Letter to Mark Martin

Today I posted a letter to Mark Martin, Arkansas Secretary of State.  I would like to share the contents of that letter.

December 14, 2011

From:   John A. Wilson

            804 East 6^th St.

            El Dorado, AR 71730

To:       The Honorable Mark Martin

Arkansas Secretary of State

State Capitol, RM 256

Little Rock, AR 72201

Subj:    Eligibility of Barack Hussein Obama

Sir,

I write to you today to request that an investigation be conducted as to whether or not the name of Barack H. Obama should or should not be included on the Arkansas ballot for the race of President of the United States.  It is my contention that unless proof can be found that unequivocally proves his eligibility to hold the office of President of the United States, Barack Obama’s name should not be allowed to appear on the ballots in Arkansas.  I further contend that Barack Obama is not eligible to hold said office according to the Constitution of the United States of America for the reasons stated below.

1.     Article II Section 1 paragraph 5 of the U.S. Constitution states:  “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President;…”

2.     The U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1789, Barack Obama was not yet born, therefore he was not “a citizen of the United States at the time of the Adoption [of the Constitution].”

3.     A Natural Born Citizen of the United States was defined in Congress in 1866 by Congressman John Bingham and that definition has never been challenged on the floor of Congress nor any case before any court.

4.     Congressman Bingham’s definition was:  

“Every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen.” (Cong. Globe, 39th, 1st Sess., 1291 (1866))

5.     A long-form birth certificate released by the Obama Administration shows that his father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., was a citizen of Kenya, and was never a citizen of the United States of America.

6.     According to the aforementioned document, Barack Obama was born in the United States which makes him a citizen of this country according to the 14^th Amendment.  The 14^th Amendment, however, does not mention the term “natural born citizen.” Therefore, being born a citizen of this country does not necessarily constitute being a natural born Citizen as is required by the Constitution to hold the office of President.

In light of this argument, I feel that Barack Hussein Obama is not eligible to hold the office of President of The United States and therefore his name should not be on the ballot for such office.  I therefore request, no I demand, that you as Secretary of State take the necessary steps to exclude the name of Barack H. Obama from said ballot.  To fail to do so, unless a valid argument against that one which I have presented can be made, would constitute dereliction of your duties as Secretary of State.  Your response on this matter will be greatly appreciated.

Respectfully submitted,

John A. Wilson

President

Conservative Action Project of Union County

The Power of Prayer

The Power of Prayer

I set aside a few minutes each morning for meditation and prayer.  I try to reflect on God’s word and what it means in my everyday life.  Then I pray for God’s guidance to put the things that I think he expects of me to good use. This past Saturday I had an experience that reminded me that God is listening and he does answer prayers. 

While in my morning meditation, I remembered something that I have recently heard.  I’m not sure but I think it may have been Pastor John Hagee on Glenn Beck’s program.  In any case, I remember someone maintain that the best way to serve God is to serve God’s children.  To me this means to do good toward others is to serve God.  As corny as it may sound this is like the Boy Scouts striving to do a good dead every day.  But that is what I thought about during my morning meditation; we should look for ways to help those around us in need as a way to serve our Lord.  I ended my meditation with a prayer.  I asked God to guide me and to bring me to someone that needed help so that I could better serve Him.

That afternoon my wife and I went on a quick trip to Wal-Mart to pick up a couple of things.  Going to the check-out counter, since I only had four or five things in my cart, I went to the express check-out.  At every open express counter there were, as usual, three or four shoppers waiting in line, except one.  An elderly lady was the only person at that particular counter, so, of course I chose that lane.  The lady was in one of those shopping scooters that Wal-Mart provides for their disabled patrons.  As I stopped my cart behind her and started to unload the items from my cart onto the counter the cashier was just finishing ringing up the lady’s purchases. The elderly lady had a bit of a struggle to reach from her seated position to reach the credit card scanner, but she managed to do it, however, she could not reach up to sign the electronic signature pad.  Without giving it much thought I stepped forward to see if I could help.  Fortunately the clerk saw the lady’s struggle and quickly offered to print out a sheet for her to sign so the elderly lady sat back in her seat obviously relieved.  When the cashier handed the lady the piece of paper to sign and a pen a new problem presented itself.  She had no surface upon which to rest the paper to sign it.  This too the cashier quickly noticed and picked up a one of several DVD packages that were for sale on the counter.  Since I was already beside the lady, I took it from the cashier and held the case so that the lady could sign the credit card charge without having to get out of her seat on the shopping scooter.  I then took the slip of paper and the DVD case and handed them back to the cashier.

