right impressions with their gifts to family, friends, and co-workers. Who dread the obligatory family gatherings where they must interact with those family members they have come to detest for some reason or other. Who may or may not make the once-a-year trip to church for Christmas Eve services out of grudging honor of an old tradition.

The idea of Christmas is very simple, and it can be a joyful occasion if simply approached in the right spirit. What I've learned is this:

Christmas is about giving, not getting.

Gifts don't have to be expensive. They're an expression of love, which requires only a bit of thought. They also don't have to be restricted to family and friends; Christmas is a great time to give to anyone needing help.

Maybe instead of dreading the family gathering, how about going with the objective of burying the hatchet and ending the feud? You may never become close with that relative, but you could certainly become civil for a few hours a year.

Christmas is about the children. There's nothing better than watching the sheer joy and excitement of the children as they enjoy every aspect of Christmastime.

So while it may be true that our society has taken the celebration of Christmas far beyond its original intent. Yes, Christ's birth probably didn't occur on December 25th, and the early church probably didn't make a big deal of celebrating it.

But it remains a very special event in the year, and if celebrated in the right spirit, can be a wonderful experience.

Agenda Films

These are the times rife with agendas, and this year has seen the release of a number of agenda-driven films. I find it somewhat encouraging that such films to this point have had rather dismal ratings. It seems that recent anti-war films, such as recent flops as 'Lions for Lambs' and 'Rendition', have flopped because they hold little entertainment value.

What movie-goer wants to go see a film that is preachy, shallow, and possibly even insulting to their intelligence. The message to Hollywood is, "You guys have been beating the drum for over six years now; Bush sucks, war is bad, Iraq war is bad, blah, blah, blah. You don't need to bludgeon us with the same message in your contrived on-screen fiction."

Now there's a release of the 'Golden Compass', a movie made based on the first book in a series called 'His Dark Materials' by crusading atheist author Philip Pullman. The movie has been watered down to obfuscate the most obvious of Mr. Pullman's agenda, but the core purpose of the film is to create demand for the books, which from all accounts depict vicious attacks on Christianity, especially aimed at the Catholic Church. Excerpts I've seen suggest not only an atheistic, but even a Satanic message.

Contrary to popular stereotype, Christians and Catholics aren't petitioning the government to censor the movie or the books. They're simply exercising their rights to shine the light on this movie's agenda, which in turn encourages parents to skip this film, which ironically has been released in the Christmas season.

Fortunately, the reviews I've seen of this agenda film have been pretty tepid. Reviewers who don't seem to care about the agenda or controversy are simply saying it's not a very good movie. Which of course remains consistent with the theory that agenda-driven films appeal to a narrow audience and won't do well commercially. Hopfully the trend holds with this film.

Some Interesting Information on the Huckeby Issue

I've written a couple of posts in the past about the Barry Huckeby case of misappropriation of funds at Columbus North High School. The stories I had access to raised a number of questions, some of which have been answered in the report released by the State Board of Accounts dealing with both the Football issue and a question also raised about accounting for a Golf Outing run by Mr. Huckeby.

My reading of the report seems to clear up several of my questions.

Barry Huckeby is astoundingly inept at recordkeeping.

He's also not very smart. How could he not have known that all his handling of funds would be scrutinized? Whether he is truthful or not in his response to the findings of the Board of Accounts, he shows a puzzling lack of judgement when it comes to minimally responsible recordkeeping. Ironically, he's a math teacher! For a math teacher, he seems incapable of basic addition and subtraction.

The Columbus North Athletic Department is not without culpability here, at least in terms of enforcing policies and procedures for handling of receipts from sporting events. It's unconscionable that the department had not even the most basic of controls in place to account for the ticket sales.

