Here’s an interesting list that draws upon science and common sense to calm the Chicken Littles of the world.

HERE are the 100 reasons, released in a dossier issued by the European Foundation, why climate change is natural and not man-made:

1) There is “no real scientific proof” that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from man’s activity.

2) Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.

3) Warmer periods of the Earth’s history came around 800 years before rises in CO2 levels.

4) After World War II, there was a huge surge in recorded CO2 emissions but global temperatures fell for four decades after 1940.

5) Throughout the Earth’s history, temperatures have often been warmer than now and CO2 levels have often been higher – more than ten times as high.

6) Significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time.

7) The 0.7C increase in the average global temperature over the last hundred years is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, natural climate trends.

The IPCC theory is driven by just 60 scientists and favourable reviewers not the 4,000 usually cited.

9) Leaked e-mails from British climate scientists – in a scandal known as “Climate-gate” – suggest that that has been manipulated to exaggerate global warming

10) A large body of scientific research suggests that the sun is responsible for the greater share of climate change during the past hundred years.

11) Politicians and activiists claim rising sea levels are a direct cause of global warming but sea levels rates have been increasing steadily since the last ice age 10,000 ago

12) Philip Stott, Emeritus Professor of Biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London says climate change is too complicated to be caused by just one factor, whether CO2 or clouds

13) Peter Lilley MP said last month that “fewer people in Britain than in any other country believe in the importance of global warming. That is despite the fact that our Government and our political class—predominantly—are more committed to it than their counterparts in any other country in the world”.

14) In pursuit of the global warming rhetoric, wind farms will do very little to nothing to reduce CO2 emissions

15) Professor Plimer, Professor of Geology and Earth Sciences at the University of Adelaide, stated that the idea of taking a single trace gas in the atmosphere, accusing it and finding it guilty of total responsibility for climate change, is an “absurdity”

16) A Harvard University astrophysicist and geophysicist, Willie Soon, said he is “embarrassed and puzzled” by the shallow science in papers that support the proposition that the earth faces a climate crisis caused by global warming.

17) The science of what determines the earth’s temperature is in fact far from settled or understood.

18) Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas, unlike water vapour which is tied to climate concerns, and which we can’t even pretend to control

19) A petition by scientists trying to tell the world that the political and media portrayal of global warming is false was put forward in the Heidelberg Appeal in 1992. Today, more than 4,000 signatories, including 72 Nobel Prize winners, from 106 countries have signed it.

20) It is claimed the average global temperature increased at a dangerously fast rate in the 20th century but the recent rate of average global temperature rise has been between 1 and 2 degrees C per century – within natural rates

21) Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski, Chairman of the Scientific Council of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw, Poland says the earth’s temperature has more to do with cloud cover and water vapor than CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.

22) There is strong evidence from solar studies which suggests that the Earth’s current temperature stasis will be followed by climatic cooling over the next few decades

23) It is myth that receding glaciers are proof of global warming as glaciers have been receding and growing cyclically for many centuries

24) It is a falsehood that the earth’s poles are warming because that is natural variation and while the western Arctic may be getting somewhat warmer we also see that the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder

25) The IPCC claims climate driven “impacts on biodiversity are significant and of key relevance” but those claims are simply not supported by scientific research

26) The IPCC threat of climate change to the world’s species does not make sense as wild species are at least one million years old, which means they have all been through hundreds of climate cycles

27) Research goes strongly against claims that CO2-induced global warming would cause catastrophic disintegration of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets.

28) Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, rising CO2 levels are our best hope of raising crop yields to feed an ever-growing population

29) The biggest climate change ever experienced on earth took place around 700 million years ago

30) The slight increase in temperature which has been observed since 1900 is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term natural climate cycles

31) Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, rising CO2 levels of some so-called “greenhouse gases” may be contributing to higher oxygen levels and global cooling, not warming

32) Accurate satellite, balloon and mountain top observations made over the last three decades have not shown any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures

33) Today’s CO2 concentration of around 385 ppm is very low compared to most of the earth’s history – we actually live in a carbon-deficient atmosphere

34) It is a myth that CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas because greenhouse gases form about 3% of the atmosphere by volume, and CO2 constitutes about 0.037% of the atmosphere

35) It is a myth that computer models verify that CO2 increases will cause significant global warming because computer models can be made to “verify” anything

36) There is no scientific or statistical evidence whatsoever that global warming will cause more storms and other weather extremes

37) One statement deleted from a UN report in 1996 stated that “none of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases”

38) The world “warmed” by 0.07 +/- 0.07 degrees C from 1999 to 2008, not the 0.20 degrees C expected by the IPCC

39) The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says “it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense” but there has been no increase in the intensity or frequency of tropical cyclones globally

40) Rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere can be shown not only to have a negligible effect on the Earth’s many ecosystems, but in some cases to be a positive help to many organisms

41) Researchers who compare and contrast climate change impact on civilizations found warm periods are beneficial to mankind and cold periods harmful

42) The Met Office asserts we are in the hottest decade since records began but this is precisely what the world should expect if the climate is cyclical

43) Rising CO2 levels increase plant growth and make plants more resistant to drought and pests

44) The historical increase in the air’s CO2 content has improved human nutrition by raising crop yields during the past 150 years

45) The increase of the air’s CO2 content has probably helped lengthen human lifespans since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution

46) The IPCC alleges that “climate change currently contributes to the global burden of disease and premature deaths” but the evidence shows that higher temperatures and rising CO2 levels has helped global populations

47) In May of 2004, the Russian Academy of Sciences published a report concluding that the Kyoto Protocol has no scientific grounding at all.

48) The “Climate-gate” scandal pointed to a expensive public campaign of disinformation and the denigration of scientists who opposed the belief that CO2 emissions were causing climate change

49) The head of Britain’s climate change watchdog has predicted households will need to spend up to £15,000 on a full energy efficiency makeover if the Government is to meet its ambitious targets for cutting carbon emissions.

50) Wind power is unlikely to be the answer to our energy needs. The wind power industry argues that there are “no direct subsidies” but it involves a total subsidy of as much as £60 per MWh which falls directly on electricity consumers. This burden will grow in line with attempts to achieve Wind power targets, according to a recent OFGEM report.

51) Wind farms are not an efficient way to produce energy. The British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) accepts a figure of 75 per cent back-up power is required.

52) Global temperatures are below the low end of IPCC predictions not at “at the top end of IPCC estimates”

53) Climate alarmists have raised the concern over acidification of the oceans but Tom Segalstad from Oslo University in Norway , and others, have noted that the composition of ocean water – including CO2, calcium, and water – can act as a buffering agent in the acidification of the oceans.

54) The UN’s IPCC computer models of human-caused global warming predict the emergence of a “hotspot” in the upper troposphere over the tropics.  Former researcher in the Australian Department of Climate Change, David Evans, said there is no evidence of such a hotspot

55) The argument that climate change is a of result of global warming caused by human activity is the argument of flat Earthers.  

