Gas Prices

Last week the Lord High Muckety-Muck, Barack Hussein Obama, gave another of his great speeches to explain to the American people why gasoline prices are once again skyrocketing.  Was anyone really surprised when the gist of the speech was, “Blame someone else.”?  That has always been his favorite mantra, nothing is ever his fault.  For two years he blamed everything that he failed to do that he has promised was to be his number one priority on George W. Bush.  Now it seems that some people won’t let him keep up that sad old song, so now the fault lies with, get this, Speculators.  Oooooh, those evil oil speculators, trying to predict how high oil prices will go are somehow pushing the price higher.  The sad part is, at least 30% of the people of America will believe that.  They will automatically assume that some filthy rich people are setting prices high just so they can make obscene amounts of money.  Let me try to explain this where even the libs can understand it.  As the price of gasoline creeps higher, people will find ways to cut back on the amount of gasoline they have to buy.  Sales will decline and profits will suffer.  That is cutting off your nose to spite your face. 

There is more than one reason that gas prices are soaring, but they all involve President Barry Sotoroe’s policies.  One of the many campaign promises that Obrainless broke was to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.  The policies of this administration seem to be designed to increase our dependence on foreign oil.  We could stop importing oil within 10 years if the government would just let us.  There is more oil in the ground in this country, most of it on government-owned land, than in all of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait and Yemen combined.  The technology for extracting it now exists and we could be totally energy independent if we just exploit it.  Shell Oil Co. has spent billions getting ready to drill on Alaska’s North Slope.  Everything seemed to be in order when the EPA suddenly cancelled their permit.  Why?  Because it turned out that in the permit application Shell forgot to consider the greenhouse gas emissions from the trucks carrying the drilling equipment to the site.  “Oh NO!!!” That could have raised the CO₂ level in the atmosphere by half a part per TRILLION! So a project that has already cost Shell Oil Co. over $5 Billion and would have brought millions of barrels of oil to American markets is summarily cancelled.

Let’s not forget the Billions of barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico.  The Obama Administration stopped all drilling in the Gulf after the BP oil spill.  In spite of a court order to begin issuing permits to again start drilling the EPA has continued to drag their feet and not allow U.S. companies to drill.  However, Brazil’s state-run oil company has been given permission by the president himself to drill in the same area that American rigs have been outlawed.   You just can’t take a person seriously who says he’ll end our dependence on foreign oil who takes away our ability to do so.

Of course, the Incompetent-in-chief blames the big oil companies for the high prices and demands that all tax breaks to the big oil companies be stopped immediately.  He even has the Department of Justice investigating them for fraud.  Okay, is this the same DOJ that put together a year-long sting operation complete with infiltrators with aliases and fake buyers to bust an Amish farmer for selling raw milk? Do you really think that they will catch any of the big bad CEO’s? 

Now is a good time to bring up El Presidente’s apparent selective hate for big business.  Notice no lefty is going after Apple, just Big Oil.  While the left is quick to give you a figure of the obscene amount of money Big Oil made last year, they fail to point out that their profit margin was only around 8%.  That means that your oil stock, (and yes, if you have a mutual funds account you own oil stock) only gained 8 cents on the dollar, while if you had instead invested in Apple Corporation you would have seen a profit margin of 44%.  At least the oil companies did pay taxes on their profits which is not something that you can say for GE.  No, GE made over a hundred billion dollars profit last year and didn’t pay a penny of taxes.  Go figure.

I could also go into how inflation is also affecting gas prices but most of you are already getting glassy-eyed, so we’ll explore that in a later piece.  For now, just remember.  The price of gasoline lies not at the feet of Big Oil, but at the front door of the White House.