My reading of the report is that Barry's handling of the funds from the golf fundraiser could reasonably be attributed to sloppy recordkeeping. Did he siphon some funds from the golf outing? Since he's the only one with the checking account and can't produce several receipts to back up his claims, there's ultimately no way to prove it one way or the other. There can be no argument that his outrageously poor management alone builds a pretty strong case for his dismissal - at least from any position that involves handling money.

The case is pretty solid against him for the missing $3,436 in football receipts. He admitted pocketing a couple of $50's, and there isn't a reasonable explanation for the difference in receipts from the playoff game against Terre Haute North, which totaled $2,080. Barry's defense is that the whole system at Columbus North was in disarray, with season pass funds mixed with game receipts and moneys deposited into different accounts.

However, the playoff game against Terre Haute North was by IHSAA rules not covered by any season passes. Everyone had to purchase a ticket, either in advance or at the game itself. The receipts from the playoff game simply can be estimated based on the number of tickets collected at the gate. So there are only two explanations for the difference of over $2,000:

1) That's the amount collected prior to the game in ticket pre-sales that didn't get counted for the game, or
2) That's the amount Barry put in his pocket after the game.

To believe that over $2,000 in pre-sales was mishandled by the Athletic Director and the Department Secretary, one would also have to believe that both conspired to either steal the money themselves or destroy Barry for some sinister personal reason. I'm not prepared believe such a theory.

At trial, I'm thinking a good defense attorney can raise enough reasonable doubt in the case to get Barry a Not Guilty verdict or a hung jury. Unless compelling evidence is presented at trial of someone seeing Barry pocket the money or talk about pocketing the money, I think it will be hard to convict him. Reasonable doubt can certainly be raised based on the department's overall lax recordkeeping procedures.

On the other hand, I firmly believe his firing was proper. His extremely poor management and failure to follow even the most basic of controls is inexcusable. Discrepancies under $100 you can chalk up to human error; discrepancies over $3,000 point to something far more serious. Clearly, Barry cannot be trusted with handling money.

That doesn't mean the blame stops with Barry, however. I'd also recommend termination of the CNHS Athletic Director, who is culpable in her failure to implement such basic controls and procedures in the Athletic Department. It would not seem out of line to take a serious look at the culpability of the Principal as well.

With proper controls and oversight in place, the incident clearly would never have happened. And that begs an immediate termination of the Athletic Director and anyone else directly responsible for such obvious mismanagement.

Another Football Post

As a fan, I've got to slip in a bit of football now and then.

At the high school level, it was disappointing to see our local team, the Columbus North Bulldogs, drop a winnable state semifinal. They played exceptional defense and scored two touchdowns in the first half to seem well in control of the game that could qualify them for the state 5A championship in the RCA Dome.

Unfortunately, things unraveled late in the third quarter, when quarterback Mike Hladik threw an interception that led to a quick touchdown by Indianapolis Pike. That touchdown was followed by two more very quick touchdowns by Pike, which found its offense and rattled the North defense with some big plays. A missed extra point on their third touchdown left Pike ahead 20-14.

But North wasn't done yet. They managed a good kickoff return and had a solid drive going, finding themselves well within Pike territory with about 2 minutes remaining in the game. But their quest for a championship ended with two dropped first-down passes in their last four plays.

I could only imagine how difficult that was for the players and coaches, to see the victory within reach and lose because of a couple of dropped passes. Ouch.

In college, it's nice to see Indiana qualified for a Bowl game for the first time in many years. It was a great tribute to Coach Hef, who passed away before the season.

In the NFL, the hated Patriots have shown some chinks in their armor the last couple of weeks. They've begun to look beatable, and for once I sort of hope the Steelers take them down next week.

The Colts have struggled since their own loss to the Patriots, which left them physically and mentally crushed. The Colts lost some key players to injury, and the physically able played liked whipped dogs the following week in San Diego. Even so, they had the Chargers beaten except for a missed chip-shot field goal by Vinatieri. Since then, they've been gradually regaining their injured players and improving. But they're still not the same Colts we saw prior to the Pats game.

