This morning on the way to work, I heard an interview that Michelle Bachmann did with Bill Bennett. She was talking about the need to drill in Alaska in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). She visited there recently and can speak about what is actually there. 

A few weeks ago, Michelle Bachmann started showing up in Townhall.com and I did not know who she was. I started reading some of her posts because they had interesting titles and got hooked. She is very intense and will not take no for an answer. When people started talking about ANWR, she wanted to know what it actually was like there. Not what people said was there, but what was actually on the ground. So, she got a few colleagues in the House and went to ANWR.

What she found in ANWR was a treeless plain. There are mountains visible a long way off in the distance. The mountains are part of the refuge, but are not part of ANWR that is being considered for the leases. She only visited the areas being considered for leasing for oil. She went in the summertime, so the area was mostly wet with some pieces of land interspaced between the marsh areas.

In talking with Bill Bennett, Michelle mentioned the Alaska pipeline. When it first opened, it carried 2.1 million barrels of oil a day through the pipeline. Now, we are down to 700,000 barrels of oil a day that is flowing through the pipeline. When the pipeline gets to 300,000 barrels, the pipeline will be forced to close down as uneconomical to use. If the pipeline were to close down, it would cost upwards of $15 billion to rebuild the pipeline. That is, if we could get the Democrats to agree with rebuilding the pipeline. Democrats think the pipeline is destroying the wildlife. The wildlife is thriving in the areas near the pipeline because of the shelter and warmth provided by the pipeline. We need to use the pipeline or we will lose it and probably never get it back.

Drilling for oil on ANWR will only be on about 4,000 acres of the vast refuge. All transportation in and out will be during the winter. During the winter the ground is frozen and the trucks and other equipment can come in and not harm the environment. When it thaws, there is no evidence that anything ever went across the ground. The only evidence that oil will be removed will be the oil drilling pads. These will be built on the solid ground portions of the wildlife refuge. The marshy areas would be a poor area to build an oil drilling pad. It would be too unstable to hold the heavy rig and would be prone to fail.

I am not sure how they plan to get the oil out of the refuge area after they pump it out of the ground. It would seem logical that they would link all the drill sites together with pipelines and then pipe all the oil out from the one collection point.

Michelle Bachmann estimated that if Congress passed legislation today, it would be three years before we would actually see oil appear from ANWR. Gas prices would go down almost immediately after the Congress passed the authorization for drilling. That is because the speculators would know that the price of oil in the future will be lower than it is today. Therefore, they will bid the price of oil down. Speculators get the blame when the price of oil goes up because they see that we do not want to bring the price of oil down. When they see that we do want to bring the price of oil down, the price of oil will come down. That would mean lower gas prices for all of us at the gas pump. As I mentioned yesterday, all economists know this. It is so much common knowledge that you cannot get an article printed in an economics magazine that says the price of oil will go down when we start drilling in ANWR. The rejection letter the authors have said that everyone knows this except for economists working for Democrats.

That rejection letter is so funny because it is so true. The Democrats seem to live in their own fantasy world. There is one world where all of us live and another where Democrats live. In the Democrats world, everything is like in, “Alice, Through the Looking Glass”. If you want to go up, you go down. If you want to go right, you go left. Those of us in the real world know that the Democrats live in their own fantasy world. The Democrats think that they live in the real world and that it translates to everything. That is why they can tell you something you know is false and do so with a straight face. That is also why; almost everything the Democrats say is completely false.

The long anticipated energy plan from that guru of energy ideas has finally been released. Paris Hilton released her energy plan last night. Other than some minor differences, it is basically the same as that of those Republicans of the House that are still in Washington demanding that Nancy Pelosi bring the House back into session and John McCain. Barack Obama also released some more ideas from his energy plan and they are no more realistic than the first ones.

Paris Hilton is for developing alternative energies. She thinks that we should spend time and effort developing wind, solar and nuclear power. To tide us over the hump, until those are viable, she advocates drilling in American sources to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of oil. The order is different, but the same themes are put out by the Republicans and John McCain.