John A. Wilson

President

Conservative Action Project of Union County

What Constitutes Life

One of the major themes in the pro-life/pro-choice debate has centered on the definition of when life begins.  On one side, the consensus is that life begins in the womb, while some on the other side dismiss a fetus as a nascent life, but not yet a human baby.  The purpose of this treatise is to approach this aspect of the debate from a scientific point of view.
While I cannot boast of any post-graduate studies, I do hold degrees in Biology and Medical Laboratory Technology.  Both of these disciplines play a role in my perspective concerning when and how life begins.  While my religious upbringing also plays a role, I will try, as much as possible, to keep that aspect of my opinions to a minimum.  
The term “Bio” is Latin and translates literally as “Life.”  The suffix “ology” translates as “the study of.”  The term “Biology” then, translates literally as “The study of life.” Life, however, is a rather ambiguous term.  With just a brief check, most anyone can tell whether something is alive.  However, can you really explain what life is? What must something have before we can say that it has life. To answer this question, we must first define what “Life” means. Biologists have come up with a number of characteristics that an organism must have to be considered “alive.” These are those characteristics and what they mean:

• Order- all organisms consist of one or more cells with highly ordered structures: cells are made up of organelles, organelles are made up of molecules, which are collections of atoms.  These levels of organization are consistent in all forms of life on this planet.

• Sensitivity- All living organisms respond to various stimuli.  While a tree responds to a wound much slower than we do, it is still a response and healing does take place.

• Ability for Growth, Development, and Reproduction- All living organisms are capable of growing and reproducing while transferring hereditary information to their offspring.  While it is true that bacteria do not grow very much, they do still grow.

• Regulation- All organisms have some sort of mechanism, which regulates its internal functions. Such functions may include supplying cells with nutrients, transporting a variety of substances in and out of the organism and many other functions.

• Homeostasis- This is a process in which an organism can maintain constant internal conditions, which are separate from their environment.  Even if this separation is only the act of keeping all of its organs inside the cell membrane such as an amoeba, it is still separate from its environment.  Some organisms are capable of much more complex separation from the environment; mammals and birds are “warm blooded,” meaning that we can maintain our body temperatures totally independent of our environment.

If an organism has all of these characteristics, then it has life.  It is a living organism.  The question now is; which of these characteristics does a human embryo not have?  Some will make the argument that a zygote, that can be seen only under a microscope, does not have the ability to reproduce.  This is true, but then, neither has a six-year-old child.  The reproductive system of most organisms is not fully developed until it reaches adulthood.  This, then, is a fallacious argument.  A baby in the womb has or is in the process of developing every characteristic necessary for it to be considered a living organism.  
Another argument is that a fetus in the early stages of its development is not capable of surviving outside the womb.  Two answers to that come to mind.  First of all, there are many adults who, today, do not have the ability to survive without extensive external life support systems.  Every hospital has an Intensive Care Unit (ICU).  In the ICU patients are sometimes kept alive by artificial means and recover fully and go home.  Furthermore, in vitro fertilization has been around since the 1960’s.  In this procedure an egg is fertilized outside the womb and is kept alive in a medium until it is planted in the female’s uterus.  If the technology does not yet exist, I’m sure that it is close to being ready, that would enable a hospital to keep a fetus alive from egg to infant without it ever being implanted in a host mother.  So, again, the argument does not stand up to close scrutiny. 
Next we shall examine the question from a Genetics point of view.  Genetics is the study of how our genes determine everything about us.  Our genes are made up of 46 chromosomes arranged in 23 pairs.  The genetic material is identical in every cell in our bodies except in the reproductive system.  The precursor to a human egg does include all 23 pairs of genes, but as the egg is released from the ovary, it splits into two daughter cells, each one containing 23 chromosomes instead of the original 23 pairs.  The male sperm cells go through a similar split so that when an egg is fertilized, one half of the chromosomes comes from the mother and the other half from the father.  That is the most important part.  Once the egg is fertilized and the chromosomes combine to form the genes the entire genetic makeup of the person that is now developing is set.  Nothing else is added or taken away.  Every single aspect of the adult that will develop from this pairing of the genes has already been determined.  Everything from what color the eyes will eventually be, to the person’s hair color and type, skin tone, whether they will be left or right-handed, even the fingerprints are genetically set.  
In my study of Biology, one of the courses that I had to take was Embryology.  As the word implies, Embryology is the study of embryos.  In that class I studied exactly how an embryo develops from fertilization to birth.  Believe me, if you study Embryology you will become very well acquainted with how complex life is and how many millions of things must go right for a new life to develop.  However, the most important thing you will learn is that life begins the moment that an egg becomes fertilized.  Everything after that is just growth.
Taking everything together, my studies have led me to believe that life begins at conception and should, therefore, be protected as such.  I can not fathom how any person, especially a female, can be so callous as to say that terminating an unwanted pregnancy is no big deal.  I know how complicated life is, and it is a big deal.