It will be fascinating to see what happens in the playoffs, where a rematch between the Colts and Patriots is very likely. The Steelers have a chance to play a role, but there doesn't seem to be any other team in the AFC able to compete with those powerhouse teams.

The sports commentators are sort of comical, as they root for the Cowboys and Packers and openly hope one of those teams can beat the AFC champ. Sorry guys, not going to happen. Whether the Patriots, Colts, or Steelers win through to the Super Bowl, I've got to predict the NFC team will lose again.

All that's left are the college bowls, then the NFL playoffs. After that, I'll have to catch some Indiana basketball to feed my sports addictions until the sports desert of spring and summer arrive.

Irony

The irony of two of the big stories this morning is fascinating. The British teacher who allowed her students to name a teddy bear "Mohammed" was released from jail, and Don Imus returned to the airwaves.

Although there's a big difference between spending a few days in what must have been a hellish jail in Sudan and getting what amounts to a paid vacation, both stories were about punishment for the most egregious sins in today's world; the sin of giving offense.

Both cases were, I believe, unintentional acts that caused a firestorm among the offended. The teacher had no idea she would be jailed and have her very life threatened when her students named a teddy bear after the founder of Islam. Imus thought he was being hip or relevant by making a statement about the women's basketball team that would have passed without notice if uttered by, say, Chris Rock.

It is a strange world where offending someone, even without realizing you were being offensive, is the most unforgivable sin. It's a strange world where people can get away with almost anything, up to and including murder, if they have a good enough rationalization. But get away with giving offense to an aggrieved group? You are forever painted with the scarlet letter, not "A", but "R"(racist) or "B"(bigot).

Be careful what you say, especially in public. The thought police are everywhere.

Missing the Point

The flap over the GOP YouTube debate continues and expands, as many of the video questions chosen by CNN have been found to be Democrat activists. Aside from the obvious dishonesty of the questioners presenting themselves as "undecided voter" or "Log Cabin Republican", CNN and their leftist supporters are missing (or mis-reporting) the point.

That point being it's not that the candidates are afraid of answering "tough" questions. It's about the double standard. It's about the predisposition of the CNN folks who chose the questions that Republicans are redneck war-mongering mean bigoted homophobes. They chose questions in an attempt to "expose" the candidates as such.

Even more to the point is the double standard. If you want to put on these left agenda-driven questioners in the GOP debate, where were the questions from Republican party activists at the Democrat YouTube debate?

Let's talk equivalency.

If it's fair game to bring Dem gay activists on the GOP debate asking their questions, why not have a Republican activist asking the Democrat candidates where they stand on Gay Marriage, and whether businesses and religious organizations should have the right to discriminate based on moral behavior standards?

How about a questioner asking the Dems to explain when exactly abortion crosses the line and becomes infanticide? Or whether they would counsel a young pregnant woman to get an abortion or enter an adoption program?

Maybe a question about whether they would support police raids on private residences to confiscate handguns, a la Washington DC?

Even a similar question as asked by the guy waving the Bible. Where do you Dems stand on religion and morality, and what place (if any) does religion play in American society?

The point is simple, but somehow the media seems to miss it.

What else is new?

Debaters

I caught the entire debate last night. CNN learned at least one lesson on the You-Tube format and cut out the stupid and outrageous stuff from the Democrat version. But apparently they couldn't help themselves in the sense of putting on some rather poor choices I suspect mirror their own attitudes.

They got caught on the gay general who hammered the candidates on "don't ask, don't tell". It turns out he's from Hillary's campaign. They compounded the dishonest presentation by letting the general expound further after the candidates gave what I thought were reasonable responses. Except Romney, who was so afraid of saying the wrong thing that he came off as an insincere buffoon.