 It was a small thing to do and I can’t imagine anyone not doing exactly what I did under the circumstances.  But when I finished I saw my wife and the cashier both looking at me with big smiles on their faces.  The cashier thanked me in a very sincere voice and said, “God bless you.”  My wife just smiled at me and patted my arm like I had done something heroic.  I felt a little embarrassed.  I didn’t do anything special; I just helped someone that needed help.  Suddenly it hit me; this was exactly what I had asked God for that morning.  I was a little stunned for a minute then suddenly I felt God’s love surround me.

 Everything had fallen exactly into place to put me there at that moment when someone needed help.  If I had not spent the few minutes that I did looking at some tools in the hardware department we may have gotten to the checkout counter before the elderly lady and been gone.  I would have never known that the elderly lady had needed any help.  Had I taken more time to pick out the new house slippers that I went there to buy the lady may have, though with difficulty, finished her purchase and left before I arrived at the counter.  Then again, I rarely go to Wal-Mart with my wife.  But today I wanted to buy something that my wife may not have been able to find for me.  And what about the fact that all of the express checkout lines were crowded, but not the one where the lady needed my help? 

When it all came together, God had guided me to be at the spot at the time when I could be of some help to one of God’s children.  I have no idea who the lady was.  All I know is that I asked God to give me a chance to help someone today, and He saw to it that I had just such an opportunity.

John A. Wilson

Why Socialism Will Not Work

Why Socialism Will Not Work

           

            For as long as mankind has existed there have been those who dreamed of a more perfect society.  From Robespierre to Marx to Lenin and Stalin, all had an idea of the perfect society.  The only trouble is; the perfect society can never exist in a society of imperfect beings.  Socialism cannot succeed simply because it is anathema to human nature.

            We all know and understand that man and woman are never perfect.  There is at least one fatal flaw in all of us, in some of us there are dozens.  Ambition is a character trait that is rampant in the human race and it has always been so.  As a matter of fact the unambitious individual is a rarity.  Very seldom do you find someone of low status that is happy to remain in that position.  The vast majority of people keep their eyes focused upward always wanting just a little more than what they have.   Ambition is the fly in Socialism’s ointment.

            The premise behind Socialism is “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”  This would mean that everyone has just what he or she needs to survive and not one thing more.  There is no competition, everyone has exactly the same.  Everyone’s house is the same; the only difference is the number of bedrooms.  The furnishings are all the same. The cancer doctor lives in the same apartment building as general laborer, the movie star lives next door to a convenience store clerk.  An education gains you no privilege that the uneducated does not enjoy. 

            Really?

            What is the purpose of studying four, six, eight or more years to be something special if there is no reward for that sacrifice?  Why put pride into your work and do your best to turn out a quality product when you will reap no greater reward than someone who slacks off and does the bare minimum?  Sure, it sounds wonderful, let’s have a society where everyone does his best and shares equally with everyone else.  That may work in a fairy tale, but in real life it won’t work.

            Given a chance to make a socialist society work, I think that the majority of people would start out trying very hard to make it work.  However, as the population of the society grows, disillusion will set in and many workers will find that they don’t have to perform well to be rewarded and eventually it will fall apart.  Severe punishment will have to be implemented to insure that each worker gives at least a modicum of effort.  Eventually this will lead to an elite class whose job is to enforce standards of production on everyone.  This will result in a certain group of people acquiring power over the rest which will inevitably result in that group granting themselves extra privileges. To make sure that they keep these special privileges, they will have to institute ways to insure that they stay in power which leads to Communist dictatorship.  This is not any new idea, it has happened many times over the history of civilization.  If you want a great example of how it works, I recommend that you read George Orwell’s Animal Farm.  Really, everyone should read that book, it isn’t a long treatise or difficult to read, try it, you may learn something.