Barack Obama said in a speech yesterday that we should develop an electrical car that will get over 150 miles per charge and we should eliminate all foreign sources of oil within 6 years. Those sound great in a speech, but are impossible to produce on the ground. I would love to eliminate all foreign sources of oil within 6 years. I know that cannot happen. We will never be able to eliminate all foreign sources of oil until we eliminate our use of oil entirely. That will not happen for a very long time. The electric car idea is one that will happen, in time. We are developing better batteries for use in electric cars all of the time. Some time in the future, we will have one that will go 150 miles between charges. Right now, we can only go about 40 miles before we have to recharge the battery. That makes the electric car impractical for use in most situations right now.

It is pretty sad when a celebrity, that has absolutely no history of using the brain she was given, comes out with a better energy plan than a Presidential candidate who has millions of dollars and lots of experts. But that reminds me of another story I heard on Hugh Hewitt yesterday about what would happen if we drill for oil in the US. Some authors wrote an article that stated that if we drill for oil in ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) that the price of oil would dramatically be slashed around the world. Their article was not printed because it was so widely known by economists except for those hired by the Democrat party. The last sentence is a paraphrase of a sentence from the rejection letter they received on why their article would not be printed. It was telling to me that they would have specified that everyone knows that the price of oil would be slashed except for those in the Democrat party. I was driving or I would have written the quote down.

What we have here is an impasse. We have one party that believes that action should be taken now. That party believes that we are in a national emergency and as such action is necessary now. The other party is trying to say that it does not matter what goes on, they know more than anyone else. Since they do not believe there is a problem, there is no problem. Since they say that drilling for oil will not bring the price of oil down, the price of oil will not come down.

One party is responding to their constituents and saying, “do something now”. The others are responding to their money donors and are saying that we should not do anything. They are privately saying to their individual members that if they need to advocate drilling to save their seat, they should advocate drilling. That is a no win situation. Their party members will be asking for us to drill and the leadership will not bring the issue on whether to drill now, up for a vote. The Democrat leadership has already demonstrated that they do not care how high gas prices go, they will not allow the issue of drilling for oil in the US to come up for a vote.

Any vote for a Democrat is a vote for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House or Harry Reid as Majority Leader of the Senate. Both of them have demonstrated that they do not care about the American people. They only care about the campaign contributions that come in from the environmental groups. We need leaders who will respond to what we as voters want, not what a few environmental whackos want.  

In response to one of my posts yesterday, a person said that we need to allow the Democrat to win so that we can then have a “true” conservative win in four years. On the surface I agree with that statement. After four years of the disaster of Barack Obama, the US will be begging for a conservative to lead. My only problem is with the type of country we would be left with.

Barack Obama believes that when it comes to fighting, running is the best option. Therefore, all that our brave men and women in the military have won in the last few years will be lost in a few months under Barack Obama. We will just be defending the homeland. They will have everywhere else. We will start seeing people die on our streets from terrorist attacks. The typical response from Obama will be to let the local law enforcement office investigate and prosecute these “crimes”. There will be no coordination to stop the attacks as Obama does not believe that they would dare attack the US.

We would no longer live in a free country. We would live in a socialist country. Once you live in a socialist country, it takes a few generations to get rid of the socialism. It only takes a few years to get into socialism, but more than a lifetime to get out. Our healthcare would become like England and Canada. We would have doctor shortages as doctors would retire rather than accept the low wages that are part of socialized medicine. That would mean long lines at the doctor’s office. Urgent surgeries would be scheduled by bureaucrats instead of doctors. That will mean that some people will not get the surgeries that they need to live, this happens regularly in England and in Canada. Once the quota for births has been reached all additional births are on their own, like happened in Canada last year.

Taxes will go up. Unemployment will go up. Recently the national minimum wage went up and the unemployment rate went up. Newspapers did not make the connection, but they happened at exactly the same time. This will happen regularly in an Obama Presidency.

How can I say all of this? I look to the model of Michigan. It has been run by Democrats for almost 10 years and it is almost deserted. Their unemployment rate is the highest in the country. They cannot attract new businesses. All major politicians go there and say how much they are going to do to bring back Michigan’s economy, but they will not say what brought Michigan to this point. What brought them to this point is that Michigan taxes everything and taxes it at a high rate. No wonder that businesses leave and find other places to do business.

