A Victory for the Little Guy

Great news for those of us concerned about government spending and earmark abuses, Bill S2590 aka the Coburn-Obama bill passed the Senate unanimously. A big thank you to the bloggers of all political persuasions who worked on finding the identities of the two senators who placed holds on it. Now we will have some accountability on spending that is long overdue!

Romney Acting Presidential

It is always fun to predict who will be the front runners for a presidential election and lately Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts is emerging from the pack. Hugh Hewitt noticed that Mitt had issued a wonderful press release denying state protection to former Iranian president Mohammed Khatami when he lectures on the eve of 9/11 at Harvard. If only President Bush had the intestinal fortitude to buck the State Department and bar this fundamentalist from our country! Unfortunately, the State Department still believes Khatami is a moderate and probably think they are wooing the moderates in Iran. The same people who are being forced out of all positions of power in government and education right now. But that's State, they are controlled by bureaucrats who believe that talking can solve every problem.

Enough with that, I want to talk about Gov. Romney. Despite his accomplishments in turning around the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics and taking a firm stand for conservative positions on gay marriage and health care reform, I admit I was suspicious of him. The reason why may surprise some -- it is because he is a Latter-day Saint. Now why would I be so wary of someone who is of the same faith I hold? It took me awhile to figure that out myself and no, it isn't just because Harry Reid is LDS too.

It is because I hold Mormons to a higher standard than I do other people. Our faith is more rigorous than most and more demanding of the individual due to our emphasis on accountability. As a result, I expect more honesty and compassion out of my fellow Church members, especially the active ones. More is expected of us due to our Church having a lay ministry and I'd like to think that we improve as people due to that service. Then there is an added layer of the history of persecution of Latter-day Saints, leading to a feeling that we will never be fully accepted by others, yet yearning for that very acceptance.

I wonder if Roman Catholics had the same feelings about John F. Kennedy when it first became apparent he would be seeking the nomination?

Heck of a Way to Start a Labor Day

The world is a tiny bit darker today, as I just read that Steve Irwin was killed by a giant stingray while filming off the Great Barrier Reef. World famous as "The Crocodile Hunter", he was always a lot of fun to watch when pursuing dangerous wild animals. While some cringed at his enthusiastic boyishness, it was clear that he really loved animals. After so many close calls, it is a shock that he died while filming a tame segment for a children's show. I suspect he never even saw the buried stingray and the hit from its barb was an astronomically high rarity. My sympathies and prayers are with his family.

Odd & Ends

Trying to type with a demanding cat is what leads to today's short post. Sid is recovering from an abscessed wound with the side effect of being really demanding now that it is healing. His life has been unhappy ever since we took in another cat from a young couple who moved out West. They hate each other and have tried to kill each other when my dad and I were in Indiana for a funeral. Sid used to be top cat as far as terrorizing our property, but age has caught up to him and he's slowing down. Thing is, he doesn't think he has and has had his butt handed to him repeatedly over the past year or so. Anyway, it's good to see him happy again.

Great post at Captain's Quarters that illustrates why McCain-Feingold has turned out to be the perfect way to protect incumbents from challengers. McCain is a total piece of opportunistic work and I'm sorry so many haven't yet seen through his facade.

Found a new blog, Adamant, that has some fascinating posts of a scientific bent. I particularly liked this post on black coal vs. natural gas emissions. The other posts are well worth reading too.

Here is a good post on religion and the current conflict going on worldwide.

Tax Reform and the Fairtax

Last night, my dad and I rolled into the driveway at a quarter of midnight after a round trip of over 250 miles. Now why would anyone be out on a Monday night on that kind of trip?

The answer is we were giving a presentation to a Farm Bureau board in a distant county on the Fairtax. Or I should say, I was assisting my father as he gave the presentation. Yes, it is more volunteer work that I'm writing about. There are important causes that need volunteers and they are the ones people don't think about first. These are civic minded causes, not charities, and are very important because they are about things that affect most of us, not just some of us. In this case, it is one of the two things you can't escape in life and it isn't death. It's the other one, taxes.

We are being taxed to death in this country, mainly because of non-compliance that adds up to the hundreds of billions of dollars and the federal taxes inflicted in every step of production of products. That's one of the big reasons all our factories are being moved overseas, other countries give massive tax breaks as well as have cheaper labor. Most of the taxes we pay are hidden from us, as companies pass their tax burdens to us in the retail price of products but even with that it is still too expensive to manufacture in the USA. Well, unless you are the Japanese, who have it even worse and are building more and more automotive plants in the Midwest. Anyway, we need to do something to simplify taxes and take the burdens off of the middle class and poor, but most of all make taxation completely transparent to the American people.

The best solution to this and the only one that really guarantees fairness is the national sales tax proposal called the Fairtax. Please check out Fairtax.org and especially their FAQ here. It will take some studying to understand it totally, but once you do you will most likely approve of it. Right now, 50% of the lobbyists in Washington, D.C. are there lobbying for tax exemptions and legislation to for companies or organizations who want tax breaks. This is how our Senators and Congressmen dispense favors and is a source of great power in the Legislative branch. Pork in earmarks and riders attached to bills often includes specially worded exemptions for specific corporations without actually naming the company. We get the Fairtax in and the 16th Amendment repealed and we'll see the biggest transfer of power from the federal government back to the people since the Bill of Rights was passed.

Whither Moderate Islam?