56) The manner in which US President Barack Obama sidestepped Congress to order emission cuts shows how undemocratic and irrational the entire international decision-making process has become with regards to emission-target setting.

57) William Kininmonth, a former head of the National Climate Centre and a consultant to the World Meteorological Organisation, wrote “the likely extent of global temperature rise from a doubling of CO2 is less than 1C. Such warming is well within the envelope of variation experienced during the past 10,000 years and insignificant in the context of glacial cycles during the past million years, when Earth has been predominantly very cold and covered by extensive ice sheets.”

58) Canada has shown the world targets derived from the existing Kyoto commitments were always unrealistic and did not work for the country.

59) In the lead up to the Copenhagen summit, David Davis MP said of previous climate summits, at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and Kyoto in 1997 that many had promised greater cuts, but “neither happened”, but we are continuing along the same lines.

60) The UK ’s environmental policy has a long-term price tag of about £55 billion, before taking into account the impact on its economic growth. 

61) The UN’s panel on climate change warned that Himalayan glaciers could melt to a fifth of current levels by 2035. J. Graham Cogley a professor at Ontario Trent University, claims this inaccurate stating the UN authors got the date from an earlier report wrong by more than 300 years.

62) Under existing Kyoto obligations the EU has attempted to claim success, while actually increasing emissions by 13 per cent, according to Lord Lawson. In addition the EU has pursued this scheme by purchasing “offsets” from countries such as China paying them billions of dollars to destroy atmospheric pollutants, such as CFC-23, which were manufactured purely in order to be destroyed.

63) It is claimed that the average global temperature was relatively unchanging in pre-industrial times but sky-rocketed since 1900, and will increase by several degrees more over the next 100 years according to Penn State University researcher Michael Mann. There is no convincing empirical evidence that past climate was unchanging, nor that 20th century changes in average global temperature were unusual or unnatural.

64) Michael Mann of Penn State University has actually shown that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age did in fact exist, which contrasts with his earlier work which produced the “hockey stick graph” which showed a constant temperature over the past thousand years or so followed by a recent dramatic upturn.

65) The globe’s current approach to climate change in which major industrialised countries agree to nonsensical targets for their CO2 emissions by a given date, as it has been under the Kyoto system, is very expensive.

66) The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had emailed one another about using a “trick” for the sake of concealing a “decline” in temperatures when looking at the history of the Earth’s temperature. 

67) Global temperatures have not risen in any statistically-significant sense for 15 years and have actually been falling for nine years. The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed a scientific team had expressed dismay at the fact global warming was contrary to their predictions and admitted their inability to explain it was “a travesty”.

68) The IPCC predicts that a warmer planet will lead to more extreme weather, including drought, flooding, storms, snow, and wildfires. But over the last century, during which the IPCC claims the world experienced more rapid warming than any time in the past two millennia, the world did not experience significantly greater trends in any of these extreme weather events.

69) In explaining the average temperature standstill we are currently experiencing, the Met Office Hadley Centre ran a series of computer climate predictions and found in many of the computer runs there were decade-long standstills but none for 15 years – so it expects global warming to resume swiftly.

70) Richard Lindzen, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote: “The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the Earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope.  Such hysteria (over global warming) simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth.”

71) Despite the 1997 Kyoto Protocol’s status as the flagship of the fight against climate change it has been a failure.

72) The first phase of the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which ran from 2005 to 2007 was a failure. Huge over-allocation of permits to pollute led to a collapse in the price of carbon from €33 to just €0.20 per tonne meaning the system did not reduce emissions at all. 

73) The EU trading scheme, to manage carbon emissions has completely failed and actually allows European businesses to duck out of making their emissions reductions at home by offsetting, which means paying for cuts to be made overseas instead.

74) To date “cap and trade” carbon markets have done almost nothing to reduce emissions.

75) In the United States , the cap-and-trade is an approach designed to control carbon emissions and will impose huge costs upon American citizens via a carbon tax on all goods and services produced in the United States. The average family of four can expect to pay an additional $1700, or £1,043, more each year. It is predicted that the United States will lose more than 2 million jobs as the result of cap-and-trade schemes. 

76) Dr Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, has indicated that out of the 21 climate models tracked by the IPCC the differences in warming exhibited by those models is mostly the result of different strengths of positive cloud feedback – and that increasing CO2 is insufficient to explain global-average warming in the last 50 to 100 years.

77) Why should politicians devote our scarce resources in a globally competitive world to a false and ill-defined problem, while ignoring the real problems the entire planet faces, such as: poverty, hunger, disease or terrorism.

78) A proper analysis of ice core records from the past 650,000 years demonstrates that temperature increases have come before, and not resulted from, increases in CO2 by hundreds of years.

79) Since the cause of global warming is mostly natural, then there is in actual fact very little we can do about it. (We are still not able to control the sun).

80) A substantial number of the panel of 2,500 climate scientists on the United Nation’s International Panel on Climate Change, which created a statement on scientific unanimity on climate change and man-made global warming, were found to have serious concerns.

81) The UK’s Met Office has been forced this year to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by revelations about the data.

82) Politicians and activists push for renewable energy sources such as wind turbines under the rhetoric of climate change, but it is essentially about money – under the system of Renewable Obligations. Much of the money is paid for by consumers in electricity bills. It amounts to £1 billion a year.

83) The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had tampered with their own data so as to conceal inconsistencies and errors.

84) The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had campaigned for the removal of a learned journal’s editor, solely because he did not share their willingness to debase science for political purposes.

85) Ice-core data clearly show that temperatures change centuries before concentrations of atmospheric CO2 change. Thus, there appears to be little evidence for insisting that changes in concentrations of CO2 are the cause of past temperature and climate change.

86) There are no experimentally verified processes explaining how CO2 concentrations can fall in a few centuries without falling temperatures – in fact it is changing temperatures which cause changes in CO2 concentrations, which is consistent with experiments that show CO2 is the atmospheric gas most readily absorbed by water.

87) The Government’s Renewable Energy Strategy contains a massive increase in electricity generation by wind power costing around £4 billion a year over the next twenty years. The benefits will be only £4 to £5 billion overall (not per annum). So costs will outnumber benefits by a range of between eleven and seventeen times.

88) Whilst CO2 levels have indeed changed for various reasons, human and otherwise, just as they have throughout history, the CO2 content of the atmosphere has increased since the beginning of the industrial revolution, and the growth rate has now been constant for the past 25 years.

89) It is a myth that CO2 is a pollutant, because nitrogen forms 80% of our atmosphere and human beings could not live in 100% nitrogen either: CO2 is no more a pollutant than nitrogen is and CO2 is essential to life.

90) Politicians and climate activists make claims to rising sea levels but certain members in the IPCC chose an area to measure in Hong Kong that is subsiding. They used the record reading of 2.3 mm per year rise of sea level.

91) The accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998.

