California Hunting - Here we come

If you heard guns a blazing at 6:50 am on October 22, chances are pretty good you live near a body of water large enough to support waterfowl hunting. The season officially opened on Saturday and I was fortunate enough to join the throng of duck and goose hunters in Calaveras County that embrace the ancient sport of water fowling.
For me it was a week of hunting as I started out on Tuesday in the corn and milo fields of central South Dakota hunting pheasants. South Dakota is one of my favorite states as South Dakotans are typically rural folks and when you step off a plane in Sioux Falls there are banners greeting the Pheasant Hunters. Orange emblazoned clothing is seen everywhere and the local and out of town hunters mix to work the fields to take a few shots at wild pheasants. Add to this mix golden retrievers and Labradors and you have what I consider the perfect mix of guns, dogs and the outdoors.
Upon my return, I found time to chase a few quail out at the ranch on friday. Pheasant and quail hunting are pretty similar. You work an area looking for groups of birds that use their legs first and their wings second to depart quickly from the advancement of the hunters. You need a place to hunt, a shotgun and ammo, and a hunting license to go after these two upland game birds. The shots are far more difficult that most imagine and for the most part hunters mimic their fly fishing brethren in the notion of catch and release, ( shoot and release we jokingly call it) meaning the shots miss and the birds fly away to a safe spot far from the hunt.
Duck hunting is something relatively new to me as the last time I hunted ducks was in the early 70’s. I used to hunt in the Bay area just off the west entrance to the Dumbarton Bridge. I literally would throw a shotgun into my car, go to high school in Menlo Park, and after school a few of us would travel to the bay lands to shoot ducks in the evening. If a kid even took a picture of a shotgun to my old high school now he would be zip tied by the school authorities and expelled, but this was the 70’s.
When I found the guys that hunt the Salt Spring Valley reservoir I asked how I could join - fully unaware that modern duck hunting requires a lot more equipment than pheasants or quail. You need a camouflage boat with an outboard motor, waders, duck and goose decoys, guns that can shoot steel shot, and about a dozen other items that add up pretty quickly.
My wife was wondering why box after box arrived from Cabela’s and why I spent so much time at the Bass Pro shop in Lathrop. Choosing the right camo pattern took more time that I normally spend selecting ties and suits for work. You need camo waders, jacket, raingear, a head cover, gloves and then there is the actual hunting blind itself. Walking around the house with all this camo gear on made my wife ask if I was planning on putting a rusty car up on blocks in the front yard next. I grimaced, and gave her a courtesy laugh.
The Salt Springs reservoir is a lot like most lower Sierra lakes in that it’s size expands and contracts based on the rainfall and the evaporation of the summer. This means you need a portable blind and most of the hunting stores sell what is called a lay down blind. It is a contraption that I suspect was designed by former workers from the old MG convertible factory in England that combines waterproof canvas and support bars in a mind numbingly complex arrangement. The goal is to hide from the wary waterfowl but still allow you to see birds zipping by overhead, and pop out at the right moment to fire when the birds are in range. The blinds are also supposed to keep the rainfall out, but like the old MG tops they leak and are crazy hard to assemble in the dark on a muddy lakeshore.
The other oddity is duck hunting is an early morning sport. We met at 5 am at the boat launch, and in pitch black I dropped a boat into the black liquid around me, and took off across the lake trying to visually distinguish the air from the water. I blindly careened over the water to an unknown spot somewhere across the great beyond. It was after the morning shoot that I discovered I was missing one key piece of equipment - a handheld GPS with pre-programmed coordinates that tell you where to point the boat to reach your shooting spot. Three ducks and one goose later I had plenty of meat for the dinner table and off I went to clean and prepare the birds for that evening’s meal.
Fall bird hunting is alive and well in the West County and like South Dakota it is un-crowded, beautiful and the bounty is plentiful.

The Melting Pot vs. the Salad Bowl

One of my oddball hobbies is playing guitar in a 50’s & 60’s band on the weekends. We have a “take no breaks rule” in the band so we will often play for 4 hours straight. I’ve had to memorize all my guitar parts over the years for about a hundred songs to accommodate this policy.
Once you commit a block of music to memory it allows you to get better at the details and tonal qualities of the songs. It also allows you to play the easy stuff mindlessly, and concentrate on the audience you are playing for.
One of the reasons I play in a band is to be able to go to a party, but not have to actually dance. My dancing is off beat, herky-jerky and uncomfortable, and those are just the compliments I’ve received. That being said - I am always amazed at great dancers and an event we recently played for was a private party for a group of professionals and their office staff’s in the South Bay Area, with a lot of great dancers.
The audience for this particular event was what I would characterize as a great example of the classic American melting pot. This was a night where I found myself playing to Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Vietnamese, Mexican, Russian and Indian immigrants, and native born Americans black, white and brown all mixing on the dance floor and singing classic 50’s and 60’s rock and roll songs.
What amazed me is that so many people knew the words to these songs as you figure 50’s music is 50-60 years old, and the 60’s tunes are only slightly younger. Yet these folks knew so many of these “moldy oldies” and had somehow learned these classic rockers. Must be the oldies radio stations doing the advance work for us.
The other concept that hit me is that everyone was engaged in a classically American activity, i.e. attending a party with a live rock & roll dance band. Yet none of the normal ethnic or racial separation that occurs in many foreign societies was present that night. My take away was that the American Melting pot concept works. Not to say that these folks have abandoned their individual cultures. Instead they have decided to embrace the American language and culture while living in the US, whether in music or sports or arts and literature.
My software pals from Asia and India often tell me how their kids are so American now that they resist learning the native language of their parents and don’t want to spend a lot of time going to the old country. They just want to be assimilated into American society. The kids have in turn educated the parents that they too need to release the mores of their old country and more fully embrace the American system. It seems that American culture tends to be the universal solvent, dissolving and absorbing bits and pieces of hundreds of other cultures into an ever changing new standard.
Contrast this to the cultural apartheid advanced by the cultural elites under the banner of Diversity and Multiculturalism. Every culture is supposed to be “separate but equal”. Foreign languages are to be embraced over American English. Every group is supposed to organize their community to loudly rally for greater prominence among a sea of other cultural islands, each vying for ascendance over the other. The metaphor of a salad bowl, where tomatoes and lettuce and cucumbers are thrown together, but never mix is the ideal of the diversity crowd.
The facts are of course, are that in America, people do mix. People from all races and cultures intermarry, often for the first time as they would not be allowed to - in the old country. They each carry pieces of their cultural identities to a new American mix, to create a hybrid that is both vigorous and vibrant. The salad bowl is the wrong ideal, as even the best salad will rot and wilt in just a days’ time.
Yet our Universities and many liberals still promote the vision that a distinct, stubbornly unassimilated tribal identity is what gives America its strength. Even dopey Al Gore bungled our most famous Latin phrase in a speech in 1998. He claimed “E Pluribus Unum” meant “out of one – to many” while we know it is the polar opposite “out of many – to one”.
The America I know and love is one where everyone is welcomed and assimilated into our society. Immigrants who obtain green cards or pursue the path to citizenship are warmly embraced and set free to pursue their careers and businesses. On the dance floor that night was a small slice of America where people had come together from all over the world to build their professional practices. They had risked their savings, built businesses, and employed many others. From behind my guitar I saw the America where dozens of formerly distinct and sometimes warring cultures can forget all that, and just gather together to dance and sing Beach Boys, Everly Brothers and Beatles songs, and celebrate by kicking back and rocking out a bit.