How Wasteful the Older Generation Was

Note:

The following is not my work.  I want to make sure that is understood, I don't want my critics screaming that I am guilty of plagiarism.  I received this as an e-mail and unfortunately there was no information as to who wrote it, so I can't attribute it to the author.  I wish I could because it is brilliant.

How Wasteful the Older Generation Was


In the line at the store, the cashier told the older woman that she should bring her own grocery bag because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. The woman apologized to him and explained, “We didn’t have the green thing back in my day.”

The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. The former generation did not care enough to save our environment."

He was right, that generation didn’t have the green thing in its day.

Back then, they returned their milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled.

But they didn’t have the green thing back in that customer's day.

In her day, they walked up stairs, because they didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. They walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time they had to go two blocks.

But she was right. They didn’t have the green thing in her day.

Back then, they washed the baby’s diapers because they didn’t have the throw-away kind. They dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts – wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that old lady is right, they didn’t have the green thing back in her day.

Back then, they had one TV, or radio in the house – not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a hankerchief, not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, they blended and stirred by hand because they didn’t have electric machines to do everything for you.

They cut up their own fruits and vegetables because they didn't have a food processor. When they packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, they used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

Back then, they didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. They used a push mower that ran on human power. They exercised by working so they didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she’s right, they didn’t have the green thing back then.

They drank from a fountain when they were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time they had a drink of water. They refilled their writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and they replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But they didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or rode the school bus instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. They had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And they didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful the old folks were just because they didn't have the green thing back then?

Here We Go Again

Well, here we go again.  Congress is trying to find a way to not close down the government by midnight tonight.  This is getting ridiculous.  What part of “Balance the budget” do these people not understand?  In 2008 when the Republicans cried “Foul” as the Democrats tried to push through very unpopular bills, they were told that “elections have consequences.”  The libs sat there knowing that they had won a great victory and would do as they pleased.  And they had all the votes they needed to pass any law that they wanted.  So why didn’t they pass a budget?  The budget for the current fiscal year was supposed to be passed before October 15^th of last year.  Barney Franks has even publicly admitted that there simply wasn’t the will to do so.  And that is why we are in this mess.

             The Republicans took control of the House because the American people were fed up with unsustainable deficit spending.  The Republicans said that they were going to balance the budget and that is just what they are trying to do.  The liberals still think they can buy enough votes to win again if they can just keep raising entitlements.  When compared to the $14Trillion+ debt that we have run up, the amount being cut seems miniscule.  But Harry Reid and his bunch scream and whine over every penny.  And they can come up with some of the most outlandish lies you have ever heard about what will happen if the cuts that the Republicans are trying to make go through.  I actually read a report just a few days ago that said that if all of the cuts that the Republicans were asking for were passed that an estimated 70,000 children would die.  Actually if we defund Planned Parenthood, that many children may live to be born. 

            Let’s take a moment here to step back a bit and try to remember what the libs were screaming about for the last two years of the Bush Administration.  If I remember correctly the libs were screaming that he had gotten us into two unjust wars where we had no business being.  I’ll conceed that point, maybe we shouldn’t have sent our troops in to remove Sadam Hussien from power.  What I don’t understand is, why was that worse than our involvement in Lybia?  Bush’s budget deficit was also a huge issue with the libs.  Ok, so spending money that we don’t have is a bad thing.  The federal deficit was more in the month of February, 2011 than for the whole year of 2009 (the biggest deficit year of the Bush Administration).  So again, if a budget deficit was so bad under Bush, why is quadrupling it such a good idea now? 