92) If one factors in non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements show little, if any, global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 ppm (17 per cent).

93) US President Barack Obama pledged to cut emissions by 2050 to equal those of 1910 when there were 92 million Americans. In 2050, there will be 420 million Americans, so Obama’s promise means that emissions per head will be approximately what they were in 1875. It simply will not happen.

94) The European Union has already agreed to cut emissions by 20 percent to 2020, compared with 1990 levels, and is willing to increase the target to 30 percent. However, these are unachievable and the EU has already massively failed with its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), as EU emissions actually rose by 0.8 percent from 2005 to 2006 and are known to be well above the Kyoto goal.

95) Australia has stated it wants to slash greenhouse emissions by up to 25 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, but the pledges were so unpopular that the country’s Senate has voted against the carbon trading Bill, and the Opposition’s Party leader has now been ousted by a climate change sceptic.

96) Canada plans to reduce emissions by 20 percent compared with 2006 levels by 2020, representing approximately a 3 percent cut from 1990 levels but it simultaneously defends its Alberta tar sands emissions and its record as one of the world’s highest per-capita emissions setters.

97) India plans to reduce the ratio of emissions to production by 20-25 percent compared with 2005 levels by 2020, but all Government officials insist that since India has to grow for its development and poverty alleviation, it has to emit, because the economy is driven by carbon.

98) The Leipzig Declaration in 1996, was signed by 110 scientists who said: “We – along with many of our fellow citizens – are apprehensive about the climate treaty conference scheduled for Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997” and “based on all the evidence available to us, we cannot subscribe to the politically inspired world view that envisages climate catastrophes and calls for hasty actions.”

99) A US Oregon Petition Project stated “We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of CO2, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”

100) A report by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change concluded “We find no support for the IPCC’s claim that climate observations during the twentieth century are either unprecedented or provide evidence of an anthropogenic effect on climate.”

Socialism Illustrated

In the spirit of Obama the Marxist winning and more and more democrats “coming out” as socialists now, I present this wonderful article entitled “Why Socialism Failed” by Mark J. Perry (blog), Ph.D. Professor of Finance and Business Economics, about why Socialism has failed in so many countries already. I think the practical reality of historical evidence is crucial in our day when it’s so easy to sell Socialism as a wonderful cure-all – in theory. (I also updated my Barack Obama and Global Warming articles if you’re interested.)

Please check out the article and comment on it. Thanks. Here’s a quote from the article just to whet your appetite:

Socialism is the Big Lie of the twentieth century. While it promised prosperity, equality, and security, it delivered poverty, misery, and tyranny. Equality was achieved only in the sense that everyone was equal in his or her misery.

In the same way that a Ponzi scheme or chain letter initially succeeds but eventually collapses, socialism may show early signs of success. But any accomplishments quickly fade as the fundamental deficiencies of central planning emerge. It is the initial illusion of success that gives government intervention its pernicious, seductive appeal. In the long run, socialism has always proven to be a formula for tyranny and misery.

A pyramid scheme is ultimately unsustainable because it is based on faulty principles. Likewise, collectivism is unsustainable in the long run because it is a flawed theory. Socialism does not work because it is not consistent with fundamental principles of human behavior. The failure of socialism in countries around the world can be traced to one critical defect: it is a system that ignores incentives.

Introduction

With all of the bailouts, automotive and bank takeovers, healthcare reform, and wealth redistribution going on under the Obama administration lately, Socialism has become a popular topic.  I oppose Socialism because: 1) It doesn’t achieve its most important stated goals, and 2) it is immoral and unchristian.  First, let’s define some terms and then we’ll get to the details.

Socialism is defined as the government owning and controlling a country’s means of production (manufacturing, shipping, etc.) and allocation of resources (raw materials, property, etc.).  It concentrates a lot of freedom of choice to a small group of politicians.  Capitalism, on the other hand, allows individuals to control a country’s means of production and allocation of resources.  It distributes the freedom of choice across the people.  People choose which products to buy, which jobs to take, which companies to create, etc.  Then through a variety of prices (wages, prices of raw materials, prices of finished products, rent, etc.) agreed upon by millions of people through their individual choices, capitalism distributes goods, services, raw materials, risks, people, and wealth in the most efficient manner thus far discovered as evidenced by the per capita GDP of citizens participating in capitalist free markets vs. those using socialism.

One stated goal of socialism is to help the poor, and I agree wholeheartedly with that goal.  What I disagree with is the means by which that goal is achieved.  Often when a person opposes socialistic programs, they are assumed to be opposing the intentions of that program, “So you don’t like to help the poor then?” when in fact it’s not the intentions that are being opposed but the programs themselves, which have been shown not to work and almost always end up hurting the poor the most.  It would be similar to becoming a drug dealer to make your way through college and someone tells you, “Hey, I don’t think you should be dealing drugs.” and you reply, “What?  You don’t want me to go to college?”

It doesn’t achieve its stated goals

Some of the stated goals we hear each time socialism is brought up are helping the poor and punishing greed.  I agree with these goals.  They’re great goals.  The big problem is that the centralized planning of Socialism just doesn’t work – it doesn’t help the poor.  Take a look at the levels of freedom compared to the conditions of the poor in each country in the following maps as well as how well the poor fare in free market societies:

The poorest of the poor are in the least “free” countries.  This means centralized planning just doesn’t achieve its main goal of helping the poor.  The richest poor people in the world live in the U.S. where a free market has raised the standard of living of their poor well beyond any socialized or centrally planned system ever has.  There are simple reasons for this.  One reason is that you just can’t squeeze the wisdom and knowledge of 300 million people out of a few hundred central planners.  A central planner just doesn’t have the knowledge of the supply and demand of local markets that the people who live in those markets do.

The other goal is to punish greed.  The problem with that is that greed is a motive, not an action.  A wealthy person could be greedy or they could just be a hard worker.  So since there’s no way for government to measure the level of greed in a person, they assume that all wealthy people are greedy and then punish them all equally.  This has the unfortunate and destructive side effect of punishing and discouraging hard work as well.

This really should be enough, shouldn’t it?  If Socialism doesn’t help the poor - it hurts them – then why even consider it as an option for helping the poor?  Furthermore, if as it tries to punish greed, it ends up ignoring incentives that allow a good company to be rewarded with profits and a bad company to be punished with failure, should it be considered as a good greed punisher with no side effects?  It punishes good companies by taxing them (since they must just be greedy, not efficient or well-run) and rewards and keeps around bad companies (think teachers’ unions tenure rules, auto workers unions, failed bailed out banks, etc.).

Socialism also has another side effect of disconnecting people’s choices from their consequences.  If a company works hard to be efficient and thereby makes a profit which is then confiscated, the consequences of their choices has been removed.  If a doctor under socialized medicine gets the same pay and same patient load regardless of their performance, then the consequences have been disconnected from the choices they made.  If a patient under socialized healthcare pays a flat fee (or nothing) for services, then the choice of going to the doctor for every scratch in their throat is disconnected from the consequence of that choice, which is the cost incurred for treating them.  When consequences are removed, progress is slowed and efficiency and wealth are reduced.