The National Anthems Glorious Past

Here’s an all American - Independence Day pop quiz. What song do we sing at ballgames, air shows, in our Churches, and at most patriotic events? Sure – you guessed it – too easy. The English poem set to music in 1770 called "To Anacreon in Heaven."
Some folks know it better by its Americanized name - The Star-Spangled Banner. The Story behind our National Anthem bears re-telling this 4th of July.
The time of this story is September of 1814, two years into the war of 1812. The nation was just 38 years old and we were a hairs width away from losing America to the British. 4,000 battle hardened British troops, led by their General Robert Ross and had just laid waste to our Nation's 14 year old capitol city of Washington, D.C. They burned nearly every Federal building, including the Treasury, the Supreme Court, the Capitol and the White House. President Madison and his wife narrowly escaped and were hiding in nearby Virginia.
Fresh from the death and destruction in Washington D.C. the British were headed by ships to Baltimore Maryland. They knew if they captured Fort McHenry on the Baltimore Harbor they could effectively cut the United States in half. The British had captured an elderly and well respected American physician, Dr. William Beanes. Dr. Beanes was accused of spying, and was taken as a prisoner aboard the British Flag ship Tonnant anchored in the Baltimore harbor. President Madison called upon a DC attorney, Francis Scott Key to negotiate a prisoner exchange with the British. Francis Key and another fellow who was experienced in negotiating prisoner exchanges named Colonel Skinner, sailed for Baltimore. They reached the Tonnant under a flag of truce and actually negotiated a prisoner exchange with the British Admiral of the fleet, Sir Alexander Cochrane.
One small problem surfaced. The Admiral admitted to Key and Skinner that the whole prisoners exchange treaty would be meaningless in two days anyway. He pointed off the ships bow towards the tip of the peninsula to Fort McHenry and said that with the destruction of Fort McHenry, taking Baltimore would be a snap. The men asked how the British planned to do this. The Admiral pointed to a group of 16 heavily armored and weapon-ized ships approaching, explaining that with relentless bombardment, no fort could withstand the destruction of the British fleet.
The Admiral explained that he had sent word to the Fort that as soon as the Americans in Fort McHenry would lower their flag, the shelling would stop. They even predicted the war would then be over and all the prisoners on both sides would go free… as British, not American citizens. The three men were placed under guard aboard the H.M.S. Surprise to witness the planned attack from the deck of that ship. That night, September 12th 1814 the ships maneuvered to within gun range of the Fort and unleashed for 30 solid hours on Fort McHenry.
The British ships fired hundreds of explosive rounds into the Fort. The design of this Fort had included huge ramparts, large defensive barriers surrounding the interior – in a sort of pentagonal shape. The shelling was relentless, and Francis Key was forced to watch this macabre attack from the ship he, Skilling and Dr. Beane were held on. It was only through the flashing of the multiple explosions that Key could glimpse whether the Stars and Stripes of our colonial flag was still visible or not. Hence the words describing how through the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. The British eventually trained their gunships on the flagpole itself and began a whole new barrage. The morning air on September 14th was so thick with smoke from the explosions and mixed with the dewy mists of the daybreak. The haze eventually thinned out enough so the three men could see the “broad stripes and bright stars” and that our Flag was still there. This signaled their freedom as Americans was still intact.
That morning, Francis Scott Key, pulled an envelope from his pocket and wrote a poem. This epic verse was published in the Baltimore newspaper and later by other newspapers along the East Coast. It was entitled “In Defense of Fort McHenry”. A few years later it was set to the music of the English drinking song To Anacreon in Heaven and re-named the Star Spangled Banner. It was not until 1931 that Congress declared it to be the official National Anthem.
Few people know all four verses, as the last three are generally dropped for brevity. The fourth verse bears repeating here in the column as it speaks to one of my core beliefs that America was and is a nation blessed by God.
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation,
Blest with victory and peace, may the Heaven rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our Trust"
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Public Unions are not Public servants

It is great to see that Madison Wisconsin is finally stepping up to take some of the limelight that follows wildly left wing cities when they misbehave. It’s usually San Francisco or Berkeley that try to grab the prize for the most insane progressive cause, such as outlawing circumcision or requesting to import Guantanamo Bay terrorist prisoners.
As I wrote about a few months ago, the real battles for the next few years in the US will be between the Statists and the private sector. Look at the hateful violent behavior of the Union thugs and their puppet masters in the Democrat Party. Witness the out of state Union bosses employing rent-a-mob tactics of importing protesters from all over the US to Madison. Coupled with their violent rhetoric and riot inducing tactics - they have proven that Unions have one interest only. It is to protect the Unions power over their members and the taxpayers. All financed by heavy doses of cash from their members to push a unionized socialist dream, on an unwilling taxpaying public.
Add to that the run-and-hide tactics of the 14 Wisconsin Senate Democrats that gave the mobs three weeks to try and intimidate the newly elected majority in the State government from making any progress. When you view the picture from above - you see the whole Union /Government cabal in its most gloriously ugly form. The democrats abandoned their jobs, abandoned the taxpayers who elected them for three full weeks. The teachers abandoned their classrooms for several days until public opinion forced them back to work. It is so clear now to see how these “public servants” see the world. Union first, duty second, constituents and students last.
The banal war cry of the left seems to be one size fits all. “You’re trying to take away our rights”. This formula is used for everything from abortion on demand to gay marriage to free needles for drug users to these Union driven demands. Michael Moore, who is front and center in this anarchy, is demanding that all “wealth in America” should be confiscated by the government and re-allocated to the “workers”. I still reel at the term “workers” as it is such a Soviet era term - to describe American employees who are free to work, change jobs, start a business etc. Options which are never made available to the “workers of the world” in socialist regimes which he adores. He never says who should give and who should take, but I notice he has never offered up his own personal massive fortune to the public trough.
Besides extorting money from unwilling state employees for union dues that only support far left causes, Unions impose hugely expensive and unworkable work rules. For example, if a Wisconsin state employee receives a phone call about work after hours they are required to be paid one half hour of overtime. Bus drivers make over $150k a year as they work the system imposed by the Unions to collect massive amounts of overtime due to work restrictions imposed by the Unions. Cha-ching go the Union registers all at taxpayers’ expense.
In any business there are constant pressures to lower costs and prices, from consumers, competitors and the economy in general. The government unions feel they are immune to these pressures and while the whole country is working many more hours for a lot less money, the Wisconsin public employees are working less and receiving more. Wisconsin spends far more than it takes in, so it has two choices, cut the spending or raise taxes on everyone. The Democrats and the Unions have one formula, tax more – followed by spend more, followed by tax more. The Republicans have a separate formula, cut spending followed by lowering taxes followed by cutting spending more. This second formula is what the voters of Wisconsin embraced in 2010 that swept the Governor and Republican majorities in both houses to power. The left refuses to believe elections have consequences unless they win the election. So rather than do the job of debating it and trying to turn the tide in the legislature they ran and hid in Illinois.
The Unions add almost no value to the taxpayers, yet they add an immense amount of cost. That is why the push has been to reduce the public employee Unions costly work rules, allowing the Governor to effectively balance the State budget. Without stripping away the Union death grip on the government the State will never be able to balance its books as the Union rules make it all but impossible to get any efficiency out of the public employee workforce.
It is time the public employee Unions be made to understand that we own them, not they own us. They are the single biggest reason all States are unable to balance the books and need to be heavily curtailed if we are to ever hope to get out of the shadow of an ever expanding government that knows no limit.

As goes Egypt...so goes the World

When Jimmy Carter lost Iran to the terrorist Khomeini we found out just how bad the replacement government can become. The Shah of Iran was no Thomas Jefferson to be sure - but he was the lone force modernizing Iran. He knew the plans and ways of the 12th century minded Mullahs who occupy the Iranian government today. Lesson to remember…when one Middle East government falls, and America stands idly by, the next one will not be a democracy but more than likely an Islamic totalitarian state.
Now we can say the same thing about Egypt, except it is Barack Obama who lost Egypt and it won’t be just Egypt, it will be Tunisia, Jordan and perhaps the whole Middle East.
Not that Obama had a plethora of good choices. Egypt’s Mubarak ruled with an iron fist since he sat next to Anwar Sadat while the Muslim Brotherhood executed the former ruler Sadat in 1981. The best choice was to support Mubarak, at least long enough for his term to run out in 9 months. How to do it without seeming to meddle in Egypt’s affairs? That would require Statesmanship, a skill which Obama definitely possesses, but one he curiously only brings out to encourage America’s foes and shelves when America’s longest standing Arab ally is in need of our support. Oh well - all that is at stake is the World Economy, Middle East Stability and the future of Israel.
Obama’s reluctance to lift a finger to stabilize Egypt was stunning. American allies have to be wondering what treachery awaits them when anti Government protests start in their country. Couple that with the fact that Obama has been on a two year submission and bowing tour to America’s traditional enemies, one has to wonder if the Manchurian Candidate was really a fictional character.
Obama and his merry band of elitist advisors have a firm overriding belief that America has a need to repent. Repent to whom and for what is always unclear to all but the benighted leftists in Washington.
The prevailing theory amongst these fiddlers of Rome is that most anti-Western sentiment is somehow legitimate, and that any official criticism of anti-Western movements are unjust examples of how the US meddles in the affairs of foreign governments.
The underpinnings of this insanity begin with the belief that non westerners are really just victims of Western Imperialism. The rabid pathologies that have developed in these terrorist organizations turned-states are therefore understood – even justifiable. This is why the US under the wobbly hand of Obama is acting like a toothless manatee instead of the most powerful force for Democracy in the world.
Not to pat my side on the back, as the Republicans of recent past had made the mistake of assuming the entire world yearns to be free - and that given free elections they will choose some form of Democratic rule. We believed that if you just destroyed the totalitarian states and let the people vote – they will create democracy in the Middle East. We wrongly assumed all people want something akin to the American system.
Here are some startling facts. According to an opinion survey in June of 2010 by Pew research, 59% of Egyptians said they back Islamists, such as the Muslim Brotherhood. Just 27% said they want a democratic government that focuses on modernization. Half of Egyptians support Hamas. 30% support Hezbollah and 20% support al Qaida. 95% of them said they would welcome Islamic influence over their laws and government. 82% of Egyptians support executing adulterers by stoning, 77% support whipping and cutting the hands off thieves. 84% support executing any Muslim who changes his religion.
This does not sound like a breeding ground for American style democracy. Reflect back to 2006 when the Palestinians were given the opportunity to vote in open and free elections. They voted for Hamas and its Islamic totalitarian agenda. Even in 2005 the Egyptians were given limited freedom to choose their legislators and where they could they elected the totalitarian Muslim Brotherhood to lead them.
When the US Government under Obama did nothing to support Mubarak, apparently hoping that the protesters will magically transform Egypt into Vermont - we have put the entire world at risk. The risk is another Iran – this time in Egypt, and soon the dominoes will fall in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The rest of the Arab world could be plunged into complete and utter darkness.
Obama now needs to support the Egyptian Army, which may be tough as he doesn’t even support our Army. This will prove to be utterly distasteful to this band of change-a-holics – but there needs to be an orderly transition of power and a strong US presence to ward off the virus that is about to infect Egypt.

