Simple Utah Mormon Politics

America's foreign policy toward Iran should be to apologize. Had the United States not meddled in Iranian domestic policy, Iran would hardly be the boiling cauldron that it is today, where secret police and military thugs kill hundreds and arrest thousands of their protesting countrymen. The Iranian people have been more than once within a hair's breadth of enjoying liberty--only to be thwarted with the help of the United States. If someone did to America what we've done to Iran, you'd want an apology, too. I'm not talking about apologizing to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or his bearded overlord. Those men are criminals. What I'm advocating, rather, is an apology directly to the Iranian people for stealing their liberty--for the things the United States did to their country decades ago which, if we hadn't done them, Mr. I'm not talking about apologizing to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or his bearded overlord. Those men are criminals. What I'm advocating, rather, i

Sometimes I wish that fewer people would vote in elections. (Actually, I just wish they would become a little bit more informed before they cast their votes.) We have had some great choices in recent elections. Unfortunately, though, it's nothing new that most Americans are content to be arm-twisted into voting for the lesser of two not-so-great choices. In his book Boiling Point: Republicans, Democrats, and the Decline of Middle-Class Prosperity , Kevin Phillips writes this about the recent presidential election: By condemning the Bush administration for favoritism to the rich and neglect of the middle class, Obama tapped a historic Republican vulnerability and took a strong lead over John McCain from July onward. True, many voters still doubted the Illinois senator's trustworthiness. McCain's last rival for the Republican nomination, Texas congressman Ron Paul, had insisted the Obama couldn't be believed, because he was financed by the same elites he purported to

I had to listen to Glenn Beck's monologue a couple of times today about the discussion between President Obama and Nico Pitney of The Huffington post. And I still didn't get what Beck was so inflamed about. Perhaps Beck ought to be paying more attention to what's going on in Iran rather than wondering if Pitney was just another media person being nice to Barack Obama. (Press conference Here , Pitney's subsequent visit with CNN, here .) Here's part of Beck's critique of the President's supposed tactics: He's contacting a media source ahead of time to plan a question for a live press conference. Who thought the media was in the tank for him? Who, booboo? He's contacted a liberal blog site to do it. He reveals that he follows the liberal blog site closely. And to top it off, he calls them second in the press conference. By the way, ADD moment. Which one of these things just doesn't belong? Associated Press, Reuters, the Huffington Post? It was a

In Farsi, Neda means "voice". The accidental "voice" of the New Iranian Revolution has also become its first martyr. The murder of Neda Agha Soltan has become the nourishment needed for the blossoming of freedom in Iran. Millions of Iranians, now honoring her innocent memory, will not be stopped, even if for many of them, it also means death. The days of the backward rule of the Ayatollah and the Iranian Supreme Council are numbered. As Neda lay dying, her father counseled her "Natazhsid!", which means "Do not be afraid!" This has become the rallying cry of millions of freedom-loving Iranians. Please pray for their success. Please pray that Neda's death has not been in vain. One of the greatest chapters in human history is playing out before our very eyes, yet most of us choose to watch mindless entertaining drivel on television instead. Iranians are suddenly on the verge of a freedom that has been centuries in the making. Do you care

For many years I have admired the passion of the Iranian people. Regardless of having lived for decades beneath the damning hand of dictatorship, they still have not lost their innate yearning for freedom. If only Americans could be as passionate about liberty as the Iranians are. Americans are content to simply have a Tea Party and then go home. Iranians, harking to a bygone American era, are deadly serious about liberty--just as Americans Americans can't just have a tea party every now and then and feel like we've made any kind of a difference. once were. While Iranians risk their lives and forsake their livelihoods for days on end in an effort to retain some vestige of representative government, Americans are too busy-- spectating at their favorite sporting events or figuring out where their next mortgage payment will come from--to care very much. It has become clear over the past eight days that Mir Hossein Mousavi, challenger to the not-well-liked Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,