The removal of consequences is like mercy robbing justice.  Justice treats all people equally.  It connects people’s choices to their consequences whether those consequences and choices are good or bad.  Mercy, which is appropriate at the right time, forgives choices and takes away consequences.  Mercy is essential but only in a case-by-case basis when the individual is truly sorry for their mistakes and who truly wants to improve.  If mercy is applied to everyone without regard to these things, it robs justice.  The government can’t administer mercy across all people at all times without robbing justice, bankrupting society, and giving limitless power to politicians who then have the option to abuse that power, which has happened several times throughout history.

It is immoral and unchristian

But Christ said to help the poor and take care of the sick and afflicted, to clothe the naked and take care of the widows!  Right, but he didn’t tell the government to force people to do these things - he told individuals to do it themselves.  The scriptures explain it quite plainly.  The war in heaven discussed in the scriptures was not about right and wrong, it was about freedom and slavery: Do we allow people to make their own choices or do we force them to do what’s right?  God’s plan was to give us agency.  Satan’s plan was to force us all to do what’s right by taking away our choices or agency.  And Satan wanted all of the glory and credit, of course, since he’d be calling all of the shots.  With freedom and choice comes power and responsibility.

Does any of this sound familiar?  Have you ever heard of a politician forcing the rich to give to the poor and then taking credit for the “charity?”

Furthermore, while Socialism puts forth the ideas of “equality” and “social justice” (and it actually does end up forcing most people to equal poverty as this and other forms of tyranny has done for millenia), it assumes that politicians are more moral than citizens are.  I don’t know of anyone who thinks politicians are generally more moral than the general public.  (One reason for this is that politicians generally have their choices and consequences disconnected – if they waste a bunch of my money on a failed project, they have no consequence especially if they can spin it right in the media.)  One group of people declares itself better than the rest, and then they rule over them – it’s an old storyline.  With Socialism, this is done to keep the “greedy” people from hording all the resources from the poor.  But aren’t we just putting greedy politicians in charge of greedy people at that point?  If we treat people differently by taking from some and giving to others then the door for corruption is wide open for favors, vote-buying, etc.

The way to cause charity while maintaining freedom is to preach the Gospel to people to motivate them to give and be generous of their own free will and choice.  Only among a righteous people can there be no poor and no tyranny in the same place at the same time!

“But people just won’t take care of each other unless we force them to!”  The ironic thing is that with all of America’s wealth, we have been the most charitable country in the history of mankind - to our own poor as well as to other nations.  That goes against what Socialists claim.  Also, when a politician or person from a socialist country argues against the greed of the rich in a capitalist country, they’re really just arguing against freedom.  Yes, freedom to do good or bad.  Freedom to choose what you want to do and to learn from the consequences.  To argue against freedom like this is to argue against the progression of mankind, and it’s ironic that modern socialists call themselves “progressives” when they’re just trying to take us back to the tyranny that has reigned in this world for thousands of years!  Do you realize that tyranny and centralized planning has been the norm for this planet throughout almost its entire recorded history?  The result has been widespread poverty and slavery – denying people of their God-given rights.  Purposefully and knowingly going back down that road again is immoral.

So, here we have the United States of America breaking free from 1000’s of years of tyranny into the light of freedom and the tyrants start to complain about this unmitigated greed!  They stir their follower-slaves up against it in the name of greed bashing – breaking the 10th commandment of covetousness.  Their plan is to grab free markets that are flourishing and drag them back down into tyranny through socialism.  The capitalists plan, however, is to free the rest of the enslaved globe.  “But won’t we need like 5 planets if everyone were living like Americans?”  Americans and other upcoming free market capitalistic countries are wallowing in wealth because they have a monopoly on freedom.  If the rest of the world were freed, then they’d compete with Americans and others for resources, products, etc. and through prices, people would automatically self-regulate.  That’s how it works.  And it works really well.  I would love to have the entire world liberated and free from the tyranny and oppression of socialism – based on history, this would truly help the poor.

Conclusion

Any time you want to force people to do something you want them to do, they have to give you a lot of power.  Any time you give a lot of power to imperfect human beings, they often, as history has shown us, abuse that power, which many socialists have done to the tune of murdering tens of millions of people throughout history once they have the power.  Just look at the list of socialist and communist murderers who have slaughtered hundreds of millions of their own citizens - usually the crippled, poor, elderly, Jew, handicapped, Christian, and others who couldn’t contribute enough: Hitler (17 million total through gas chambers, execution style murder, etc., not including the people killed in WWII), Mao (50 to 70 million through military slaughter combined with starvation brought about by socialist programs), Stalin (anywhere between 10 and 100 million), Pol Pot (only 1.7 to 2.5 million), Kim Il Sung (1.6 million, not including the 2.5 million killed during the Korean War), Mussolini (only 300,000), Che (“several thousand” citizens – but he, in his own words, liked to kill them himself execution style at close range and forced their families to watch the executions), etc.  What a strange pattern of mass murder from those who just want to take from the rich and give to the poor to level the playing field – of course, out of compassion for the poor.  Socialism is not just immoral, it’s satanic, according to how satan himself describes his plan in the scriptures and that seems to be backed up by the fruits of those who follow his plan of socialism and communism.

Government through taxation disconnects its choices from its consequences.  If it does a bad job, it still gets taxes.  If it throws money away on a bad program, it still gets taxes and has lost nothing.  Because of this disconnection, combined with its monopolistic nature, government should be kept as small as possible.  When it creates a program, it’s generally the only option and so free market controls, incentives and disincentives are not there to help it stay efficient and to minimize corruption.   It should be big enough to maintain order and protect its people.  The reason that the military is one of the only things a government does well, is because a government’s military is in competition with other countries’ militaries and so that competition keeps it in check whereas other government programs don’t have that competition.

I think it’s worth mentioning one other pattern I’ve seen recently in the environmentalist movement.  Parts of it appear to have been hijacked by the socialist movement.  With global warming scares (no global warming has occurred since 1998, by the way), the socialists have found a vehicle upon which they can achieve their wealth redistribution goals.  This is happening through cap-and-trade legislation, which will funnel trillions of dollars from the wealthiest countries to the poorest countries over the upcoming decades.  Why don’t we just free the poor countries and let them become wealthy like the U.S. and others have instead of stealing, redistributing, and keeping them poor all in the name of helping them?  Proponents of these socialistic environmental programs stir up support by encouraging people to break the 8th and 10th commandments in the name of injustice – stating that the injustice comes from freedom when it actually comes from slavery.  Don’t usher in “equality” by enslaving the free – do it by freeing the enslaved!