Christmas comes but once each year

Christmas always sneaks up on me. Not that I don’t know it’s coming well in advance, as the stores seem to go from Halloween to Christmas overnight. My business is busy in November and December (thankfully so) and so many of the glorious days of Christmas prep go on without my taking notice. One tradition that I have to perform is put up the Christmas lights on our home. That job better be done by the end of the weekend after Thanksgiving – or I am in the doghouse.
Every family has formed their own traditions. One of the more modern ones is the Christmas family letter. My wife creates and sends ours but we receive many from friends that are so funny you wish you had created them yourself. Others are pretentious, where the writer refers to their own children as “our son, Dr. Houser”… or they claim that between vacationing in Switzerland and Paris they barely had time for fashion week in Milan…you know the type.
Many of the traditions we now take for granted have very odd origins, and many are misunderstood. Take for example the word Xmas. For years I thought this was a disrespectful clipping of Christ’s name from Christmas. Turns out the origins of that word form is Greek. The first letter of the Greek word for Christ is chi, which is X. With the invention of the printing press, "Xmas" was often used, in print, to save the hand setting of type and ink. The English word “Christmas” derives from the old English Christes maesse, meaning "Christ's mass."
Christians have been celebrating Jesus' birth on December 25 since the early fourth century. The December date for the holiday probably arose from a desire to provide an alternative to the Roman "birthday of the unconquered sun" and the Persian birthday of Mithras, both of which were celebrated on or around the winter solstice. The first evidence of its observance is in Rome in 336 AD. The earliest Christians do not appear to have commemorated the nativity, but only the baptism and resurrection of Christ and the deaths of the martyrs.
Did you know that Christmas did not become a national holiday in America until June, 26, 1870 by President Ulysses S. Grant? The first state to recognize the Christmas holiday officially was Alabama.
How about Christmas Trees? The Germans tell how in 722, Saint Boniface encountered some pagans who were about to sacrifice a child at the base of a huge oak tree. He cut down the tree to prevent the sacrifice and a Fir tree grew up at the base of the oak. He then told everyone that this lovely evergreen, with its branches pointing to heaven, was a holy tree - the tree of the Christ child, and a symbol of His promise of eternal life.
Martin Luther, the Protestant reformer, was the first to add lighted candles to the tree. He was so taken with the Christmas night sky that he wished to bring "the lights of the stars" into the home of his family. From this, decorating the tree with ornaments and small gifts emerged in later centuries leading to our customs today.
A wreath with holly, red berries and other decorations began in the 17th century. Holly, with its sharply pointed leaves, symbolized the thorns in Christ's crown-of-thorns. Red berries symbolized the drops of Christ's blood. A wreath at Christmas signified a home that celebrated to birth of Christ.
The creation of Rudolph the Red nosed Reindeer is also interesting. A man named Bob May was a copy writer for the retail chain Montgomery Wards. He was given the job of creating a booklet containing a Christmas story that Wards could give away as a promotional item. May created a story about how being different from everyone else could be a positive. May told the story over and over to his 4 year old daughter, changing it day by day until the version we have today was created. The familiar story emerged of Santa being faced with a problem, in that one Christmas Eve the earth was engulfed in a thick fog. Rudolph with his red nose glowing bright provided a way to light the way of Santa’s sleigh and cut through the mists, saving Christmas. Rudolph went from weird looking pariah among Reindeer, to the Hero of Christmas Day.
The booklet was so popular that by the end of 1946 6,000,000 copies had been given away or sold, making Rudolph one of the most widely distributed books in the world. In early 1949 Bob May secured the rights to his creation, and he and his brother in law turned it into a catchy song. Later that year it was recorded by Gene Autry and sold 2 million copies.
Hope you’ve enjoyed these little Christmas stories and I wish all of you, your families and friends a very Merry Christmas and thanks for reading this column.

Israel Israel Conservatives are Calling

Why do American Conservatives have such a strong attraction to Israel ? This is a question posed by many liberals who do not understand why we so strongly support the Jewish state. Like most of our stands on issues, there are Social & Political explanations - and there are Religious grounds for our backing.
The ‘secular conservative’ feels that Israel is an ally of the US, based on their Democratic form of Government and their Westernized approach to business and society. If you go to Israel you will find it seems a lot like America. People of all races, nationalities and yes, religions co-exist in Israel. Almost every citizen speaks English, owns a car, watches Western movies, wears American style clothing, and votes in their regular elections.
Israeli entrepreneurs create all sorts of innovative companies - looking to cash in on capitalism - much the same as we do. Many of the software companies I have worked with in the last 20 years started in Israel. Our farmers in the central valley are using drip-irrigation products, sophisticated water pumps, and ingenious agricultural accessories that are created and produced in Israel.
Israel - like the US - also has a free press. Israeli newspapers and television reflect a diversity of views, and you can select media that represent every view from ardent Zionism to almost suicidal pacifism. Over one million Arabs live in Israel and account for about 20 % of the population. They enjoy full rights of citizenship, vote in elections and serve in Israel’s parliament. When you talk to Arab citizens in Israel, many proudly proclaim their Israeli citizenship.
Another aspect that appeals to conservatives is that Israel is the top military deterrent to the aggressive anti-Semitic nations such as Iran and equally virulent regimes such as Hamas in Palestine or Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Israeli military is fast, effective and ever ready. They employ technology that comes from years of winning wars of repelled invasions. Their military discipline and logistical efficiency is world renowned.
Israel occupies only 10,000 square miles compared to the adjacent Arab countries that are over 5,000,000 square miles. Israel has never sponsored any terrorist act, never kidnapped innocent citizens of other countries, and has fought for its very existence often since it was founded in 1948. Conservatives feel that any democratic pro-American presence in the Middle East is of supreme value to our country. Just turns out that Israel is the lone ranger in this category.
To the American religious conservative it is all of the above plus a special understanding of who the Jewish people are. Conservative Christians interpret the word 'Israel' in the Bible to mean 'the Jews' and not 'the Church.' It means that the Jews are still the chosen people, that they are still in covenant with and beloved by God, and that they are still the rightful heirs of the land of Israel. Christian conservatives that embrace the Bible reject all forms of anti-Semitism while embracing both the Jewish people and their national aspirations in Israel.
This positive theology towards the Jews originated with some small Protestant sects in Europe. When the seeds of these ideas crossed the Atlantic, they took root and have become mainstream Christianity here. The American Founding Fathers had such reverence for the Bible and the Jews that they seriously considered making Hebrew the official language of the new nation. George Washington wrote his famous letter to the members of the Touro Synagogue warmly welcoming their civic participation and condemning bigotry in the strongest terms.
If you read Genesis 12:3 in the Old Testament and Romans 15:27 in the New Testament you will see ample evidence of the Lord’s admonition to always stay on the side of Israel. The Genesis reference is to the Lineage of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, i.e. the people of the House of Israel. It simply states that if you bless Israel you will be blessed and if you curse Israel you will be cursed. In the Romans passage the Apostle Paul says 'If the Gentiles have shared in the Jews' spiritual blessings, they owe it to the Jews to share with them their material blessings.' For Christians the New Testament recognizes that the Jews have given spiritual blessings to us as Christians, and inspires true Christian charity towards the Jews. It is in this same spirit that Christians join Jews in following the calls of the Hebrew prophets to care for the poor and the persecuted around the world.
I trust we will continue to ignore the cries to stop supporting Israel that have been heard from various groups inside the US. I dearly hope that we never follow this path, as I believe the future of America is inextricably inter-twined with the future and success of Israel.