For years, we've been hearing from the media about all the moderate Muslims who only want peace, but are made to look bad by the extremists. As I've delved more into Islam in an effort to understand the current world situation, it became apparent that the more devout the Muslim, the more true to the Koran and the Hadiths, the more likely to be intolerant and violent toward non-Muslims that Muslim will be. So reading this article at The Washinton Post, I felt sorrow because of the fact that American Muslims are not assimilating, but are actually separating themselves from the rest of America. The oft reviled "melting pot" is what made the USA such a strong and vibrant free society, with a marketplace of ideas and beliefs bouncing off of each other in creative fermentation. We can see in Africa and the Middle East how tribalism keeps violence alive in a perpetual cycle with no end in sight. Over in Europe, we have unassimilated Muslims poised to be the majority around the middle of the century, if not earlier. Forced conversion and conquest are integral parts of the religion since its founding, with dreams of the worldwide caliphate still strong. Lately the terrorist threats being stopped have been from "home grown" Muslims in the USA, UK, and Germany, not from Saudi Arabia or Egypt like the hijackers of 9/11. So reading about the Muslims here becoming more like the Muslims in Europe is alarming to say the least.

Most people don't want to face it, but we are in an epic clash of cultures that most likely won't be resolved peacefully unless Islam itself changes radically. Given that change is forbidden by Islam (there are those who bend the rules, but the reality is everything is supposed to be set in stone), I don't see it happening anytime soon. We are seeing the Muslim world grow more fundamentalist thanks to the petrodollars of Saudi Arabia funding madrassas around the globe. Malaysia and Indonesia are getting more intolerant of other religions with the classic blame the Jews meme being repeated over and over. In Thailand, Muslims are killing schoolgirls walking to school and leaving their heads at the roadside, all in the name of Allah.

As time goes on, we either successfully weaken Islamic fundamentalism with democratic ideals or we face what is really coming. It is something that nobody wants to think about, something that most are doing their best to avoid talking about. And what is it? War on a scale that has never before been seen in the modern era. Something that makes WWI and WW2 look like Sunday picnics. It will be a war of survival for the West and it will have to be won. Otherwise, we will be seeing our women in burkas and praying toward Mecca five times a day. Not pleasant thoughts at all, but something that has been brewing since the 6th century. Me, I'd like to avoid it, which is why I support our efforts in Iraq and wish we could stop Iran developing nuclear weapons.

If the clash does develop the way I think it will, it won't be the end of the world. It will be catastrophic, but the West has been through that kind of thing before with rampaging hordes of Ghengis Khan and the earlier attempts by Islam to conquer Europe. Even earlier, the Persians (we call them Iranians these days) were turned back by the combined city states of Greece. That war was notable for the famous last stand of a badly outnumbered contingent of 300 Spartans and several thousand supporting troops from other areas against at least 100,000 Persians. They did what had to be done to save all of Greece and I hope that we will be brave enough to do the same for Western culture and Judeo-Christian values when the time comes. Great sacrifice will be required and I fear that we have become terribly weak.

If you want to understand what happened with the Spartans, I have to plug a brilliant novel about the battle of Thermoplyae, Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield.

It's a pity Hollywood will never adapt it, mainly because of the carnage involved and a non-Hollywood ending, but it is a great depiction of honor and duty, two things not taught enough these days. Instead we get The 300 adapted from Frank Miller's graphic novel, complete with gratuitous sex and surreal orc like villains. Ah, well.

Musings on Volunteer Work

For some time now, I've been pondering how to get people more involved in helping others out through volunteer work. So far I've come up with nothing that actually works. Guilt, pressure, enthusiasm, begging -- none of them work. A wise man made a comment that caught my attention recently, "Two percent of the people do ninety percent of the work." That's a disturbing thing to think about, especially since it is very true from what I've seen. No wonder so many burn out after doing everything short of bleeding for a cause.

The problem is aggravated by the fact that the two percent in the area I live in are getting too old to do as much as they used to. There are very few, if any, younger people volunteering these days. By younger, I mean the under 60 crowd, not teenagers. The excuses I hear from that age group is that they don't have time, both spouses have to work just to make a living, etc. Some of these same people have no trouble finding time to golf, go to concerts, take multiple vacations a year, or spend time on other recreational activities. Most volunteer work wouldn't take that much time up a week, especially if we had enough volunteers.

I blame the rampant materialism of our time, this keeping up with the Jones is simply out of control. There is also a lot of money spent on expensive toys we really don't need, but hey they kill a lot of time, don't they? Selfishness is a way of life now, which is a worrisome sign of the times. How to overcome that, I wonder?

Looking back at past generations, I see the big break from charitable work beginning with one generation -- the Baby Boomers. It is no coincidence that they were spoiled rotten by parents who went without during the Great Depression, for it is the spoiled who tend to be the least altruistic. They were the first generation to be marketed heavily to from cradle onward, besieged by TV commercials at their most impressionable age but without the jaded cynicism of later generations to offset the influence. They are still the most voracious consumer generation known and soon will be hitting retirement age. But I don't see them helping others out then, the obsession with staying young and affluent runs too strong there.

Of course, there is a possibility they won't retire permanently, as Social Security will not be able to handle entitlements for the entire generation. Those at the end of the Boom will be in the same boat with all of us who came after, a boat with no Social Security lifesavers.

Perhaps I'm sounding too pessimistic about it all, but I suspect there will be some serious hardship for the USA in the not too distant future and that will change the equation. It is hardship that brings forth the best in us humans, not times of prosperity. As things such as regular long distance travel becomes expensive again, we'll see a rebirth of the concept of community. Often, very good things come out of very bad things and I think the pendulum will swing that way.

Of course, I may be too optimistic about that! But I've been a pessimist and I can say being an optimistic realist is a lot more fun.