One other area that is worth mentioning is the housing and financial crisis.  Socialists like to blame those problems on the unregulated free market and by doing so, they suggest that what we need is more regulation and less freedom, thereby achieving their freedom destroying socialistic goals.  They’ve already taken over large portions of the financial and automotive industries through these crises in the name of saving us from our consequences.  If it weren’t so tragic, the hypocrisy would be quite funny.  The housing crisis happened because the government put pressure on banks to lend to minority groups.  They wouldn’t let banks open up new branches or install ATM’s or do other things that require government approval unless they met certain quotas.  The government also allowed Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to buy bad mortgages from banks, moving the risk from the banks onto the taxpayers.  So, with pressure to loan to those who would likely not repay and a removal of the risks involved with doing so, the banks were incentivized to make loans to anyone who was breathing.  This caused housing prices to skyrocket with all the new demand and money flowing into the market.  Once Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac started to crumble under the weight of all of these bad loans, the house of cards fell and there was the government, ready and willing to blame its own mess on the “free” market.  They bailed out (which equates to taxpayers buying these homes for the people who could not pay for them – which was the socialists agenda in the first place) and blamed and pushed forward with more regulation.  It’s actually quite disgusting – and of course it ended up hurting the poor once again.  I recommend reading “The Housing Boom and Bust” by Thomas Sowell for a more in-depth look at this socialistic wealth distribution housing mess.

Part of a socialist government’s power grab is to demonize the heads of the companies that the government wants to take over in the name of greed and then start to take away their rights and punish them.  We see this currently as the government currently demonizes the heads of banks and the American public sits by and watches this happen because, “well, they really don’t need all that money”, right?  If we allow the government to take the rights of some, we give them power to take away rights of all of us – all in the name of forcing people to do what’s right to help the poor and needy.

Profits are also demonized and losses are bailed out by the government – if they choose to.  Those two incentives are what cause a free market to be efficient.  Profits reward companies that are doing well, allowing them to reinvest those profits to increase the size of that good running company.  Losses shrink poorly running companies.  If the failing company doesn’t change something quickly, it will disappear.  This frees up the people involved in that failing company to go do something else that they’re better at.  It punishes waste and inefficiency.  It gets rid of things that people don’t want.  It rewards efficiency which allows more goods and services to be available to more people.

Socialism pretends that incentives don’t matter when thousands of years of history prove that incentives do matter.  Some day, when a group of pure people who can live together in love and who have good work ethics regardless of pay, they can help each other and there will be no poor among them and that would obviously be the best kind of society.  There have been a few examples in the scriptures of that happening, but those situations are rare and fleeting.  That kind of heavenly society is what we all yearn for, socialists included, but instead of letting people arrive at that place by their own refinement, free will, and choice, they seek to force all people into a fake form of that kind of society where all end up suffering equally.  Forcing people against their wills is slavery and it just doesn’t work in the end – it achieves exactly the opposite of its stated goals of helping the poor and punishing greed.  It’s been proven throughout history over and over but we, like Satan, try it again and again because of the power grab it provides as a side effect.

There are four ways to spend money: 1) Spending your own money on yourself – this is the best way to spend money because you look for the best quality and the lowest price, 2) Spending your own money on others – This is a little worse because you still look to save money since it’s your money, but you aren’t as concerned about quality because you won’t be using the item being purchased, 3) Spending other people’s money on yourself is worse still – you look for good quality because it’s for you, but you don’t care about cost because it’s not your money, 4) Spending other peoples’ money on other people – this is socialism and government spending in general, and is the worst form because you don’t care about either quality or cost.

Socialism goes against natural law. In “de Legibus“, Cicero expresses his belief in natural law, which talks about self-evident truths dealing with what’s “right” and what’s “wrong”. He says that a country’s laws must promote good behavior and forbid or punish evil behavior. If a country’s laws go against natural law, it will fail and you’ll get less good behavior and more bad behavior as a natural consequence. Socialism inadvertently rewards bad behavior and punishes good behavior.

Socialism breaks at least the eighth and tenth commandments that deal with stealing and coveting. We’re playing robinhood and stealing from the rich and giving to the poor because we don’t like how the rich person is living their life. I think you need to give me your bank account number so I can spend your money on my house because I think I know better how to spend your money than you do.

It almost seems that socialism is really just a clever and covert method of turning a country into an enslaved dictatorship in the name of helping the poor and providing social justice.  At least that’s what history has shown us.

Educate yourself.  Vote.  Get involved.  Talk to your friends, neighbors, family, and relatives about these things.  Oppose socialism now in all of its forms.  Fight for freedom - apparently it’s worth fighting for.

A picture says a thousand words (source):

Obama announced recently that he will, on September 8, 2009, speak (transcript below) to America’s school children.  It will be broadcast live at www.whitehouse.gov as well at 12:00 noon eastern standard time.

In preparation of this speech, the following documents have been created by the U.S. Department of Education.  “These are ideas developed by and for teachers to help engage students and stimulate discussion on the importance of education in their lives.”

I have included the documents below with portions that I find manipulative, idiotic, funny, or that concern me (if he ends up talking about stupid stuff) highlighted in red.  I left the rest unhighlighted because it’s just fine – juuuuuust fiiiiiine.

PreK-6 Document: (pdf, doc)

PreK-6 Menu of Classroom Activities: President Obama’s Address to Students Across America

Produced by Teaching Ambassador Fellows, U.S. Department of Education

September 8, 2009 

Before the Speech:

• Teachers can build background knowledge about the President of the United States and his speech by reading books about presidents and Barack Obama and motivate students by asking the following questions:

Who is the President of the United States?

What do you think it takes to be President?

To whom do you think the President is going to be speaking?

Why do you think he wants to speak to you?

What do you think he will say to you?

• Teachers can ask students to imagine being the President delivering a speech to all of the students in the United States.  What would you tell students?  What can students do to help in our schools?   Teachers can chart ideas about what they would say.
• Why is it important that we listen to the President and other elected officials, like the mayor, senators, members of congress, or the governor? Why is what they say important?

During the Speech:

• As the President speaks, teachers can ask students to write down key ideas or phrases that are important or personally meaningful.  Students could use a note-taking graphic organizer such as a Cluster Web, or students could record their thoughts on sticky notes.  Younger children can draw pictures and write as appropriate.  As students listen to the speech, they could think about the following:

What is the President trying to tell me?

What is the President asking me to do?

What new ideas and actions is the President challenging me to think about?

• Students can record important parts of the speech where the President is asking them to do something. Students might think about: What specific job is he asking me to do?  Is he asking anything of anyone else? Teachers? Principals? Parents? The American people?
• Students can record any questions they have while he is speaking and then discuss them after the speech.  Younger children may need to dictate their questions.

 After the Speech:

• Teachers could ask students to share the ideas they recorded, exchange sticky notes or stick notes on a butcher paper poster in the classroom to discuss main ideas from the speech, i.e. citizenship, personal responsibility, civic duty.
• Students could discuss their responses to the following questions:

What do you think the President wants us to do?

Does the speech make you want to do anything?

Are we able to do what President Obama is asking of us?