Public Employee Compensation Columns

The real battle of the next 20 years will not be against Jihadists, Communism in Latin or South America or even Liberals versus Conservatives. It WILL be the battle of the Public Sector versus the Private sector. Why? The public sector has been on a wild binge of runaway salary and pension spending - and has conveniently mailed the bill to us and our children.
Sure the Public Employee Unions and the grand daddy of this problem - former Governor Jerry Brown -are trying their best to play the Jedi mind trick on all of us. They mumble “These are not the Government Droids you are looking for“. They want us to focus on anything but their hideous records of bloated civil service spending and pension contracts. It would be great to review Brown’s records as governor to see what he actually did - but hey- he took the unusual step of writing a law just before he left to seal his records for 50 years – until 2038 !
The reality though - is that there are way too many government workers and they are paid way too much.
Professor Paul Light of NYU –calculated that the size of just the Federal Civil service as a sum of Civil Service employees, (1.9m) military personnel,(1.4m) government contractors,(7.8m) grant jobs( 2.9m) and Postal Service employees (.7m). All of those add up to 14.6 million federal workers. That’s just the Federal Government. We have State, County and local government to add to that number.
Then there is the income disparity between the Public and the private sector. If you measure the average Salary between the two – you see that the average federal worker receives $79k and the average salaried private sector worker just $50k annually. When you compare total compensation it gets worse. The average bureaucrat gets $119k a year and the private employee $69k. That means the government bureaucrats make almost twice as much per year as the people paying their salaries.
At the California State level the average government worker makes 45% more per hour than their private sector counterpart. To make it worse State Government workers often retire at age 55 on full pensions that run for3 to 4 decades at full pay and benefits. These unbelievably great pensions are time bombs, as the same government weasels that brought them to us have consistently underfunded the pension funds. The current forecast of just how much the State of California public pension fund is “underfunded” is 535 billion dollars.
Don’t forget – it was Jerry Brown that did this to us in his first regime as governor in the 70’s.
Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown, when Governor of California in 1978, signed the “Dill Act" which gave California public employees the right to collective bargaining. That’s when this monstrosity of a problem started. He did it again as the Oakland Mayor, and as Attorney General has been so cozy with all four of the public employee unions - that they have dumped multi millions of dollars of grateful cash in his election deposit box.

Jerry Brown empowered the Unions grip on the system - making it virtually impossible to fire government bureaucrats. As an example, the Los Angeles Union School District has only tried to fire 7 teachers in the last 10 years. Of this miniscule number, they succeeded in only getting 4 of the worst burnouts you can imagine fired. The price tag? $3.6 million to terminate 4 bad teachers. The US Bureau of Labor statistics show that involuntary termination rates in the private sector are over 6 times as high as federal or state government workers.

To sum it up, Jerry Brown created the network of Government Unions that hired far too many public employees; made sure they got paid way too much, and made them impossible to get rid of.

And 50% of Californians are cheering him on to be Governor again? Which half? The Government half or the private sector half? Which side are you on?

For fun, check out this Saturday Night Live Skit which parodies this very situation. http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/public-employee-of-the-year/1222306

Tea Party helps Republicans be Republicans

I read the news today – oh boy. USA Today said the Recession was over in June 2009. That’s what the National Bureau of Economic Research said on Monday. Really ? 14 months ago the recession ended ? Did anyone ask the follow up question…”When then did the Depression begin ?” No one seemed to ask this panel of Government paid economists… Hey, how’s that unemployment thing going ? What about the 40% decrease we’ve seen in our home values ? Couple that with the “spend till they drop” policy that the Obamunists have blindly followed and I bet not one out of ten people feel the recession is over.
The fall elections are going to be a referendum on the recession. The one party that has the only sensible solutions is not really a political party at all. It has not even run any candidate under it’s Party name, nor seeks to promote folks that run as a third party candidates in the general elections. It does seek to run the most fiscally conservative candidate in the primary system, challenging the status quo for many Republican candidates. That’s why I’m a Tea Party Republican.
I was a Democrat growing up, voting for Jimmy Carter in my first election. Ay yi yi – what was I thinking ? Jimmy Carter was the very definition and personification of malaise. But, Carters incompetence gave rise to the best President of my lifetime – Ronald Reagan. Reagan was the candidate who uttered the words, “Government is not the solution to our problems, Government is the problem” I switched from a Democrat to a Reagan Republican then – and still count myself as a loyal Republican, but I solidly identify with the Tea Party as it has the most sensible fiscal platform out there.
The Tea Party has been a joyous phenomenon to watch. For years we have been trying to get our Republican party to stop running these Democrat-lite candidates and dressing them up as Republicans. They politely would appear to listen to us then would give us Arnold Schwarzenegger and John McCain.
The Tea Party has been the baseball bat with a nail driven thru it the Republican leadership has needed applied to their mindset of running “Obama Republicans”, just to reclaim their power base. The core values of the Tea Party are pretty simple. Shrink the Government now. Return individual liberties to the people. Help the business community get back on its’ feet so businesses can hire new employees.
The miserable reality of electing liberal leaning moderate republicans is well known. They vote almost lockstep in concert with the democrats. They have learned how to campaign as if they were in favor of shrinking government then when the election is over they go back to the right side of the government trough to feed.
Liberal friends of mine chided me during the Bush years about the concepts of “Big Government Republican-ism”. They were right. Republicans were not adhering to the principles of smaller government and individual liberty that we all believed in and voted for. They were consumed with doing whatever it took to stay in power, even if core conservative principles had to be discarded. The RINO led Republican Party talked a decent game but their actions were completely different. Their voting records were so close to liberal democrats that any hope of stopping the nanny statism that keeps rolling forward seemed impossible.
Then the Tea Party came to life. Tea parties sprang up all over the country. Ordinary folks who normally were part of the silent majority spoke up loudly - to roll back big government policies. The big government liberals giggled and the big government republicans yawned and both went back to the trough. The Tea Party decided they were not going to make the same mistakes that Ross Perot’s 3rd party made in the early 1990’s. The Tea Party ran candidates that were hard core fiscal conservatives in the Republican primaries. Suddenly the old guard Republican candidates that were not conservatives found themselves losing those primaries.
The President said Monday that the Tea Party should tell him specifically how the Government can be rolled back. I felt like shouting at the radio – “That’s your job” but I didn’t want to yell at two things that are only capable of broadcasting - and are deaf to anyone’s voice. Here are some of the concepts that Conservatives have been saying for years to the hear nothing politicians.
• Reduce Tax Rates. Our corporate income tax rate, is the second highest in the developed world, must be cut to restore U.S. competitiveness.
• Spend Less. Congress needs to cap the annual increase in total government spending, limited to inflation plus population growth. Lawmakers need to establish policies that return federal spending to less than 20% of U.S. GDP.
• Eliminate Government Intervention. The government should end the TARP program. It should also force privatization of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Companies should be allowed to fail, and laws and regulations should create no expectation of a future bailout.
I’ll end with one more Reagan quote for the road. ”Republicans believe every day is 4th of July, but Democrats believe every day is April 15.”

The Left was Right !

I have to admit publicly that my leftist friends are truly able to predict the future. I had no idea until recently how good they really are. They told me in the fall of 2008 several very key events would take place if I voted for John McCain. As a side note - for conservatives - voting for John McCain is like getting a bad tattoo on your face. You never understand why you did it in the first place and everyone winces when they realize what you did. That being said, we didn’t have much of a choice way back in ott-eight.
My friends said that if I voted for John McCain we would end up in an endless series of escalations to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They were right ! I voted for McCain and we have had several large escalations to the wars in the Mideast. Don’t get me wrong. When we engage militarily anywhere in the world, I am completely behind fighting hard and winning that war, even if I don’t agree with the political motives behind it. Our military is clearly the best trained and armed force to ever walk the earth.
My friend’s son is a Marine recon serving in Afghanistan. He told me how the rules of engagement changed dramatically soon after Obama took office. They are sent in to scout out Taliban bad guys and take them out. Oh – except for the new rules of engagement say if the person is not verifiably armed you cannot shoot them.
These recon patrols sit there for two or three days – completely hidden and watching and waiting to see who comes and goes. The Taliban leaders have learned the Obama policies and have adopted them effectively against our troops. If a recon patrol sees a group of Taliban fighters, towing a covered trailer of weapons, unless these weapons are in the hands of the fighters the Marines are only allowed to report them to their command.
They were sent there to kill the Taliban but cannot fire unless the bad guys are visibly armed. Many times they know on sight the Taliban leaders by facial recognition. The bad guys know this but simply parade around not carrying weapons, or dressed in Burka’s, thus triggering the no-kill provisions of the Obama combat doctrine. They can’t shoot or order airstrikes unless they actually see the weapons on the fighters.
This is the Obama dogma. The administrations anti war planners from NYU know that the real war is fought in American courtrooms. These brave lawyers wistfully dream that they can best defeat our enemies by suing them in Federal Court. Take that you man made disasters… Hopefully General Petraeus will reverse this insane engagement model and allow our troops to actually do the dangerous jobs they were sent there to accomplish.
My friends said if I voted for John McCain the big Wall Street banks and investment houses would be propped up and salvaged from the normal cycle of capitalism. They said that big corporations would be protected and small business would be thrown to the wolves. They were right ! I voted for McCain and we declared the huge Wall Street firms too big to fail and bailed them out. We were fleeced by the federal government to support the international bankers’ interests and make sure that it was business as usual at Goldman Sachs et al. Campaign contributions and caviar for you my good Democrat controlled congress.
The Obama administration has consistently done one thing; protect any government or business that is unionized. We nationalized General Motors and Chrysler, putting the American taxpayer in charge of pumping up two companies doomed to fail. These behemoths were dying from being forced to satisfy bloated union pension obligations instead of investing in replacing outdated manufacturing plants.
What businesses are suffering ? The small businesses of America. Fully 70% of all job creation comes from this sector but they cannot afford to hire anyone. They know that come January 1 2011, their taxes are going to skyrocket, so they are preserving capital, or declaring bankruptcy.
My friends said if I voted for John McCain I would have a President who didn’t really understand the economy or how to steer policy towards ending the recession quickly. They were right again ! I voted for McCain and I have a President who thinks that FDR was an economic genius, emulating his every move. Even though historians have documented at length how FDR’s Keynesian economic policies prolonged the depression. Even Henry Morgenthau, the architect of the new deal declared it was an absolute failure in ending the depression. The déjà-vu Obama policies are prolonging the current recession and yet these politicians whistle as we work, to pay the bills of their newest university experiment on our economy.
Lastly, my friends said if I voted for McCain I would end up with an idiot for a Vice President. They were right ! I voted for McCain and now we have one of the dumbest bags of sand ever to occupy the Vice Presidential office.