Put this on a national level and you will see what will happen. Any corporation that can leave will leave the country and set up shop somewhere else where taxes are better. This will reduce our tax pool driving up the deficit and making taxes rise even more.

What I see from an Obama Presidency is such a disaster that I cannot in good conscience allow it to happen. The only good thing would be that people would be begging for a conservative to lead the country by the time 2012 came around. The problem is that there might not be a country left to run in 2012 if Obama is elected President. He runs from every threat. He will allow Iran to go nuclear. That will allow terrorists to get nuclear bombs. Once terrorists have nuclear bombs, cities will start to disappear in a burst of light and a mushroom cloud. We will be forced to surrender to the terrorists because Obama will not allow us to fight the terrorists. We just might not have a country to hold a vote in 2012. That is why I have to support McCain. He, at least, will insure that there will be a vote for President in 2012. I am not so sure if Obama gets elected.

Something interesting is going on in Washington. The Democrats voted to go on 5 weeks of vacation and left Washington last Friday. The Republicans did not vote to go on vacation and are still there trying to bring the will of the people to a vote. What is the will of the people that the Republicans are so worked up about that they will not leave Washington for a 5 week vacation? It is high gas prices and the solution to those high gas prices.

The Republicans in Congress and the President all agree that the best way out of this high gas price mess is to allow drilling on the outer continental shelf and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The Democrats in Congress also know that the best way out of this high gas price mess is to allow drilling on the outer continental shelf and in ANWR. The problem is that if the Democrats allow a vote on this issue, they will have to vote with the people that give them their money, not with the people of the United States. That means they will vote against drilling for oil where we know there are untold billions of barrels of oil. We know that there is at least 10 billion barrels of oil in ANWR. There is probably 10-20 times that in the outer continental shelf by any conservative estimate. There is more oil under United States Control than in any single country in the world, yet the Democrats do not want us to get any of it. In fact, there is more oil in oil shale than there is oil in Saudi Arabia alone.

Why won’t the Democrats vote on drilling for oil? They know that if they vote with their money people, they will not be elected to Congress in the November. If they vote with the people, so they can get re-elected, they will not have any money to run on for re-election. This is a real dilemma. Nancy Pelosi has the answer, run away. That is her answer to every crisis, run away from it and it will go away.

San Fran Nan as Nancy Pelosi is frequently referred to, came into office as the Speaker of the House and said she had a plan to reduce high gas prices. Since then, gas prices have almost doubled. It is time for her to trot out her plan to reduce the gas prices. She had a plan when she was put in as Speaker; I assume that she still has a plan. The plan seems to be, ignore it and it will go away.

In the Senate, Mitch McConnell had an altercation with Senator Salazar of Colorado over drilling and gas prices. Senator McConnell first started out with an immediate start to drilling. Then he put a trigger on at $5, then $6, then $7.50, finally he stopped at $10.00 per gallon for the trigger. At each level, Senator Salazar objected to allowing drilling. That seems to be the Democrat plan, no drilling no matter how high the gas prices get. They do not care about the average working people or the poor working people. They only care about those large contributions they get from the environmental groups that fund their re-election campaigns where they lie and say they care about the “working people” and hate the “evil” rich. That is a crock. They hate the average person probably more than they hate the rich person. The rich person gives them a campaign contribution, the poor person has to be fooled. The problem is that there are more poor people than rich people. Therefore, they tear down the rich person because they make an easy target.

Nancy Pelosi has to worry about this revolution the Republicans are pulling off. The longer the Republicans carry on, the more likely they are to get publicity from the press. When the press picks up on it the more likely the average person will see the Republican position and say that it sounds reasonable. It is reasonable, especially since just saying we want to drill lowered gas prices about 6%. Imagine how much actually drilling for oil will lower gas prices. That is the message that will get out the longer the Democrats ignore the Republicans and their revolt.