In this country, middle class and upper middle class citizens look at the very rich and curse the fact that they don’t have as big a house, or as fancy a car and it is very easy to convince them that the rich got their money by cheating people like them.  When I hear most people complain about how unfair life is to them, I always want to ask, “What about those who have less than you?”  And folks, no matter who you are, if you live in this country the vast majority of people in this world have less, much less than you.  Here in America we enjoy the highest standard of living of any country in the world, by far.  But class warfare goes on and a mysterious, vague group of people called “The rich” are targeted.  People don’t seem to have any concept of whom they are speaking when they say, “The rich should pay more taxes.”  It’s just someone that has more than they do. 

And “someone who has more than you” is the very basis of the great push today toward Socialism.  Facts don’t seem to be a big deal to the people who lead this attack on success.  It’s all emotional and anyone who disagrees is labeled an idiot, a liar or worse.  And many of us, myself included, who try to state some facts and inject some small bit of common sense into the argument are threatened and marginalized because there is no real argument against that which we say.  So we continue to plunge this, the greatest country in the world, headlong into a system that has never and will never work, just because someone has something that someone else doesn’t.

John A. Wilson

President

Conservative Action Project of Union County

El Dorado, Arkansas

Now HERE is a Marine!!!

The pic of the Marine Gunnery Sergeant apparently didn't make it to the post.  Here is a link to the pic.

http://www.ptsdsupport.net/1_finger_salute.html

Now HERE is a Marine!!!

 
Leading the fight is U S Marine Gunnery Sgt. Michael Burghardt, known as 'Iron Mike' or just 'Gunny'.  He is on his third tour in Iraq .  He had become a legend in the bomb disposal world after winning the Bronze Star for disabling 64 IEDs and destroying 1,548 pieces of ordnance during his second tour.  
Then, on September 19, he got blown up. He had arrived at a chaotic scene after a bomb had killed four US Marines. He chose not to wear the bulky bomb protection suit. 'You can't react to any sniper fire and you get tunnel-vision,' he explains. So, protected by just a helmet and standard-issue flak jacket, he began what bomb disposal officers term 'the longest walk', stepping gingerly into a 5  foot deep and 8 foot wide crater. 
The earth shifted slightly and he saw a Senao base station with a wire leading from  it.  He cut the wire and used his 7 inch knife to probe the ground.  'I found a piece of red detonating cord between my legs,' he says.  'That's when I knew I was screwed.'  Realizing he had been sucked into a trap, Sgt. Burghardt, 35, yelled at everyone to stay back.  At that moment, an insurgent, probably watching through binoculars, pressed a button on his mobile phone to detonate the secondary device below the sergeant's feet  'A chill went up the back of my neck and then the bomb exploded,' he recalls.  'As I was in the air I remember thinking, 'I don't believe they got me..' I was just ticked off they were able to do it.  Then I was lying on the road, not able to feel anything from the waist down.'  
His fellow Marines cut off his trousers to see how badly he was hurt.  None could believe his legs were still there 'My dad's a Vietnam vet who's paralyzed from the waist down,' says Sgt Burghardt.  'I was lying there thinking I didn't want to be in a wheelchair next to my dad and for him to see me like that. They started to  cut away my pants and I felt a real sharp pain and blood trickling down.  Then I wiggled my toes and I thought, 'Good, I'm in business.'  As a stretcher was brought over, adrenaline and anger kicked in.  'I decided to walk to the helicopter. I wasn't going to let my team-mates see me being carried away on a stretcher.'  He stood and gave the insurgents who had blown him up a one-fingered salute.  ‘I flipped them one’.  It was like, 'OK, I lost that round but I'll be back next week.' 
Copies of a photograph depicting his defiance, taken by Jeff Bundy for the Omaha World-Herald, adorn the walls of homes across America and that of Col John Gronski, the brigade commander in Ramadi, who has hailed the image as an exemplar of the warrior spirit. 
Sgt Burghardt's injuries - burns and wounds to his legs and buttocks - kept him off duty for nearly a month and could have earned him a ticket home.  But, like his father - who was awarded a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts for being wounded in action in Vietnam - he stayed in Ramadi to engage in the battle against insurgents who are forever coming up with more ingenious ways of killing Americans. 

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.