The Government - All we want is everything

This is an open Letter from the Federal Government to our citizens. While many of you are finding comfort in our cradle to grave programs, we find it disconcerting that others are rebuking the very thought of Statism? Especially this 4th of July Holiday when citizens celebrate the glory and power of Government. As our brilliant state controlled media has told you repeatedly, you are the ones that chose us. You elected us as Statists to positions of control over you in the great election. You agreed that government knows what’s best for you. Have you forgotten that?
We now need to help you better comprehend the wisdom of your selection. It is obvious to all but the most rebellious among you that the grand experiment in Capitalism has failed. How many of you are wealthy beyond your wildest dreams. The Capitalist system promised you riches beyond measure, yet has it delivered? No! The wisdom of our switch to a centrally planned Statist system is bearing fruit in the great equalization. Were passing new laws every day that tax all who retain over abundant wealth and re-distribute it to our supporters, the citizens of great need.
Yet we constantly hear over the Internet and especially on those miserable AM radio broadcasts that a few of the old guardians of stolen wealth are haranguing us. Why? For liberating the ill gotten gains from the wealthy - to relieve the costs of life for the masses? It’s time to silence these defenders of the old regime and replace them with the tried and true perspectives of the mainstream media who are true believers in our plans. The criticism by these outdated insurrectionists has been discredited by our objective government content review panels such as Media Matters. The time has come for the government to firmly wrest control from these criminals, stopping them from confusing you with their opposition to the wisdom of the Statists you elected.
After all, the Federal Government only seeks to protect you from yourself and those greedy Capitalists. This is why we will be instituting, under the emerging Global Governance of the United Nations, a few needed programs to guarantee your safety. The first is to rid society at large permanently of dangerous weapons. Guns kill people every day and we seek to end this injustice. Every progressive society in the world has banned private ownership of firearms by their subjects. By asking the small minority of gun owners to surrender their rifles, pistols and shotguns, as per the UN small arms treaty, to the proper authorities we are taking a bold step towards mandated health and safety. You elected us to be bold, didn’t you?
In the same vein, we seek to better control the average citizens diet and healthcare. As our great leaders have mentioned, obesity is one of many epidemics we have to solve. We never waste a crisis here in the Federal Government and to that end we will be instituting programs to better control food production. Additionally we will heavily tax any business that sells or promotes foods not specifically approved by our committees of experts. It’s to your benefit to help us become deeply involved in the nation’s food supply and distribution systems so we can better control what your fellow citizens actually put in their mouth.
Fortunately, we were able to finally begin the process of resetting the healthcare system in 2009 from a private, profit driven monster to a proper government run and controlled system. The Government Healthcare programs we launched will eventually provide sensible health services to all for free. By limiting the obscene profits that Pharmaceutical, Medical Device and Biotech companies can generate and re-directing those funds to our supporters benefit, we’re able to take a huge leap forward in creating social justice.
Our extremely brilliant planners have many more policies in the works. The nation’s energy supply has long been controlled by greedy capitalist corporations that produced more toxic side effects than benefits. We need you to focus on oil covered birds in the Gulf, the deaths of Coal miners, and the nuclear meltdown of Three Mile Island while we jettison the old energy industry. The Federal Government is implementing a breathtaking program, called cap and trade. It is designed to take huge sums of unused profits from these energy producers and taxes from gluttonous consumers, to re-distribute them to our trusted leaders in the new green energy movement. Oil, Coal and Nuclear power are to be cast upon the dustbin of history.
Again – thank you for supporting us in the intervention and re-structuring of the Automotive, Financial, Insurance and Healthcare Industries in the last 18 months. We were elected by you to transform the economy of America in a way that was never envisioned by that small cabal of slave owning, wealthy property owning eccentrics known as the Founding Fathers. Rest assured, even with the howls of the citizenry against us, we will not slow down these progressive policies until our final solutions are fully implemented. Again, thank you for empowering us to be your rulers.

Teach your children well - send them to Texas

How many of you believe that in the last 25 years, what our schools teach about US History has been altered to fit the whims of the political left? If you agree, you join 60% of Americans who feel the same. To put a sharp point on the issue; many believe that the curriculum for teaching US History in our schools and Universities has been hijacked by the hate America strain of leftist elites. Their notion of "education" consists of presenting an ideologically rigged set of "facts" in the classroom that seek to narrow rather than expand a student's mind.
The State of Texas recently was in the news as the their state school board chose, by a bipartisan 11 – 3 vote, to change their US History textbooks to present a more centric and patriotic view. In the last Texas textbook re-write in 1997, the formerly left of center review panel removed Christmas, the Liberty Bell, Neil Armstrong, Albert Einstein, and reduced teaching about Thomas Edison, Veterans Day, and Independence Day, religious heritage, and more. Compare those changes with the ones just agreed upon in Texas.
- 8th grade students will analyze Abraham Lincoln's ideas about liberty, equality, the Union, and government as contained in his first and second inaugural addresses and the Gettysburg Address, and contrast them with the ideas contained in confederate leader Jefferson Davis’ inaugural address.
- Causes of the Civil War will be presented in this order: sectionalism, states’ rights and slavery.
- Students are asked to “examine…compare and contrast” the phrase “separation of church and state” to the original wording of the Constitution.
- In high school history, a standard promotes discussion on the “solvency of long term entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare”.
Are these controversial concepts?
Critics immediately hit the airwaves with charges that US History had been incorrectly re-written. They alleged that the new textbooks removed Thomas Jefferson from the standards. False - Jefferson is in the standards five times, second in prominence only to George Washington, and the Declaration of Independence he authored appears another 25 times. They argued that slavery was removed and renamed something more flattering. False. Slavery is extensively covered nine times in the new curriculum.
Then the critics accused the board of intentionally diminishing women and minorities. False again. The truth – they added Hillary Clinton, Barbara Jordan, Cesar Chavez, Thurgood Marshall, Dolores Huerta and Sonia Sotomayor to the textbooks. Does this sound like a blackball of the left by the conservatives?

What did our open minded liberal teaching establishment in California do? They passed a law seeking to bar textbooks adhering to Texas’ educational standards from the state. Our bottom of the list California schools chieftains want to indoctrinate us in their aging leftist curriculum. None of this pro-America Texas nonsense will appear here. So here we are – 49th out of 50 in terms of school success – and we are convinced the Texas school board is wrong.

It reminds me of the story from the 80’s movie “Stand and Deliver” about Bolivian born Math teacher Jaime Escalante. He was the teacher who believed and proved he could teach advanced Mathematics to inner city kids at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles. He also showed that the education system didn't give a whit about education. His success was opposed by the school authorities, fellow teachers and most aggressively by the teachers unions. His success was so pronounced that often 50 or more kids would cram into his classes. The union forced a contract provision limiting classroom size to 35 students, throwing kids who were for the first time in their life learning math out of the classroom. In 1990 the Unions and the School District stripped Escalante of his chairmanship of the school math department. Escalante retired and went back to his native Bolivia.


My daughter went to San Jose State for a year. She was taught that Texas was stolen from Mexico. She was indoctrinated in Multicultural ethnic studies courses that called America oppressive and actively encouraged mushy headed students to actively fight for "social justice”. That is the new term for government forced re-distribution of wealth, and jailing business people for making a profit.