The other offshoot is that if Republicans get credit for bringing the Democrats back from vacation to vote on this issue, the Republicans will get all the good press when it passes. Again, that is not what Nancy Pelosi wants. She wants Democrats to get any good press. If a Democrat was in the White House and this same situation were happening, she would be glad to have a vote and bring down the price of gas by drilling. That would mean huge amounts of votes for Democrats. With a Republican in the White House and the Republicans making a big stink, she is in a pickle. She cannot allow a vote on the issue before the November elections to allow the Republicans a victory. Yet, she cannot allow the Republicans to continue to hammer the Democrats on this issue. She has to find some way to get this issue off of the table without giving the Republicans any victories. She also cannot put any Democrats up for re-election in jeopardy of losing their jobs, either. How she will pull this off will be a sight to behold. I do not see an out for her.

If Nancy Pelosi puts this issue up for a vote, any person up for re-election has to vote to allow drilling or face defeat. That option is definitely off the table. She also cannot allow the Republicans to continue to hammer her on this issue. It is giving the Republicans life in the November elections and she does not want that. She has to find some way to diffuse this issue without voting on it and putting Democrats on record as opposing or favoring drilling.

I can hardly wait to see what she does. No matter how she jumps, she is screwed. At least that is the view from where I sit her in my chair on South Mountain.

It seems to me that John McCain has finally found the way to fight the Obama sensation is with humor. He first hit him with the comparison between Paris Hilton, Brittany Spears and Barack Obama as being just a celebrity. That created a tornado of a response from the liberals. You would think that McCain had compared Obama to Hitler or something the way they carried on so. But, the commercial made the point that Obama is a celebrity and nothing more. He has done nothing worthy of being made a celebrity, he just is one.

The second commercial just came out. It pokes fun at the way the press has been treating Obama. The press treats Obama as if he is the second coming of Jesus Christ. They only show him in pictures that project a religious image. He has a halo around the head and the like. Many people have been calling him the Obama Messiah. The commercial plays on this fever of adoration. It builds on the comments from Obama himself that he can do things that only a Messiah could do. One of these things is to make the oceans recede and also some other similar things like that. Then, near the end of the commercial, it cuts to Charlton Heston in “The Ten Commandments”. That is the point at which you just roll on the floor laughing.

Since liberals in general and Obama followers in particular do not have a sense of humor, they did not take the commercials very well. Their response is more of a, “How dare you”, than anything worth commenting on. That is what makes this even funnier. If they had laughed at the commercials and gone on, the commercials would have been worthless. Because they hit a sore spot, they are priceless. Humor is always better than any other way to tell your story. People respond well to humor. They do not respond well when people are mean spirited.

McCain needs to keep up with the humor and needs to keep poking Obama in the spots where he knows it hurts. Obama thinks of himself as the one person that can solve all the world’s problems. That means that he takes himself very seriously. He will not react well to humor. He thinks that he is too serious for humor. That is why humor works so well on him. He thinks he is above humor and will be offended when it is used. That means keep on using it until things are no longer funny. Remember that Obama believes everything that he says on the campaign trail. That also makes him vulnerable to pokes in the ribs about what he says.

McCain is invulnerable to humor. McCain uses humor on himself all the time. Obama cannot use it with any real effectiveness against him. What humor can Obama use that McCain does not already use? There are few open spots where McCain takes himself so seriously that humor would disarm him. That is precisely why it works so well on Obama. He does take himself that seriously.

Now, McCain cannot hope to win the Presidency with just humor, but it can be a wonderful tool in his arsenal. If he keeps poking fun at himself, he keeps that tool away from Obama. Any time you can keep ammunition away from your opponent in a political situation you should do it. Any time your opponent hands you ammunition to use against him, you should use it. That is just the way politics is played in the United States. If you are not willing to play by those rules, you should not be in American politics. You will not be in American politics for long, because you will lose every race you run in.

Last night, I was thinking about the danger of putting Barack Obama into the White House. It led me to an analogy. The analogy came about because of an article I was reading about baseball.