The guy with the guns was funny, but I suspect may have been a set-up designed to suggest Republicans are a bunch of stupid rednecks. And the guy waving the Bible was simply insulting. Actually, I thought as many as half of the questions CNN chose were very questionable, possible put-up jobs. It's hard to believe they chose the one with the question about the stars & bars. In general, there were too many non-serious obnoxious questions from obvious enemies of the party.

My personal opinion is that Romney didn't do so well. He seemed insincere and calculating to me.

Rudy was his usual self, promising to do for the country what he did for New York City. Problem is, New York City is hardly a place most Americans (including me) would consider a reasonable model for the rest of the country. For me, New York, Miami, and Los Angeles are as close to being their own separate countries as they can be. I don't especially want the rest of America to look like New York City.

I thought the strongest performances came from McCain and Huckabee. They were earnest and seemed honest and passionate about their beliefs. McCain did a great job of projecting a confidence in his ability to win in Iraq and deal with the threats of terrorism. Huckabee was very personable and affable, and was terrific on the WWJD question.

Ron Paul must have gotten the message, toning it down a bit so he didn't come across quite so crazy. I was finally able to see what makes him attractive to his enthusiastic base of supporters.

I still really want to like Fred, and can't say he did badly. He seemed fairly comfortable and plain-spoken, but still doesn't really show much passion for the race. He's a guy I'd be happy to vote for in the general election, but he doesn't seem to give people a lot of reason to support him enthusiastically in the primary.

Hunter and Tancredo were all but ignored. They could be the greatest candidates in the field, but CNN seemed determined to keep them in the shadows. Tancredo still seems the one-trick pony, all about the immigration issue. Maybe he's served his purpose in highlighting the issue and can go ahead and retire from the race. Hunter seems like a good guy, but we get far to few chances to learn much about him.

I've got to think that the race is not between Rudi and Romney, but maybe between McCain and Huckabee. It will be interesting to find out whether I'm right.

Sports Fans Mistreated

The two examples this season of spiraling greed of sports executives is in the NFL and the Big 10. Both have launched their own cable networks which are mostly unavailable to the public. Indiana University basketball fans can't watch their beloved Hoosiers, who are now on the Big 10 Network. The second biggest game of the NFL season tonight can't be seen by most fans of the Packers and Cowboys, because it's only shown on the NFL Network.

The Big 10 and NFL blame the cable companies, who they say have greedily refused to carry their new networks on their "basic" television packages. The cable companies say it's the Big 10 and NFL who are the greedy ones, demanding something like $.80 per subscriber while they demand the channels be added to the basic package.

Like every other sports fan, I grew up watching the NFL and College basketball on free network television. Advertisers paid the stations for the right to show me their wares during time-outs. Everybody made money, and the leagues built huge fan bases.

But they got greedy. Cable channels, notably ESPN, entered the picture, and suddenly you had to have a cable subscription to watch your favorite teams play sometimes. Fewer and fewer games play on the "free" network channels.

The result I expect is going to be a loss of the fan base that has been the golden goose for the NFL and Big 10 all these years. Having only seen part of 2 Hoosier basketball games so far this season, I find myself starting to lose interest in the team I've followed since I was a kid. Likewise, the NFL will see angry and disaffected fans begin to find other interests.

Anyone that's upset over the money grabs by the NFL and Big 10 should act in this simple way: Stop watching. Don't subscribe. Don't give in to their attempt to grab your wallet and just avoid these new networks. Send the message that you will not play the game, and your support for the teams and leagues is not for sale.

I think the NFL and Big 10 should be forced to back down. But are the fans strong enough?

We'll soon find out.

Why Hate?

Maybe it's just that I've been paying more attention now, or I just didn't recognize it in the past, but it seems that hatred is at an all-time high both in quantity and intensity.

It's hard for me to imagine, because I honestly don't hate anyone. At least using my own definition of hatred, which is despising an individual so thoroughly as to actually wish them ill.