What would you like to tell the President?

• Teachers could encourage students to participate in the Department of Education’s “I Am What I Learn” video contest.  On September 8^th the Department will invite K-12 students to submit a video no longer than 2 min, explaining why education is important and how their education will help them achieve their dreams.  Teachers are welcome to incorporate the same or a similar video project into an assignment. More details will be released via www.ed.gov.

 Extension of the Speech:  Teachers can extend learning by having students

• Create posters of their goals.  Posters could be formatted in quadrants or puzzle pieces or trails marked with the labels: personal, academic, community, country.  Each area could be labeled with three steps for achieving goals in those areas. It might make sense to focus on personal and academic so community and country goals come more readily.
• Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.  These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals.
• Write goals on colored index cards or precut designs to post around the classroom.
• Interview and share about their goals with one another to create a supportive community.
• Participate in School wide incentive programs or contests for students who achieve their goals.
• Write about their goals in a variety of genres, i.e. poems, songs, personal essays.
• Create artistic projects based on the themes of their goals.

Grades 7-12 Document: (pdf, doc)

Grades 7-12 Menu of Classroom Activities:  President Obama’s Address to Students Across America

Produced by Teaching Ambassador Fellows, U.S. Department of Education

September 8, 2009

 Before the Speech:

• Quick Write or Think/Pair/Share (Students spend a few minutes Thinking and writing about the question; Paired with another student to discuss, then Sharing their ideas with the class as a whole).  What do we associate with the words responsibility, persistence, and goals? How would we define each term?  A teacher might create a web of student ideas for each of the words.
• Quick Write or Brainstorm:  What are your strengths? At what are you successful as a person/student?  What makes you successful at these efforts? List at least three things you are successful at and why you feel successful with these tasks.
• Short readings.  Notable quotes excerpted (and posted in large print on board) from President Obama’s speeches about education.  Teacher might ask students to think alone, compare ideas with a partner, and share their collaborations with the class (Think/Pair/Share) about the following:   What are our interpretations of these excerpts?  Based on these excerpts, what can we infer the President believes is important to be successful educationally? 
• Brainstorm or Concept Web:  Why does President Obama want to speak with us today? How will he inspire us?  How will he challenge us? What might he say?
• Brainstorm or Concept Web:  What other historic moments do you remember when the President spoke to the nation?  What was the impact?  Students could create a Cause/Effect graphic organizer.

 During the Speech:

• Listening with a purpose:  personal responsibility, goals, persistence.  Teachers might ask pairs of students to create a word bank from the web of any one of the terms (personal responsibility, goals, or persistence) at the top of a double-column style notes page.  On the right-hand side, students could take notes while President Obama talks about personal responsibility, or goals, or persistence, trying to capture direct quotations.  At the end of the speech, students could then write the corresponding terms from the word bank in the left hand column, to increase retention and deepen their understanding of an important aspect of the speech.
• Listening with a purpose:  Inspiration and Challenges.  Using a similar double-column style notes page as the one above, the teacher could focus students on quotations that either propose a specific challenge to them or inspire them in some meaningful way. Students could do this individually, in pairs or groups.

 Transition/Quick Review:  Teachers could ask students to look over the notes and collaborate in pairs or small groups.  What more could we add to our notes?   Teachers might circulate and ask students questions such as: What are the most important words in the speech?  What title would you give it?  What’s the thesis?

 After the Speech:

Guided Discussion: 

• What resonated with you from President Obama’s speech?  What lines/phrases do you remember?
• Who is President Obama addressing?  How do you know?  Describe his audience.
• We heard President Obama mention the importance of personal responsibility.  In your life, who exemplifies this kind of personal responsibility?  How?  Give examples.
• How are we as individuals and as a class similar? Different?
• Suppose President Obama were to give another speech about being educationally successful.  Who could he speak to next? Who should be his next audience?  Why?  What would he say?
• What are the three most important words in the speech?  Rank them.  What title would you give this speech?  What’s the thesis?
• What is President Obama inspiring you to do?  What is he challenging you to do?
• What do you believe are the challenges of your generation?
• How can you be a part of addressing these challenges?

Video Project:

• Teachers could encourage students to participate in the Department of Education’s “I Am What I Learn” video contest.  On September 8^th the Department will invite K-12 students to submit a video no longer than 2 min, explaining why education is important and how their education will help them achieve their dreams.  Teachers are welcome to incorporate the same or a similar video project into an assignment. More details will be released via www.ed.gov.

 Transition:   Teachers could introduce goal setting in the following way to make the most of the extension activities.

 “When you set a goal, you envision a target you are going to reach over time.  Goals are best when they are Challenging, Attainable, and Needed (CAN).  For example, a good goal might be “I want to boost my average grade by one letter grade this year so I can show colleges I’m prepared.”  But, every good goal also needs steps that guide the way.  These steps keep you on track toward achieving your goal.  For example, my first step might be, to improve by a letter grade in all subjects for each report card.  My second step:  to complete 100% of my homework for all my classes the first week of school.  My third step: to study an extra hour for all my tests each marking period.  My fourth step: to attend tutoring or get an adult to help me whenever I don’t understand something.   My last step might be the most important:  to ask an adult in my life to check on me often, to make sure I’m reaching each of my steps.   Your steps should add up to your goal.  If they don’t, that’s okay; we fix them until they do add up! 

 Let’s hear another example of an academic goal for the year, and decide what steps would achieve that goal…

 Now I want you to write your own personal academic goal for this year and steps you will take to achieve it.  We can revise our steps each marking period to make sure we are on track.”

 Extension of the Speech:  Teachers can extend learning by having students

• Create decorated goals and steps on index card sized material.  The index cards could be formatted as an inviting graphic organizer with a space for the goal at the top and several steps in the remaining space.  Cards could be hung in the room to create classroom culture of goal setting, persistence and success, and for the purpose of periodic review.  (See “Example Handouts”).
• Create posters of their goals.  Posters could be formatted in quadrants or puzzle pieces or trails marked as steps.  These could also be hung around the room, to be reviewed periodically and to create a classroom culture of goal setting and for the purpose of periodic review.
• Interview and share their goals with one another and the class, establishing community support for their goals.
• Create incentives or contests for achieving their personal goals.
• Write about their goals and steps in a variety of genres, i.e. poems, songs, personal essays.
• Create artistic representations of their goals and steps.
• Graph student progress toward goals.

Transcript of Obama’s Speech (with my same highlighting rules as above):

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama
Back to School Event

Arlington, Virginia
September 8, 2009
 

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.”

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in. 

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse. 

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same. 

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK.  Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, “I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

A taste of bold justice.  Finally.  We need more calm powerful justice like this.