The situation is this: You are the manager of a baseball team. It is the World Series and it is the seventh game. You can choose between two pitchers to start the game. One of them is a rookie that was called up from class ‘A’ ball (a lower minor league) only yesterday. The other is a grizzled veteran who has been through the season with the team and has played for many years. Which one do you choose? You can go with the promise of youth or the known quantity of experience. If you choose wrong, you could lose the game and the series. If you choose right, the World Series Championship is yours.

Choosing between Barack Obama and John McCain is much like my analogy. Obama is the unproven rookie from class ‘A’ ball. Obama has only been a state senator for a few years and almost no experience as a US Senator. McCain is the grizzled veteran. He has been around for awhile. You know what to expect from him. The choice is one you have to make. The game is the war against Islamo-Fascism. If you choose wrong, the war will be lost and we will have to become Muslim or die. If you choose right, the war will be won and all will be well. We will keep the US and the world will be a much better place to live in.

What do we know about Obama and his positions on the war against Islamo-Fascism? First, we know that he does not believe that we are fighting terrorists in Iraq. I am not sure who he thinks we are fighting there, but it is not terrorists. He does believe we are fighting terrorists in Afghanistan. He would concentrate his efforts there. His efforts against other Islamo-Fascists like Iran will be strictly talk, no action.

What do we know about John McCain and his positions on the war against Islamo-Fascism? First, we know that he does believe in killing terrorists wherever he finds them. He will be tough on Iran and will not allow Iran to get a nuclear bomb. That may mean going to war against Iran, but it would prevent a terrorist from getting a nuclear bomb that could destroy New York in one bright explosion.

In looking at the two choices, it is obvious that if you believe we are fighting against terrorists you would have to vote for John McCain. If you do not believe that we are fighting terrorists, you would vote for Barack Obama. I do have one question for those who do not believe we are fighting terrorists, who are we fighting? If you do not believe we are fighting terrorists, you should open your eyes and do some research. Then you will discover that the people we are fighting want us either to become Muslim or die. That would be enough for me to want to fight against those people. John McCain will be our best choice for Commander in Chief, not Commander of Chief as Barack Obama likes to put it.

The super bloated housing bill was signed by President Bush yesterday. He signed the bill in secret. That tells me that he really did not like the bill. If he likes a bill and thinks that it is a good idea, he will sign it in public with a ceremony. If he thinks that the bill is not a good idea, but will sign it anyway, he signs it in secret.

This housing bill will do nothing for me as a homeowner. It will not make any money easier for me to get as I already have a loan and am happily paying it off. Even if it did something for me, I would still think that the bill was a bad idea. It is a bad idea because it transfers the risk to the future. That means that my children and grandchildren will have to pay for the short term relief that this bill will give to the housing market. And the relief will only be felt at the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac level anyway. The individual homeowner will not really see any difference in how things are done.

The news media is saying that the bill loosens restrictions on FHA loans. That remains to be seen. It most likely will allow more people that cannot pay loans back to get loans. That will just aggravate the problem in the long-term. In case you cannot tell, I do not have much faith in this bloated bill.

The worst thing the bill does is inject the government into the housing market more than it has been in the past. I cannot find anywhere in the Constitution where it says that the federal government should be involved in housing markets. Of course, I also cannot find where the federal government should be involved in most of what the federal government is involved with. I have a copy of the Constitution on every classroom wall in the building I work in. The Constitution also includes all of the amendments that have been approved. Even looking through the amendments, I cannot find any reference to housing assistance. It must have been an oversight by the founders. They saw everything else needed for our country, they must have missed housing assistance.

Every Senator and Representative that voted for this bill should be voted out of office when they come up for re-election. That means all the Representatives in 2008 and 1/3 of the Senators each year for the next 6 years. We will most likely forget about this bill by the time November rolls around, but we should not forget. It is one of those events that should be remembered for all time as a stupid event and the people that pushed it should be reviled as doing something stupid.