Sure, there are a few people I've met in my life that I've disliked. Mainly because they were absolute jerks. My approach is very simple - I just make sure to stay as far away from them as possible. On one or two occasions the jerks have been co-workers, but even then I seemed able to distance myself from them except for when I was forced to interact. Then I refused to allow anything but brief conversations about the business at hand.

It's very strange to me that so many people seem to nurture a murderous hatred of George W. Bush. How can one hate so viciously someone they've never even met, and only know based on the image conjured of him by the news media?

Among public figures, I have to admit that I expect there's a special place in Hell reserved for one Bill Maher. He's one jerk I hope never to meet in person. But I do pray for him, because aside from being a jerk, I think he's just terribly misguided.

Those who hate the president accuse their conservative counterparts of hating his predecessor no less viscerally. I'd have to disagree - I never heard the most rabid of conservatives openly hope for Bill Clinton's assassination like the Bush haters do. Personally, I thought Clinton should have done the right thing after the Lewinsky mess and resigned. I was profoundly disappointed in what he did and how he demeaned the office, but never hated him.

Some people irritate me. They anger me, disappoint me, exasperate me. But I don't hate them for it. At most, they just make me sad; more for them than for myself.

Instead of hating each other, why can't we just disagree? I think we can disagree with each other strongly and vigorously without coming the the H word. Maybe now and then we can learn a little about each other.

Some of us will never like each other, but that beats hating each other.

Projection

A little psychological term I picked up in college, projection is a defense mechanism whereby someone accuses another of a negative attribute or behavior she actually exhibits.

There seems to be a lot of projection in our modern political dialogue.

Let's examine a few:

Conservatives who support capital punishment are heartless barbarians.

I'm still waiting for an explanation about why the most strident voices against capital punishment are equally as strident in their defense of a "woman's right to choose", even to the point of where a fully-developed human infant's brains are sucked out just before delivery so the mother doesn't have to raise the child. How does it work - "Save the murderers, kill the babies"? How about "Save the environment, abort a fetus".

Conservatives "steal" elections by "disenfranchising" Democrat voters.

I've been trying to figure out what that means, and the closest I can get is this: Laws like the one passed here in Indiana that require voters to produce a valid identification before voting disenfranchise Democrat voters who are filling in for people who have moved away, are dead, or never existed in the first place. Then of course there are the illegal immigrant and convicted felon disenfranchised Democrat voters. Who exactly is "stealing" elections?

Conservatives, especially talk radio, are responsible for the divisiveness and uncivil discourse in American politics today. It's conservatives who have no tolerance for other points of view. Rush Limbaugh is the poster child for this argument.

Tell you what: Listen to Rush Limbaugh just once, then turn on Bill Maher or Keith Olbermann or Chris Matthews. Then tell me who is more uncivil; who exhibits more raw hatred and disgust for the other side? Be honest.

Conservatives hail from the Flat Earth Society.

I guess the charge is that conservatives hate science, apparently because they're religious nutcases. Al Gore recently said that anyone who questions his highly touted "scientific facts" about global warming is no more worthy of media play than someone who believes the earth is flat. Interesting, given the fact that even the climate scientists on Al's side have admitted that he's vastly overblown many of his "facts", and completely made up several others.

Interestingly, the people who claim to put so much faith in science and reason rise up in righteous indignation if anybody in the scientific community releases a study that seems to prove one of their sacred liberal beliefs isn't true. The latest story on stem cells, for example. Darwinian evolution. That men and women are actually different in several measurable ways (*gasp*).

It's so interesting how science is only touted by these folks when it serves their agenda. Oh wait - I thought that was supposed to be the other side that does that!

Moving on to reason, that just may be the biggest joke. Those who profess to use reason and a dispassionate analysis of the factual evidence seem to be most likely to abandon reason for emotion. Those on the far left (Marxists, in case you don't know who the far left are) choose to ignore the abject failures of Marxist society, believing they will simply implement it better than the others.

Bush is spying on Americans.