“In case you haven’t heard about Brian Baird a Congressman from Washington State, he is the one who said those at townhalls expressing their concerns about ObamaCARE were exhibiting a “lynch mob mentality” and “close to Brownshirt tactics,” a reference to Nazi stormtroopers. David William Hedrick, a member of the silent majority, decided that he was not going to be silent anymore. So, he let U.S. Congressman Brian Baird have it. He was one questioner out of 38, that was called at random from an audience that started at 3,000 earlier in the evening. Not expecting to be called on, he quickly scratched what he wanted to say on a borrowed piece of paper and with a pen that he borrowed from someone else in the audience minutes before he spoke. So much for the planned talking points of the right wing conspiracy.” – source

Video Transcript:

BRIAN BAIRD: Yes, sir.

DAVID WILLIAM HEDRICK: My name is David, and I’m from Camas Washington.

BAIRD: Hi David.

HEDRICK: And uh, first of all I want to let everybody know since this is the thing tonight that I’m a marine corp vet.  [applause]

BAIRD: Thank you David.

HEDRICK: And like you, I swore an oath to defend my constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. [applause]  Now, I heard you say tonight about educating our children, indoctrinating our children, whatever you want to call it

BAIRD: I didn’t say indoctrinating.

HEDRICK: Stay away from my kids. [applause]  I also heard you say that you’re gonna let us keep our health insurance.  Well thank you!  It’s not you’re right to decide whether or not I keep my current plan or not.  That’s my decision.  [applause]  Now I’ve heard recently in the media that you and some other people on the national political stage call us brownshirts because we oppose…

BAIRD: No I did not.  No I did not.  What I said was, and I’ve apologized for it.

HEDRICK: Ok, well thanks for apologizing, but let, uh, I won’t speak to you then, I’ll speak to others.  But I’ll remind you, a little history lesson, the Nazis were the national socialist party.  They were leftist.  They took over the finance.  They took over the car industry.  They took over healthcare in that country.  If Nancy Pelosi wants to find a swastika, maybe the first place she should look is the sleeve on her own arm. [applause]  Now what I want to know is, you’ve done a lot of things that violate your constitutional oath as you know.  What I want to know is as a marine, as a disabled veteran that served this country, I have kept my oath.  Do you ever intend to keep yours?

BAIRD: Yes I do.

This article discusses how we go along with failed environmentalist scheme after failed environmentalist scheme partly because of prosperity guilt.  It’s quite interesting.

After receiving a speeding ticket and taking an on-line driver’s safety course, I found a link in that course that took me to trafficwaves.org. Absolutely amazing! It describes how a single driver can completely destroy a huge traffic jam by putting some space in front of him before entering the jam. It talks about the wave patterns in traffic and many other things. The author of the site has single-handedly broken up many traffic jams already with these simple techniques. It’s also interesting that virtues such as patience and generosity are through this experiment shown to increase efficiency in traffic flow. It also shows how the vices of impatience and greed can cause a backward travelling wave of jammed cars behind him that can last for hours and it decreases the efficiency of the highway – so the most aggressive person in the jam is causing and increasing the jam and is slowing himself down without knowing it. Check out the site – it’s quite interesting!

Here’s a rebuttal paper to Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvient Truth” (AIT).  Read the rebuttal, forward the link to people, pass it on.  I have heard that Mr. Gore is planning on doing a sequel to his first Oscar-winning movie, so I figured now is a good time to get some information out.  See also this other article I wrote on Global Warming that also has links to two counter-documentaries against AIT, pointing out its flaws as well.

Below is a summary from the above linked paper of some of the problems in Mr. Gore’s movie/book.  The paper itself goes into great detail on these topics and others:

One-sided statements

• AIT never acknowledges the indispensable role of fossil fuels in alleviating hunger and poverty, extending human life spans, and democratizing consumer goods, literacy, leisure, and personal mobility.
• It never acknowledges the environmental, health, and economic benefits of climatic warmth and the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 content.
• It neglects to mention that aggregate mortality and mortality rates due to extreme weather events declined dramatically during the 20th century.
• It neglects to mention the circumstances that make it reasonable rather than blameworthy for America to be the biggest CO2 emitter: the world’s largest economy, abundant fossil energy resources, markets integrated across continental distances, and the world’s most mobile population.
• The book impugns the motives of so-called global warming skeptics but never acknowledges the special-interest motivations of those whose research grants, direct mail income, industrial policy privileges, carbon trading commissions, regulatory power, prosecutorial plunder, or political careers depend on keeping the public in a state of fear about global warming.
• AIT never addresses the obvious criticism that the Kyoto Protocol is all economic pain for no environmental gain and that regulations stringent enough to measurably cool the planet would be a “cure” worse than the alleged disease.

Misleading statements

• AIT implies that, throughout the past 650,000 years, changes in CO2 levels preceded and largely caused changes in global temperature, whereas the causality mostly runs the other way: CO2 changes followed global temperature changes by hundreds to thousands of years.
• It ignores the societal factors that typically overwhelm climatic factors in determining people’s risk of damage or death from hurricanes, floods, drought, tornadoes, wildfires, and disease.
• It erroneously implies that a study, which found that none of 928 science articles (actually abstracts) denied a CO2-global warming link, shows that Gore’s apocalyptic view of global warming is the “consensus” view among scientists.
• It reports that 48 Nobel Prize-winning scientists accused Bush of distorting science, without mentioning that the scientists acted as members of a 527 political group set up to promote the Kerry for President Campaign.

Exaggerated statements

• AIT hypes the importance and exaggerates the certainty of the alleged link between global warming and the frequency and severity of tropical storms.
• It claims polar bears “have been drowning in significant numbers,” based on a single report that four polar bears drowned in one month of one year, following an abrupt storm.
• It portrays the collapse in 2002 of the Larson-B ice shelf—a formation the “size of Rhode Island”—as harbinger of doom. For perspective, the Larson-B was 220th the size of Texas and 1/246th the size of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS).
• AIT presents a graph suggesting that China’s new fuel economy standards are almost 30% more stringent than the current U.S. standards. In fact, the Chinese standards are only about 5% more stringent.

Speculative statements

• AIT blames global warming for the record-breaking 37-inch downpour in Mumbai, India, in July 2005, even there has been no trend inMumbai rainfall for the month of July in 45 years.
• It blames global warming for recent floods in China’s Sichuan and Shandong provinces, even though more damaging floods struck those areas in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
• It blames global warming for the disappearance of Lake Chad, a disaster more likely stemming from a combination of natural regional climate variability and societal factors such as population increase and overgrazing.
• AIT warns that a doubling of pre-industrial CO2 levels to 560 ppm will so acidify seawater that all optimal areas for coral reef construction will disappear by 2050—implausible because coral calcification rates have increased as ocean temperatures and CO2 levels have risen, and today’s main reef builders evolved and thrived during the Mesozoic Period, when atmospheric CO2 levels hovered above 1,000 ppm for 150 million years and exceeded 2,000 ppm for several million years.
• It warns of “significant and alarming structural changes” in the submarine base of the WAIS, but does not tell us what those changes are or why they are “significant and alarming.” The WAIS has been retreating since the early Holocene. At the rate of retreat observed in the 1990s, the WAIS should disappear in about 7,000 years.
• It warns that “moulins”—vertical water tunnels formed from surface melt water—could cause half the Greenland Ice Sheet to break off and “slide” into the sea, even though the scientific study to which Gore alludes found that moulins increase glacial flow by only a few meters a year.