At the recent convention of the Western Governors' Association, Nick Bridge, British counselor for global issues, stated that the earnestness of global warming is like "driving towards a cliff at high speed and [you] have a 30 percent chance of brake failure. Would you get in the car? Nobody would get in the car." Well, no, actually, I'd do a computer model simulation to ensure that the 30% chance of failure is a correct estimate. ;-) Mr. Bridge's verbal faux pas indicates the inanity of the claims of those involved in crying global warming wolf. He can't even think through the process of evaluating risk. If I had a car whose brakes had a 30% chance of failure, I would test them thoroughly--under actual conditions--to find out what percentage of the time they actually did fail . If they actually failed at all, I'd get them fixed. Global warming criers, however, think that delving in theory, simulating risk, and crying wolf is all that is needed in orde

The man who committed murder at the Holocaust Museum yesterday is being deadpanned by hordes as a "right-wing extremist". The murderer was certainly an extremist, as, blessedly, these things are the exception rather than the rule. But the murderer was far from being "right-wing". Defining "Left" vs. "Right" with regard to what side of the aisle of parliament you sit on is meaningless. The worthwhile definition of left vs. right has nothing to do with political parties. Rather, it all depends on how you feel about freedom. "Stalin is left-wing, Hitler is right-wing." "Stalin is left-wing, Hitler is right-wing." "Stalin is left-wing, Hitler is right-wing." If you say it enough...it still won't be true. Yet somehow, if you search for "holocaust right-wing" on Google News, you'll find a plethora of "news" articles calling the Holocaust Museum murderer a right-wing extremist. Like this

For the first 5,000 years of man's existence on earth, very little advancement was made in things technological. In the two centuries following the pilgrims' arrival on America's shores, technological innovation became unprecedented. In the two hundred or so years since, advances in technology have been even more astonishing. How did it happen? By harnessing the ingenuity of freedom. In the name of a farce, that is about to be destroyed. In their perpetuation of one of the largest frauds in history, the global warming/climate change crowd is attempting to destroy much of the technological achievement of the past 400 years. Not for themselves, mind you, but for all of the rest of us. The propaganda of the environmental extremists is a not-so-veiled attempt to destroy liberty. The settlers of Jamestown in the New World of the early 1600's exhibited a shocking similarity to everyone who had peopled the earth for the five thousand years prior--they had achieved very

If the United States cared to pay attention to great examples of crappy foreign policy, it could have easily noticed what hell Belgium wrought in Rwanda during most of the 20th century. Belgian intrigue paved the way for the hatred, persecutions, and massacres that followed their arrival. During the genocide of 1994, when it would have been wise for someone--anyone--to come to the aid of Rwandans in distress who had asked for outside help, the United States was busy licking wounds sustained from becoming involved in Somalia, a place we were neither needed nor wanted. When our help isn't asked for, we usually cause more problems by jumping into the fray. When our assistance is wanted, we are most often too busy running with our tails between our legs from the effects of our own crappy foreign policy. For centuries the Rwandan Hutus and Tutsis shared the same culture, the same language, and the same religion, and they lived in relative peace. They often intermarried. In 1916, tha

Ironically, especially for those who have not been keeping score, liberal Democrat administrations committed the United States to every major conflict in the 20th century except one. That one exception, George H.W. Bush's foray into Iraq, along with his son's clean up project to kick off the 21st century, convinced America that the Republican party is the perpetual party of war. For many Americans, history seems to have started on the morning of September 11, 2001. For all they know, Republicans do start all the wars. But the reality is that war-starting has very little to do with political party affiliation. Conservative leaders have consistently opposed the vulgarity of American empire, while progressives of either major party have been the ones to push us into empire, with those needless and messy wars. The actions of both Bush administrations have convinced many Americans that only Republicans have never met a war they didn't like. This Red vs. Blue is a worthless c

The one good thing about the government's takeover of General Motors is that they won't have to change their logo very much. In fact, I've already fixed it for them. (see image, right). Governmental Motors has a short-term advantage in the auto market, but that will quickly turn out to be a disadvantage. If you thought that GM sucked when the government was sticking pins its voodoo doll from afar, just wait--it gets much worse. We've seen this movie before. Now that the United States government has purchased its first automobile company, they should be getting some words of advice from citizens of the former Soviet Union. Wait! The Russians just did give their input, unsolicited and with perfect timing. They said, not surprisingly, that we're much stupider than they were: It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me