Aside from the fact that there's no evidence any innocent American has been illegally wiretapped, it's another great example. Anybody remember the FBI Files scandal, euphemistically called "Filegate", from the Clinton era? By the way, it was Hillary that set up the illegal office where FBI files were obtained on all of the Clinton's political enemies to use against them. Plus there was the case of Newt Gingerich's cellphone conversations being tapped by Democrat party operatives and shared with Hillary to use against him.

Strange how everybody but Hillary got prosecuted for that stuff.

There are more, but here's the last one:

Bush has shredded the Constitution.

That's amazing, coming from those who would impose a big-brother socialist society on the rest of us, telling us what we are allowed to drive, eat, smoke, even think. Those who want a Supreme Court that disregards the constitution to implement anything they can't achieve through democratic means. Those who would erase all references to God and repeal the first and second amendments as quickly as possible.

Our word for today, children, is Projection.

Atheist Oppression

Lately I've been hearing and reading about prominent atheists and their crusade against Christianity. Just trying to understand the point of view, I have discovered their true agenda is the destruction of religion.

The basic ideas I'm hearing from them are these:

Christianity is the source of most of the violence today and throughout history.

Christianity is a fable, there is no God, and those who adhere to a Christian faith are akin to ignorant unenlightened closed-minded superstitious fools.

Christianity is about denying people a fulfilling life through silly and arbitrary behavioral rules. Christianity also attempts to refute and deny scientific facts, and tries to keep children ignorant and away from scientific education or discovery.

If Christianity could be eliminated, people would somehow become more enlightened and educated, the world would be a less violent place, and everyone would enjoy true equality.

Let's see if I can address these point-by-point:

Christians are violent? OK, keep pointing to the Crusades and Spanish Inquisition. Reading history, I seem to find much more violence by other than Christians than those two tired old examples. Check out the Inquisition, and despite the fact it was certainly not a bright spot for the Church, it was a very short-lived and isolated event that in fact killed a very small number of people.

Why is it so en vogue to attack Christians as violent, absent any actual examples of violence done in the name of Jesus Christ? Stranger still, the same people on that bandwagon don't seem to have a problem with Islamic terrorism, which is a real and observable phenomenon of our time.

How about atheists? How many people were killed by atheist states in the modern era? By communists in China, VietNam, Cambodia, the Soviet Union, and so on. The treatment of people when atheists take over the government would seem to suggest there's a great deal more to fear from atheists than any Christian.

The idea that Christianity is a fable is strange. There's more evidence of the existence and execution of Jesus than most other historical figures, both in biblical and Roman accounts. It's hard to deny the man existed, even if atheists insist on arguing the point of his resurrection and divinity.

The flat statement that God does not exist is never made from a place of logic, as the atheist spokespersons try to suggest. Just listening to them talk, their rhetoric is full of anger and invective. It suggests to me that they are not approaching their activist agenda out of a desire for reason and logic, but rather out of some terrible anger over some abuse or slight they must have experienced at the hand of someone claiming to be a Christian.

These atheist activists are crusading to destroy the Christian faith because of a deeply held antipathy toward those who espouse the faith. It would seem to me that a dispassionate atheist would have more of a live-and-let-live attitude, or perhaps strongly support science education in schools. They run over the cliff when they extend their agenda to pushing for government denial of the First Amendment.

As for the arbitrary behavioral rules, I'd suggest they are not arbitrary at all. Christians know that the entire moral code set out by the faith is based on how we treat each other. Adultery isn't wrong because it's about sex; it's wrong because by definition the act is one of deceit that harms the adulterer's partner. Prohibitions against extramarital sex in general are based on very real outcomes, nearly all of which are devastating. Disease and pregnancy, for example.