Wrong statements

• AIT claims glaciologist Lonnie Thompson’s reconstruction of climate history proves the Medieval Warm Period was “tiny” compared to the warming observed in recent decades. It doesn’t. Four of Thompson’s six ice cores indicate the Medieval Warm Period was as warm as or warmer than any recent decade.
• It claims the rate of global warming is accelerating, when it has been remarkably constant for the past 30 years—roughly 0.17°C/decade.
• It attributes Europe’s killer heat wave of 2003 to global warming; it was actually due to an atmospheric circulation anomaly.
• It claims that 2004 set an all-time record for the number of tornadoes in the United States.  Tornado frequency has not increased; rather, the detection of smaller tornadoes has increased.  If we consider the tornadoes that have been detectable for many decades (F-3 or greater), there is actually a downward trend since 1950.
• It blames global warming for a “mass extinction crisis” that is not, in fact, occurring.

In light of these and other distortions, AIT is ill-suited to serve as a guide to climate science and climate policy for the American people.

To quote Dr. Martin Luther King:

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

I heard that some people voted for (or against) Barack Obama simply because of his skin color.  That’s obviously racist, shallow, and dangerous.  Instead of looking at something as irrelevant as skin color, let’s take a look at the content of his character by looking at where he stands on issues.  Please click on each link in the paragraphs below to get full articles about each topic.  The text of each paragraph below is just a summary of the underlying information.

Socialism

Socialism Illustrated

First, based on his comments about “spreading the wealth“, and his ideas about “socialized health care” he’s a socialist.  I recently found an amazing article about socialism and capitalism and why socialism has failed in countries it’s been tried in (click here to read that article, and click here for that author’s blog).  Here’s another great speech about government charity from Congressman Davy Crockett – this one’s an amazing read.  For LDS members, you can also read this talk about socialism and communism by Ezra Taft Benson, former Secretary of Agriculture for both of the administrations of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower.  Here’s a famous quote from Ezra Taft Benson:

Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev bragged to American patriot and Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson: “Your grandchildren will live under communism!” To which Secretary Benson enthusiastically replied: “If I have it my way, your grandchildren will live free!” Khrushchev, undeterred, fired back: “Oh you Americans! You’re so gullible! We’ll spoon feed you socialism until you’re Communists and don’t even know it. We’ll never have to fire a shot!” – Benson, Ezra Taft. “An Enemy Hath Done This,” Salt Lake City, Utah: Parliament Publishers, 1969, p. 320.

He also doesn’t like how the constitution holds back not only the legislature from redistributing wealth but the supreme court as well!  He wants the supreme court to redistribute wealth since he can’t get laws passed in the legislature.  From the link above:

“In the interview, conducted by Chicago Public Radio in 2001 while Obama was an Illinois state senator and a law professor at the University of Chicago, Obama discusses the failure of the Supreme Court to rule on redistributing wealth in its civil rights decisions. The unearthed conversations gave fresh ammunition to critics who say the Democratic presidential candidate has a socialist agenda.”

Abortion

Next, let’s look at the “Born Alive Infants Protection Act“. Congress heard testimony about babies who had survived late term abortion attempts. Nurses testified that these living, breathing babies were either being thrown into medical waste bins to die or they were killed outside the womb. Since the baby was completely separated from its mother, there was no threat to the mother’s health. The act became federal law in 2002. Imagine needing a law that said “You can’t kill babies after they’re born.” Hooray for congress!

Identical language to that act was considered in a committee of the Illinois Senate. It was defeated with the committee’s chairman, Barack Obama, leading the opposition on the (incorrect) grounds that the legislation could “undermine Roe v. Wade.” Why stop there Obama?  Why not say that a parent should be able to kill their kids at any age?  Be careful – that might be tempting on some days for parents of teenagers.    See this article for more detail on this.

I’ve heard there will likely be some appointments of judges to the supreme court and other courts during this next president’s administration.  I hate to see who President Obama might pick given his extreme stance on abortion and socialism.

Family

He “supports the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, a treaty that would have disastrous consequences for the American family”.  He also supports gay marriage.  I don’t.  He supports sex education for kindergarteners.  I don’t.  He says if his daughters make a “mistake” and get pregnant, he doesn’t want them to be “punished with a baby“.

National Defense

Obama’s own words and enough in this area:

“I’m the only major candidate who opposed this war from the beginning.  And as president, I will end it.  I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending.  I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems.  I will not weaponize space.  I will slow our development of future combat systems.  And I will institute an independent defense review board to endure that the quadrennial defense review is not used to justify unnecessary spending.  I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons.  To seek that goal, I will not develop new nuclear weapons.  I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material.  And I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICMBs off hair-trigger alert and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear program.”

–Barack Obama on National Defense (campaign commercial) – source

…and…

“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.” – source

I hope such a civilian national security force isn’t the start of a new Schutzstaffel.  No, that couldn’t happen here.

Actually, his own words aren’t enough.  I would love to live in a world with no need for nuclear weapons and no violence or any other bad thing.  The reality of the situation is that there are people in this world who want to commit acts of violence against others and sometimes the only way to decrease the violence is with violence.  It should be the last resort and should be as minimal as possible, but when it’s necessary, it must be used to decrease the amount of violence the perpetrator can inflict.  Obama’s words above are fine but reflect a huge disconnect from the reality in which we live.  That disconnection is dangerous and could result in more violence not less.

Gun Control

Obama’s stance on gun control is not constitutional.  Surprise.  He supported legislation to ban the manufacture, sale, and possession of handguns among other anti-gun legislation.  This smells the same as socialism as both tend to decrease an individual’s choices and power and transfers that power to the government.  No thanks.

Exhaustion

I was going to continue looking at his character by attacking his anti-American church and friends who he voluntarily chose to listen to for many years, his hand not on his heart during the national anthem, refusal to wear a flag pin until people let him know that they didn’t like that, or on Page 293 of “Dreams for My Father,” He recounts his pastor’s “The Audacity of Hope” sermon which includes the quote, “white man’s greed runs a world in need“, the fact that he’s been voted the most liberal senator in the senate – even more liberal than socialist party senator Bernie Sanders, the fact that he wants to “bankrupt the coal industry” and that doing so will cause “electricity prices to skyrocket”, but hey, it’s all in the name of saving the planet from the global warming that hasn’t been happening since 1998, etc. but I’m exhausted.  Maybe some other day.

The Future

All that negativity having been said, I really do hope that he will run the country differently than he has done things in the past.  I really hope things go better than everything above.  If he does more closely represent all Americans rather than what he’s done in the past, then I’ll respect him for that.  Time will tell.