I have two ancient California textbooks on US History in my library at home. One is from 1936 called The Story of America. The second is from 1961 – West’s Story of our Country. Both of these extol American Exceptionalism. Both of these present a positive view of America, covering the highs and lows of our history in a very uplifting way. Somehow, between then and now, the textbooks we use present a very different view of American History. Today’s California textbooks are heavily tilted to the political left point of view and are far more consistent with the drivel my daughter endured at SJ State.

So here’s to Texas finally correcting a heretofore unopposed slide to the left in their educational system.

Close the Border Mr. President - they're killing us

I’m sure by now the name Rob Krentz rings no bells for most Americans. Rob Krentz was a rancher in Kingman Arizona, who was shot and killed by an illegal immigrant on his ranch. Like most modern media reports there is much more to the tale than has been told. So…here’s the real story.
Rob and Susan Krentz owned and operated a 35,000 acre cattle ranch near the Mexico border. They constantly dealt with hundreds of illegal aliens crossing their ranch to find work in the surrounding area. The Krentz’s routinely would offer food and water to dehydrated migrants, and were most often repaid by getting their fences cut, cattle shot, fires started and garbage strewn all over their ranch.
To amp up the problem, the Krentz’s and other ranchers in the area had noticed a huge increase in para-military type drug rings entering their ranches. The drug gangs send in a point man with a machine gun in front, followed a half mile behind by armed guards, followed another half mile behind by the drug shipment, followed by more armed guards. The ranchers all knew to stay well away from these drug related death squads invading our southern border, and rely upon their local Sherriff’s or the US Border Patrol.
Just a few weeks before Krentz's murder, another rancher nearby found a huge shipment of drugs on his property. He called the authorities, and they confiscated the drugs, but were unable to stop the gang of illegal’s that came a few days later and viciously beat the rancher and his wife, threatening to kill them if they reported any more drug shipments. The drug smugglers kill anyone who gets in their way and often kill their own drug "mules" who fail to keep up in what Police call human "drug trains".
One week before his murder, Krentz found a similar drug shipment in trucks on his ranch. He reported the drugs and had the Border Patrol and DEA haul the drugs off. No one knows for sure exactly who killed Rob Krentz yet, but on the day of his murder he had radioed to his brother that he had spotted an illegal that looked like he was in trouble so he was on his way to help. Investigators reported that the assailant shot Rob and his dog, and that Krentz was able to drive his ATV away from the shooting site. Krentz was mortally wounded and he soon went into shock, and died. Foot tracks of the killer were identified and followed 20 miles south to the Mexico border by sheriff’s deputies and U.S. Border Patrol trackers.
Is it any wonder Arizona recently passed a much needed enforcement bill to try to stop this cycle of violence? Phoenix had 316 kidnapping cases last year, more than any other town in America, and nearly all of them involved illegal immigrants and drugs. The Federal Government attempts to claim exclusive authority over illegal immigration, yet they do almost nothing to enforce the existing laws. The people of Arizona were sick and tired of waiting on a detached federal bureaucracy that continually ignores the will of the people.

The citizens of Arizona recently passed a statewide law that is identical to the existing federal law. Now both the Federal and State law makes it a crime for a non-citizen to be in the U.S. without government documentation. Under the existing Federal law, legal-resident aliens have been required to carry and show those documents to federal law-enforcement officers since 1940. The core concept of Arizona’s SB 1070 similarly requires immigrants to carry proof of legal status or risk being turned over by state troopers to federal authorities. The new Arizona law specifically bans any racial profiling and only allows inquiry into citizenship status if the person is stopped for some other crime. Every country in the world has this same type of requirement, especially Mexico. Heaven help the poor illegal immigrant from El Salvador who gets caught in Mexico without his proof of legal status.
The squeals from leftists are always the same. They shout racism is the motivation behind any opposition to their agenda, whether it is socialized medicine, nationalizing US corporations or the Arizona immigration reform. They ignore the fact that their own existing federal laws are identical to the Arizona statute. Both Attorney General Holder and DHS head Napolitano loudly criticized the law, never having bothered to actually read it.
Americans overwhelmingly favor legal immigration. We take pride in welcoming new immigrants to our country, and support efforts to assimilate new citizens by encouraging they learn English and American History as the surest path to becoming productive citizens.
What we ask of government is to enforce existing laws and for our borders to be controlled. We were promised a double layer border fence along the entire Mexican border. According to DHS, only 34.3 miles double-layer fencing has been completed along the 1950 mile Southern border. If we had simply constructed the double layer fence Rob Krentz would not have been murdered. When we as Americans begin the debate again on immigration reform, we need to loudly shout at our political class “Finish the Border Fence First, then we’ll debate”.

With Obamacare - Medical Innovation in danger

Good healthcare is not cheap, and cheap healthcare is not good. The hallmark of the American healthcare system is how we incorporate both leading edge therapies coupled with mass scale manufacturing techniques to increase the quality of care while driving costs down.
The software company I work for deals almost exclusively with life sciences companies. I get to see large and small medical device manufacturers, plus biotech and pharmaceutical firms all over North America. What I can say with steely eyed certainty is we are in the golden age of medical innovation. With equal certainty I can tell you this wave of innovation can be destroyed by the proposed government takeover of the healthcare sector.
Government controlled systems systematically starve the use of new drugs, devices and procedures. The deployment rate by government run healthcare providers of these new life saving technologies is minimal and years behind a market driven system. Why? They deem them too expensive. Cost control, not patient care is the primary driver in government systems. Just ask the Canadians.
Dr. Anne Doig, the president of the Canadian Medical Association, described the Canadian health system as imploding. Waiting times for critical procedures are increasing dramatically. Treatments available in the U.S. are now denied in Canada. That’s why they come to America, with its’ private sector led healthcare system, and they pay for it out of pocket.
The American private sector is humming with a pipeline of soon to be released wonders. I have seen two companies with late stage therapies for Lupus. A friend of mine works for a company that is developing a system that analyzes genetic markers associated with early detection of a dozen different types of cancer. Another is a new non-surgical, removable hearing and communication device designed to imperceptibly transmit sound via the teeth to help people with single-sided deafness.
How about something for your heart? Continuous-Flow Ventricular assist devices are tiny, powerful; 3-ounce med devices that are surgically attached alongside the heart, that quietly and effectively take over the pumping ability of the heart. The technologies I’ve described represent far less than 1 % of the next wave of medical breakthroughs…if we keep the American free enterprise model in place.
Sidney Taurel, the former CEO of the pharma company Eli Lilly said: “America, though hardly free of government intervention ... is the one market where global innovators find the incentive they need to keep pushing the boundaries."
Unfortunately, the health care bills moving through Congress could dramatically curtail medical innovation. Imposing price controls on drugs and treatments, or indirectly forcing their prices down by means of a "public option" or expanded public insurance programs, would reduce the incentive for innovators to develop new treatments.
The innovation pipeline relies on several types of companies to effectively function. The large Pharma and Med Device companies have the raw capital, the mass manufacturing capacity and the wholesale and retail distribution and delivery systems to bring cost effective new medical products to market. The small companies have the agility to develop and manage the clinical trials of thousands of potential new breakthrough technologies. Once these are approved by the FDA and the company can bring its wonder drug or device to market, they are typically bought by the giant companies. This investment cycle is what has produced 95% of all medical innovations in the last 30 years.
Not to leave out the Government, as they try to get in on the innovation pipeline too. The problem with the government led projects is they tend to fund technologies that feel good to the political class. Politically motivated approaches such as human Embryonic stem cell research (hEsc) are darlings of the Government funded research community. Problem is - no therapies have been developed from hEsc research, while dozens of therapies have resulted from the market driven adult stem-cell research. The market rewards success and penalizes failure on its own terms without accounting for political tastes.
The Venture Capital firms and the business community demand a financial reward in the future to risk gobs of capital today. The Scientists that develop the intellectual property that is the heart of the innovation pipeline also rely on financial gain. This industry employs millions of people with high paying jobs in the US, jobs that will continue long after “shovel ready” jobs created by temporary government stimulus money runs out.
Conversely the government people who now want to run our healthcare system are the same jokers that run the Post Office and the "cash for clunkers" program. Do you want these bureaucrats making your families medical choices for you? Remember once we start down the slope towards socialized medicine we cannot go back. The innovative medical treatment you now receive will wither and die, only to be replaced by long waiting lines for rationed services. Instead of advanced diagnosis and treatment options with cutting edge technologies we will be subjected to the dull and aged technologies of yesteryear.
Let the golden age of innovation continue. Don’t let our precious healthcare system be destroyed by Socialized Medicine. Remember Socialist systems of any kind guarantee only one thing - an equal share of misery.

What did that sign say ?