Which leads to abortion. I've come to decide that the rage of atheists against Christianity's stand against abortion has at its heart a human reaction to having an evil act reflected back. If someone who has aborted a child comes to understand that the abortion is tantamount to infanticide can't live with herself. So one psychological response is rage against those who would suggest such an idea. They already know the truth, but like petulant children, scream loudly to drown out those who would state that truth.

The anti-science argument is another matter. I know that there are those in the evangelical community that hope to get something called "intelligent design" included in the curriculum of science classes that teach Darwinian evolution. I haven't read enough about "intelligent design" to know what it is for certain, but it seems to suggest that the questions of origins that aren't adequately described by science just might be found in the idea of a creator.

If there's an area I can agree with atheists, it's that science is science and should be taught as such. That said, I think Darwinian evolution should be taught with an honest airing of its many flaws and gaps. It seems to me that some atheists have an agenda as strong or stronger than those pushing the "intelligent design" idea, presenting Darwin as fact and purposely ignoring its gaps and flaws.

The Left is feeling empowered these days, confident that they will win control of the Federal Government next year. That seems to have led to many voices coming out to trumpet their agenda for the new liberal government. Those goals seem to include a deliberate suppression of Christianity, which has already been evidenced by the House's bill to designate homosexuals as a protected class, equivalent to racial minorities. It happens to be in direct conflict with the rights of religion to hold such behavior as immoral.

But the oppression doesn't stop with religion. Overweight? The new government will force you to exercise and eat better and lose weight, or you might lose your access to healthcare. Smoke? Better quit, or you will be denied access to healthcare. Drive an SUV? Not for long. Even more extreme - the China protocol is favored by many on the left; population control through government enforcement of one child per couple (but of course the couple can be of any gender pair).

Could it possibly be true that the majority of Americans will unwittingly vote for all this government intrusion on their lives? So it seems.

Rights and Wrongs

Apparently the US House passed a bill banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. What a terrible idea.

No, I don't say it's a terrible idea because I think gays should be treated badly. I think it is a terrible idea because it infringes on rights and freedoms of everyone else.

Let me illustrate:

Giving gays the right to sue employers who chose not to hire them or promote them because they perceive a discriminatory bias will lead to harassment lawsuits against companies all over the country. It will become a popular tactic used to damage or bankrupt businesses the radical gay activists don't like.

The law will now force employers to provide all benefits they offer to married couples and children to gay partners. Which means discriminating against all their employees that cannot get benefits for dependent parents, brothers, sisters, or others.

Most importantly, small businesses owned by sincere Christians who believe homosexual behavior is immoral and disordered will be forced to hire open gays and provide them with benefits. It's the same to people of faith as being forced to hire and give special treatment to any person of low morals.

Then there are churches, parochial and Christian schools, Christian bookstores, and related businesses that have at their core a commitment to high moral standards. They'll be insulted by a callous government telling them they cannot make moral judgements in their hiring decisions.

It's no different than passing a law telling business owners they may not discriminate against openly promiscuous applicants. Employees who compromise on some moral issues are more likely to compromise on others. That is as true of a heterosexual man who has been married 4 times and continues with serial affairs in the office as an openly promiscuous gay man.

If the government can force employers to hire this special class, then why not protect other classes? How about overweight people, who are openly discriminated against in our society? Why not short people? Ugly people? Stupid people? I could go on and on ...

Common sense is dead. And morality died with it.

A Sour Mood Previewed

The local elections this week in Indianapolis may have some relevance as a micro-level demonstration of the sour mood among American voters in general.

In a classic "throw the bums out" move, Indianapolis residents kicked out Bart Peterson and voted in a Republican majority to the City Council.

It's an angry city, to be sure. Property tax reassessment made many homeowners in greater Indianapolis exceedingly upset, with some claiming increases up to 200 and even 400 percent. That on top of a hike in their local income tax rate combined to produce an angry mob of voters prepared to force change.