It is easy to sell the bill as for the “poor”. Selling it as for the “poor” and it being an election year make it something that no elected Representative can ignore. They have to do “something”. The problem occurred because of actions by the federal government being involved in the housing market. The elected representatives are trying to solve the problem of the federal government being involved in the housing markets by involving the federal government even more in the housing markets. Tell me if I am wrong, but there is something wrong with that statement. You do not solve a problem of too much government by getting the government more involved. You solve the problem of too much government by removing at least some of the government from the problem. That would solve the problem, but no elected Representative will vote to lose power. They will only vote to gain power, unless the public demands that they vote to lose power. Then they will be forced to vote to lose power, kicking and screaming all the way that it is the wrong thing to do.

We need elected Representatives who are in the mold of Adams, Jefferson, Washington and the entire founding fathers. Unfortunately, we have weasels that are only on the lookout for themselves, not the country. This bill is a perfect example of how weasels react when they see the problem of too much government. They say there is too much government, the solution is more government. Too many people do not see that the problem is too much government. They are not told that the problem was caused by government. That way when government is proposed as the solution, the elected Representatives can get away with not telling the truth to the public.

Last night on the way home from work I listened to Mark Levin. I only heard the first half hour of the show where he was talking about the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. His opinion is that this is a disaster for our children and our grandchildren. I agree with him. We are increasing our national debt to bail out people who should not have been loaned money for a house in the first place.

During most of my lifetime when looking for a home loan, I have had to prove that I was credit worthy. I can remember trying to get my first loan on a house in Arvada, Colorado. We had always paid cash for things and had never used credit cards. We had no car loans at that point. We had been renting only a short time. We had a difficult time proving to the bank that we would be credit worthy and would pay back the loan. They took a chance on us because we had always paid cash for things. The loan officer told us to get some credit cards and establish credit. In some ways that was an excellent piece of advice and in some ways it was terrible. At times we abused the system and got ourselves in trouble. We got ourselves out of those problems and are now doing just fine, thank you.

Democrats noticed that there were parts of cities where it was difficult to get a home loan. They called this practice, “Red Lining”. They accused the banks of deliberately choosing not to loan money to blacks and other people of color. The reason the areas were a difficult area to get a loan is that people in that area had a poor record of paying back those loans.

The Democrats in Congress took up the charge and got weak kneed Republicans to go along with forcing banks to loan money to people who had poor credit ratings. This made money available to people everywhere and allowed home loans in areas where they previously were not available. Housing prices rose dramatically because of the demand. People would rather own than rent. Then the age old problem arose. Those with a poor credit history started missing payments and defaulting on their loans. The problem increased as the poor credit history people accumulated. They still only amounted to 1% of the total home loans.

This put the home loan purchasers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a difficult position. They were not making much money. Since they were semi-federal agencies, they went to the federal government and asked for a bailout. The Congress saw an opportunity to purchase votes. They jumped on this and made sweeping changes to the law to help those with poor credit histories. The problem was solved! No, the problem was just put off for a few years. The problem was now put off for our children and grandchildren to take care of. They will now have a much higher bill to pay because of the bailout. If the market was allowed to do its job, it would have corrected itself in short order. People would have lost money and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac might have lost money in the short term. BUT, the government would not have had to put out money to shore up people who would be defaulting anyway.

We now have more government involvement in the housing market. What we need is less government involvement in the housing market. Government intrusion in the housing market has caused lots of problems and solved nothing. There will be some government involvement due to the GI bill, but that should be it. The government should let banks and other lending institutions do their job and loan money to people who will pay them back. If the government would get out of the way and be only involved with the GI bill and licensing of lenders and loan officers, the market would work and most people would win. Some would lose, but that is part of what makes a market work.

The problem in this country is that we have the federal government doing things it is not supposed to do. The Constitution does not say anything about the federal government being involved with housing or medicine. Since it does not say the federal government should be involved, the federal government should get out of the way. If state governments want to be involved, that is the responsibility of each state government. It is not the responsibility of the federal government.

We need less government, not more government. That should be the message that all people running for office should have. Ronald Reagan said it best when he said, “The government is not the solution to the problem, it IS the problem”. (Emphasis mine)

Normally, I talk about politics or science in this site. Today, I will talk about an event that happened at my college last Thursday afternoon.