I am sitting in the Newark NJ airport, trying to catch a flight to beat a monster snowstorm that is now blasting Washington DC. There must have been a global warming conference here in the east today to trigger such a massive snowstorm. That being said – and since I am near comatose after 5 days of internal company meetings I wanted to write a column on oddball signs I have seen over the years that are curious and sometimes hilarious.
Before the signs though I had to pass on something from a menu in a restaurant a friend took me to in Montreal where they summed up the wine selection with the curious phrase ”Our wines leave you with nothing to hope for”.
Menu’s are easy to fix, as are many other public postings so I find the more permanent the mistake the funnier it is. I had a friend whose grocery club card was mistakenly printed as belonging to Mr. Smoth when his name was Smith. I was with him once when the clerk said “thanks for shopping at Safeway Mr. Smoth” and after that everyone called him Mr. Smoth.
In my travels I often spot signs that don’t make much sense. I took my youngest daughter to Australia and we encountered several signs that were yellow diamond road signs warning us of danger. One was a “Please drive with care” sign that then stated the word “Ahead” and pictured three silhouette drawings on it. One was a man on a horse, the second was a Kangaroo hopping and the third was a Wombat that was the same size as the horse.
Another was a sign at a beach that was just the drawing of a man in swim trunks, under the wave line with a giant squid tangled around his legs. We ran from that beach. At the Sydney Zoo we saw a sign that read “Please do not feed the animals. If you have any suitable food, give it to the guard on duty”
The last Australian oddity was a triangular warning sign that showed a man in a wheelchair on a steep downhill slope rapidly approaching a crocodile with open jaws. Do wheelchair bound people get eaten by Croc’s often enough to warrant a metal warning sign?
On another trip to Italy, I spotted in Florence a sign on a doctor’s office that proclaimed he was a “Specialist in Women and other diseases” – no kidding. Passing thru Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam a sign in an airport lounge read “Ladies are requested not to have children in the bar” – I kidded my Dutch friends about that many times.
In South Africa I took my oldest daughter plains game hunting and while still in the City of Johannesburg we would find that any nice establishment such as a theatre, restaurant or casino had a sign at the entry encouraging guests to check their handguns. There was usually a gun check desk where a nice lady would check your pistol for you while in the establishment. I took several pictures of my daughter as the gun check lady for her facebook page.
In the Pilansburg Game Park in Africa one stone monument read “Don’t feed the Lions” on one side of the marker and then on the reverse it stated “Toilet – Stay in your car”. Must be some bush trick to keep the lions away?
A few signs friends have sent me are equally odd. One from the Chelmsford UK area has a large road sign pointing to the right that tells you how to get to the “Secret Nuclear Bunker” on the A128 road. Another was a warning sign near an electric railway in Newcastle that said “Touching wires causes Instantaneous death + £200 fine” Death should be enough of a punishment, why add a 200 pound fine?
Other head scratching signs such as the one that reads “Parking for drive thru service only” that we saw in Arkansas, or the one on the road from Phoenix to Tucson that reads “Hitchhikers may be escaped Prisoners”. Can’t say my Mom didn’t warn me about hitchhikers but never knew she had a sign made. One in Florida - but should have been in Marin County was a normal yellow diamond sign of a man walking with a separate square yellow sign beneath it with the words ”High Pedestrian Area”
That’s the end of my strange sign collection. Back to hardball conservative politics next column I promise.

What in the World is a Manmade Disaster ?

The Christmas Day Terrorist attempt proved that a pound of prevention is worth far less than an ounce of cure. What do I mean? The Obama administration seems to believe an army of lawyers is far more powerful than an actual Military Army of soldiers. Evidence ? They immediately turned this terrorist over to a cabal of left wing defense attorneys whose job it is to get the terrorist to say nothing, offer nothing and make sure he’s comfortable, at ease and relaxed for his arraignment and eventual trial.
What we needed right after capturing this vermin is to have the specialists in the Military fully interrogate him as to his terror network connections. Don’t jump to water boarding – that is ridiculous – and off the table with Obama anyway. What we needed is skilled military interrogators that could have found out the names and locations of his and other Yemeni based terror cells. Then we could find and destroy these nests of terrorists before they had a chance to scatter. We could have learned in a few hours of “cure” – the who – what – where & when of the next wave of terror attacks that his Yemeni based Al Qaeda network has been planning.
What did the wunderkind of Washington order? Send in the suits with NYU law school degrees to protect him. Instead of actionable intelligence we have a terrorist who is being treated as if he was nothing more than a US Citizen caught in a stock swindle. He is “Lawyered up” and fully out of reach of the US Military who could actually use the information in his head to protect us.
We were told by Obama’s head of DHS Janet Napolitano that the system worked. That means the system must include passengers spotting and thwarting terrorists when they are about to detonate a bomb. Then after a pounding in the alternative media, she changed her mind. The system had - a day later - fatal flaws that only could be cured by more government. She is now the Wizard of Odd – telling us to pay no attention to the terrorist behind the curtain – that what we have here is an isolated incident – a lone wolf renegade. He was recruited and trained by Al Qaeda and even his own father, a Nigerian diplomat called the US State Department to warn us of his son’s radicalization by a group of terrorists in Yemen. The new improved State Department laughed that report off as if it was generated by talk radio.
The mindset of the Obama administration is that the War on Terror was lost long ago and now they – with their lofty speeches – can produce reconciliation with countries that harbor terrorists. Replace all that nasty war rhetoric with bridge building to nowhere. Add to that winning recipe a September 10th mindset – that terrorism is really a law enforcement issue and you have fully emboldened the terrorists to plan and execute more attacks. They are engaged in a war against us, and we are engaged in a lawsuit against them.
We have now had two strikes by Terrorists on US soil since Obama came to power. One was the Fort Hood shootings and the second is the underwear bomber. I think the American public is now waking to the fact that we are unprotected and is telling the democrats who control everything federally, three strikes and you’re out.
What is the “pound” of prevention I am referring to? We now want to deploy full body scanners at every airport. We already take off most of our clothes now - just to get past security. We are adding thousands of Air Marshalls to sit on planes in case a terrorist boards a plane. We deploy armies of data analysts that constantly comb the conversations of suspected terrorists on cellphones for keywords that could add up to real intelligence. Why not take the actual live terrorist you have in your hands and interrogate him? Can’t do that as his Miranda rights would be trampled upon. What Miranda rights exist for foreign terrorists?
Unless we are willing to return to a War on terror footing as a country, we are going to see wave after wave of these attacks, followed by speeches and lawsuits from our feeble and bloated government. They actually wanted to replace the words “War on Terror” with “manmade disasters”. If you read George Orwell’s 1984 you would recognize this as an example of “Newspeak”. Replace hard words with soft fluffy words and the peasants will go back to sleep. Don’t be fooled by these pre-September 11th charlatans. We need to fight a war, not win a lawsuit.

Happy Holidays - thru the eyes of 3 Religions

The now ubiquitous greeting of “Happy Holidays” is one that can actually have some meaning, if the significance behind the phrase is actually understood. The Holidays are typically religious ones, so I will focus on three of the world’s great religions, namely Islam, Judaism and Christianity. What do these three have in common? In one word, Abraham - or as our Muslim brethren call him - Ibrahim.
For Jews and Christians we start with the book of Genesis in the Old Testament. Abraham was 99 years old when the Lord appeared to him saying that he and his wife Sarah were to bear a child named Isaac. Isaac would be the child that the Lord established his covenant with, and the promises the Lord made in this covenant to Abraham were significant. Abraham would later be commanded to sacrifice his son, Isaac whom he loved as his side of the covenant. If God, through Abraham’s hand, sacrificed Isaac, then Abraham reasoned that God would raise Isaac from the dead in order to keep his promises to Abraham. On the day of the sacrifice the Lord stayed Abrahams hand in sacrificing his son, and he and his lineage were blessed for their obedience and faith and willingness to sacrifice.
The Lord was cementing three key concepts with all mankind at this point. One is obedience to God’s commandments, the second is the Law of Sacrifice and the third is faith in the Lord’s plan.
Abraham’s older son, was named Ishmael and was 13 at the time of the birth of his brother Isaac. Ishmael was also blessed by the Lord in Genesis and made the head of a great nation thru his offspring of 12 sons. For Muslims, they believe that the son that was to be sacrificed was not Isaac, but rather Ishmael, as he was the first born son of Abraham. In the Islamic scriptures, called the Qur’an, Abraham states in the passage known as Surah 37 “O my son! I have seen in a vision that I offer thee in sacrifice: now see what is thy view!" (The son - Ishmael) said: "O my father! Do as thou art commanded: thou will find me, if Allah so wills, one of the steadfast!" Thus Ishmael was placed on the Altar for sacrifice, and the Lord stayed Abraham’s hand blessing both father and son for obedience, sacrifice and faith.
Thus all Christians, Jews and Muslims trace our religious roots back to father Abraham and the three key spiritual principles revealed in Abrahams sacrifice. So what does this have to do with the phrase “Happy Holidays “?
In December we as Christians celebrate Christmas which is to honor the birth of the Savior of the world, the Lord Jesus Christ. For us Christians, Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice made by our Heavenly Father, offering his only begotten son to pay the ransom for our sins, allowing us to return to his presence one day. The sacrifice Abraham made was a foreshadowing of the sacrifice we feel God made in bringing his son Jesus, to the earth to pay the price for our sins.
For Jews, on December 12th they celebrate Hanukkah – the Hebrew word for dedication that begins on the 25th day of Kislev in the Hebrew calendar. It lasts for eight days beginning at sunset the previous day and is also known as the Festival of Lights.
Hanukkah celebrates the victory (165 BC) of the Maccabees over the Syrian tyrant Antiochus IV and the subsequent reclamation of Jerusalem. According to the Jewish scriptures known as the Talmud, only a one day supply of non-desecrated oil was found in the Temple when the Maccabees prepared it for rededication by removing all Syrian idols. Miraculously, the oil lasted for eight days until oil that was fit for use in the temple could be obtained.
This miracle is commemorated by the lighting of the Hanukkah candles. The candles are placed on the hanukkiyah or menorah, a nine-branch candelabrum. The ninth branch of the menorah holds the shamash, or servant light. This branch is lit first and is used to light a new candle on successive nights. The candle lighting is accompanied by the chanting of blessings. The Jews also believe in the Law of Sacrifice and Hanukkah is a time when they are reminded that God keeps his promises and protects his chosen people. The chosen people are those who trace their lineage to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Islam follows a lunar calendar that is neither in synch nor corrected according to the solar calendar. Therefore, holidays occur at different times each year. On November 27 this year, Eid al-Adha or Feast of Sacrifice was celebrated and is the most important feast of the Muslim calendar. It is a holiday meant to celebrate the conclusion of a Muslim’s annual pilgrimage to Mecca, commonly called the Hajj and is very sacred for believers of Islam. Eid al-Adha lasts for three days and commemorates Ibrahim's (Abraham’s) willingness to obey God by sacrificing his son Ishmael. The feast re-enacts Ibrahim's obedience by sacrificing a cow or ram (the animal sacrifice is more common in Arab lands than the US ) The family eats about a third of the meat and donates the rest to the poor.
So here you have three key religious Holidays, briefly explained that may give the reader some meaning to attach to the often empty phrase we all use “Happy Holidays”.