It makes me think that on the national level, maybe change will drive next year's elections more than party affiliation. Could it be that the press is wrong, as they so often are, in predicting a landslide for Democrats next November? Maybe the landslide will be seen more in an anti-incumbent vote regardless of party affiliation.

I think people are sick of the parties, and are simply looking for candidates that give them straight talk and offer real solutions instead of the standard meaningless pablum the incumbents have so carefully cultivated over the years.

Got a Democrat in your district who supported amnesty for illegal immigrants, tax increases, and votes in lockstep with Nancy Pelosi? If challenged by an articulate, reasonably intelligent Republican, he or she might be surprised to find him(her)self unemployed next year.

Got a Republican in your district who participated or didn't visibly oppose the pork when his party owned the congress, aligned with the President on illegal immigration, or favored corporate interests over his constituents? Likewise, a Democrat could unseat even a seemingly entrenched lawmaker.

For President, I'm no longer assuming Hillary's a lock. Obama seems to be gaining on her, and the Republican candidate has yet to emerge.

When I hear someone say they will vote for Hillary, I try to just ask why. The reasons I hear are pretty simplistic: She's a woman (usually the reason given by women), and she's not George Bush. So let's suppose the GOP candidate gets out there head-to-head with Hillary and communicates clearly on common-sense solutions to issues, at the same time exposing Hillary as a poll-driven animal without any real principles (except, perhaps, getting and keeping power for herself). He could win.

Of course, the only candidate who has a chance to win is the one who has the best common-sense solutions to very difficult problems. Oil prices, Iraq and Iran, Terror, Illegal Immigration, Taxes and Spending, Healthcare, Social Security. Lots of incredibly tough problems out there for the next President, who I suspect will have to begin the term with the country in recession.

Is there somebody running who will be best to deal with so many large and difficult problems? I'm not sure there is, but I do think there's a tremendous opportunity from somebody to step up and prove it to the people.

Do I Ask too Much?

Spending a week in Canada was sort of frustrating, since the only news I could see was CNN. But I can't stand it for very long, because inevitably I begin hearing the talking points direct from the DNC and the Clinton campaign.

Lou Dobbs is a notable exception. He's mad at both parties, and continues his quixotic crusade against outsourcing, offshoring, and illegal immigration. Issues where of course he has virtually no support from either political party.

Otherwise, the rest of the talking heads get tiresome as they spin each and every issue as somehow screwed up by George Bush, and only solvable by Queen Hillary and her Democrat comrades. I feel like I'm watching something from the old Soviet Pravda.

I don't care if all the reporters are socialists or communists. All I ask is that they at least make an attempt to tell the complete story and offer the opposing (definition: non-Democratic) point of view now and then.

Let's be honest. Next year's election is about deciding a few very simple principles for America:

Either we will find our healthcare provided by a federal government bureaucracy or the status quo. Nobody's going to fix the problems, so unfortunately those are the only two available options.

Either we will continue to keep terrorism on the run or they will begin bombing our cities. Maybe with nukes.

We'll either find ways to increase oil supplies and bring down prices or the problem will reach crisis proportions. The latter is about an 80% probability, as far as I can tell right now.

Either our taxes will go up a lot or just a little. A lot seems more likely.

We will probably be in recession. The only question is how long will it last, and how painful will it be. The parties will just blame each other. Democrats will pretend like increasing taxes will help. Republicans will propose reducing taxes but will be rebuffed.

The illegal alien problem won't be solved. Even though somewhere north of 70 percent of Americans are outraged about the lack of attention paid to the problem by elected officials. They still won't do anything to solve it, unless you call legalizing all the illegal aliens solving it.

Hillary as president will be controlled by the Chinese, Labor Unions, Trial Lawyers, illegal immigrants, gays, and socialist minorities.

The Republican president will most likely be controlled by big business, the drug companies, the insurance companies.

Nobody will represent us average working folks.

I'm angry. I'm cynical. I'm disappointed. I feel more like voting against every incumbent than electing anybody in particular.