            I just want to make this as plain as possible.  The Democrats got us into this mess, not the Republicans.  The Republicans are working to get us out of it.  If the Democrats continue to fight against the work the GOP is trying to do, November 2012 will be a very dark time for them.

We Must Stand with Israel

"You know what's wrong with the world today?
People done gone put their Bibles away..."
                                                               Charlie Daniels


Charlie Daniels has sung some great truths in the lines of his songs, and that is one of the greatest to me.  People have put their Bibles away and are no longer reading them.  We have forgotten what the Word of God says and what it means to follow it.  And the shocking thing is, it is no longer being taught in our churches.  How can states  pass laws that make getting an abortion as easy as going out for a cup of coffee and not have every preacher, pastor, priest, rabbi and reverend screaming about it from the pulpit?  Moral turpitude is rampant in this country today and the churches aren't doing anything to stop it.  No, we are now taught that we must be tolerant of others who are different from us.  We must accept people with "alternative lifestyles" with kindness.  We must accept those of the Muslim religion and look away as they scream hate against Israel.


And that brings us back to the Bibles that we have put away.  The five books of Moses tell us in no uncertain terms that the Jews are the chosen people of God.  The God of Abraham promised the Israelites that He would take them to a land flowing with milk and honey, and He did.  God told His people that they would face great odds in battle from the peoples who inhabited the land that He was giving them, and they did.  God told the Jews that no matter what the odds, He would smite their enemies and deliver them to His people, and He did.  God promised the Israelites that He would protect them from invasion by destroying the invaders though the attackers greatly outnumber the Jews, and He still does to this day.  Look at a map of the middle east.  Israel is but a flyspeck in the midst of huge Muslim empires, all of which wish to destroy Israel.  But, though Israel has been attacked again and again and again, they still stand as a strong but tiny bastion of liberty and democracy in a huge sea of Muslim dictatorships.  No people could stand against such insurmountable odds unless God was with them.  The one and only thing that has kept Israel alive and well has been, time and again, Divine Intervention.


As Christians we believe that Jesus was the son of God.  By "God," we mean the God of Abraham.  We worship the same God as do the Jews.  We live by the same Ten Commandments as the Jews.  When we want to know more about what is behind the Old Testament, we look to Jewish scholars.  We have a bond with the Jews and as such we should always give them whatever aid we possibly can.  That, however, is not the attitude of the current administration in the White House.


Maybe it's just me, but it seems to me that our "President" always leans in favor or the Muslims.  When an African/American professor was arrested for disorderly conduct, the Narcissist-in-Chief condemned the police officer without having any of the facts, but when an Army Major Nidal Hassan killed 13 and wounded 29 soldiers in Ft. Hood while screaming "Allah ackbar" (Alla is Great), King Obama said we must not call him a terrorist until more information is known.  When a madman killed a federal judge and seriously wounded a Congressman El Presidente was quick to condemn hateful speech from the Tea Party before we even found out that the gunman wasn't a Tea Party member.  But we are told we must not refer to the Gitmo detainees as terrorists.  I have even been told straight to my face that the Israelis are just as brutal and vicious as the Muslime (no I meant to spell it that way) people are.  Oh, really???


How many homosexuals have been put to death in Israel?  How many women have been stoned to death because they were accused of adultery? How many Jewish women have been raped and then beaten for being promiscuous?  How many Jewish girls have been murdered by their own fathers or brothers because they besmirched the "honor" of the family?  How many of the 9/11 hijackers were wearing yarmulkes?  And when have candies and sweets been passed out on the streets in Israel to celebrate the slaughter of a Muslim family?  


Don't tell me that God's chosen people are the evil ones.  That statement just doesn't hold water.  If we don't stand behind Israel today, one day we will stand before God to explain why.


John A. Wilson
President
Conservative Action Project of Union County