The Climate Gate Swindle

Sherlock Holmes, the legendary fictional detective, often criticized Scotland Yard for sloppy and simplistic investigations. He said they “looked for facts that fit their pre-conceived theories” rather than doing proper detective work, which was “looking for theories that fit all the facts”. This describes the current sad state of the once respected Peer Review process that is driving the science behind the Global Warming theory, called Anthropogenic Global Warming –AGW for short.
Here’s what happened…someone either leaked, or hacked the email servers of the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit in the UK. The CRU is not some backwater group of academics, but the center of the research that has powered the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC) reports for the last 18 years. The body of emails between the key researchers details a pattern of scientific deception that rivals Watergate. Hence the name “Climategate” You can check out all of the leaked emails for yourself at this link - http://junkscience.com/FOIA/
The scientific peer review process relies on other scientists critically reviewing the data that has fueled the Global Warming theory, but as we learned this week, the CRU scientists confessed to throwing out most of the raw temperature data on which their theories are founded on. The loss of the data prevents other scientists from checking it to determine whether, in fact, there has been a long-term rise in global temperatures during the past century and a half. The CRU and the UN IPCC’s peer review process turns out to be almost non-existent. Hey, why ruin a good headache?
The second revelation of the leaked documents is how the CRU scientists manipulated the data through their software programs, always arriving at one desired outcome – one that lowers temperatures in the past and "adjusts" recent temperatures upward, in order to convince the UN IPCC of accelerated warming. These e-mails also revealed scientists that are deeply frustrated by planetary temperatures that had stubbornly refused to rise in the last 10 years.
The third and most shocking revelation is how this influential cabal of scientists have silenced any expert that questions their dubious findings by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dared to publish their critics' work, and by ensuring that no dissenting research becomes part of the UN IPCC reports.
So what ? We’re being fleeced. Remember the critical elements of the swindle are “The science is settled” and “drastic action must be taken” by the US immediately to limit carbon emissions, which resulted in the cap-and-tax legislation awaiting debate in the Senate, and the global climate meeting in Copenhagen, where world leaders will attempt to globalize cap-and-tax.
All of this lovely intervention is based on a pyramid scheme of scientific data that is compromised, and definitely not peer reviewed. Of the claimed 2500 scientists that support AGW - how many have properly reviewed the data sets? Very few could have, as the data sets were discarded long ago.
The UN IPCC claims to have reviewed all relevant data and published all of it. Oh yeah, except for the last IPCC compendium on climate science, published in 2007, that left out gobs of peer-reviewed science - “ facts that didn’t fit their theory”. These include articles from the journals Arctic, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Earth Interactions, Geophysical Research Letters, International Journal of Climatology, Journal of Climate, Journal of Geophysical Research, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Quaternary Research.
Science may be objective; but scientists peddling global warming are not. The main culprits are perhaps the top scientists in the global warming gene pool. Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director, described in a series of emails a ‘trick he employed to ‘hide the decline’ in global temperature trends, as well as discussed attempts to ‘redefine what the peer-review literature is’ to prevent papers that raise questions about AGW from appearing in IPCC reports.
Then there is Penn State's Michael Mann, author of the erroneous “hockey stick” that showed temperatures steady for hundreds of years, then rapidly rising in the late 20th century. Mann agrees with Prof. Jones stating “I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is! ".
“Kevin” is Kevin Trenberth, who controversially pushed the UN IPCC into scaremongering over hurricane activity. He wrote, ‘the fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming and it is a travesty that we can’t.’
The scientific peer review process has to be re-established as the truly blind scientific study process it once was. All we have here is a little climate science mixed with a hefty load of leftist political science that is faulty, incomplete and manipulated.

Who do you thank at Thanksgiving ?

Snap - went the spring loaded trap thrower out at the ranch. Crackle went my right arm, specifically the outer forearm bone called the ulna. Pop - we did - over to the hospital to get my arm set. No this is not a beginning of column on the healthcare debate, but rather one that is about Thanksgiving. Note: this column was typed entirely with my left hand – but with the assistance of my right brain.
Let me start by saying I am so thankful for the care I received at the hospital ER. Among cases of H1N1 flu, and assorted other weekend traumas, I was X-Rayed, diagnosed, and patched up in less than 2 hours. This is something every American and many non Americans have access to – the skills and capabilities of the glorious Emergency Room.
This odd break from my normal life caused me to pause and reflect on all the things I have to be thankful for. The first question is who am I thankful to? While not everyone will agree I have to first thank my Heavenly Father. I have this wonderful life because He has allowed me to come to earth to experience mortality and all the attendant lessons it brings first hand. Even painful episodes such as the “night stick fracture” that the Doctor diagnosed, is a great lesson. It reminded me to be much more careful around things that can snap bones. It created another funny story my wife and family can tell about Dad, and who knows; my arm may heal stronger than before.
I also have to thank God for my family. I readily admit that most of the stability and fun we have as a family is in large part due to a great wife and soul mate. My kids have taught me how to overcome normal human selfishness and have enhanced my life in ways no other experience could. These are blessings indeed, whether we recognize them as such or not.
I am so thankful for my Country. I love America and all that goes with it. I have visited over 35 other countries in my travels, and while I readily admit Africa is pure adventure, India is stunningly different and Europe is charming, nothing works like the USA. America is, to me, the best and most vibrant country on the face of the earth and needs to be preserved for the benefit of all mankind. Yes – I also believe that America has a hugely positive role to play in Gods’ plans too.
So, to summarize… God, Family, Country. This phrase may seem quaint and naïve to some but I believe it is the basic recipe for Americas’ incomparable greatness.
The spiritual nature of Thanksgiving though dates back to the Berkeley Plantation in Virginia where the first Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1619, 12 years after the founding of the Virginia colony at Jamestown.
It was set aside as a day to thank God, and featured only a modest meal at first. It wasn't until two years later, in 1621, that Thanksgiving was expanded to include a banquet by the pilgrims in Massachusetts.
During his first year in office, President George Washington issued a proclamation calling for a day of "public thanksgiving and prayer." Washington understood that a free society had a basic obligation to both thank God and seek His guidance. In his Thanksgiving proclamation, Washington wrote: "It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits and humbly to implore His protection and favor."
During the Civil War, in October 1863, President Abraham Lincoln added to President Washington's initiative and created an annual day of Thanksgiving. Like Washington, Lincoln was determined to emphasize the direct tie between America and the Creator from whom Americans draw their rights. Even in the middle of the great and tragic Civil War, Lincoln focused on the nation's blessings, urging Americans to remember that "no human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the most high God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.”
Even for folks who have no religious or spiritual tradition associated with Thanksgiving, it is a grand time to be thankful. I do want to encourage folks who do revere God to remember Him this Thanksgiving. We have many opportunities as Americans to be grateful and America needs your prayers of Thanksgiving in 2009.