I was teaching a lab on Thursday afternoon. Suddenly, another instructor came into my classroom and said that the campus was on lockdown. That meant no students could leave the class and nobody could come in from the outside. When the class ended, my students got out their cell phones and got updates on what was happening.

What had happened was this: Two young men got into a fight. When one of the young men got the worst of the fight, he pulled out a gun and started shooting the person who was winning. He shot the person a few times. He also missed and hit a young woman and another young man who happened to be in the area. After he emptied his gun, he ran away. Many of the people in the computer commons area knew him and identified him. When the police got there about 1-2 minutes later, they went to his house and arrested him. The entire situation was started and ended in about 20 minutes, if you count the police finding the suspect at his house. If you only count the situation on campus, the situation lasted about 2-3 minutes.

I was sitting about as far away from the incident as possible and still be on campus. The only problem would have been during leaving my campus. We would have had to drive near the area where the incident occurred. That would have been potentially dangerous.

The area in question is a computer commons area. There are a lot of computers there for use by students and the public. It is heavily used by the public during the afternoon and evening. The suspect had been tipped off that the victim was frequently in the computer commons area. He had been carrying the gun since the victim had beaten him up a few months earlier with the help of a couple of friends. The suspect came onto the campus with the intention to use the gun, if he came into contact with the victim. If he had not come into contact with the victim, he would not have used his gun. That makes this incident much different than the other shootings on a college campus. Those shootings were because the person wanted to kill lots of people. Here he just wanted revenge against one person and only one person.

In court, when he was brought up for bond, he apologized to the two innocent victims. He was stopped by his attorney and by the judge that the proceedings were being recorded. He proceeded on anyway to give his apology. That basically convicts him. His only chance now is to work out some plea deal on time. He will be in prison for a long time on this charge. Our college was told today that the District Attorney for the County has said that he will not let this one slide. He will prosecute this one to the fullest extent of the law. That means a long prison term for the suspect.

Now my college has to regain its reputation as a college where nothing exciting happens. Nothing exciting has happened in our first 28 years and it all gets destroyed in one man’s desire for revenge. Now we will have to work on another 28 years of not being in the news, except for winning athletic awards.

Mr. Perfect is having a hard time over there in Europe. He is having a difficult time remembering what committees he is on in the Senate. Yesterday, he thought he was on the banking committee. He was talking about a bill that was just passed through the banking committee about eliminating all banking connections with Iran. He then added that he was on the banking committee. He should be able to remember what committees he is on. At least you would think that he would remember. This is crucial because he said that he took action on the bill that was being discussed. That was impossible as he is not on the committee that was working on the bill.

People all the time make mistakes. You usually do not make a mistake about what group you are with. You may not remember which bill you worked on, but you will remember that you were on the committee that worked on it or not. We should be able to expect at least that much from the brain cells of those we elect to represent us in Congress.

Senator Obama is starting to sound like the kid in school who is usually second place in the competition. To make up for being second place all the time, they start to make up things about themselves to make them sound like they are more important than they are. They eventually get found out and end up being even lower than they were in the first place. But, they enjoy that short time in the spotlight. I think that Senator Obama is starting to realize that he is coming up short on his qualifications. So, he has to manufacture qualifications to make him look better to the public. He knows the news media will not do any background checking to see if he is right or not. They will assume that he is correct. He also knows that most people get most of their news from the main stream news media and so he should be home free. It is just the news junkies like me who pick up on this stuff and bring it to everyone’s attention.

I read another report yesterday that Barack Obama has a complaint against him with the Illinois Bar Association. The complaint alleges many of the same things that I am reporting in this blog, that he said things that were not true and he knew them to be untrue when he said them. This all goes back to some events when Barack Obama was working in Illinois. I do not know the details of the complaint, just that it was filed. The main stream media will not report on this complaint. If Obama were a Republican, this complaint would be front page news. Because he is a Democrat, the complaint will be buried until it blows up under Barack and buries him alive. Then they will express surprise that anything had happened at all.

Sooner or later, people have to realize that Senator Obama is not what everyone has been led to believe. He is not a “new” politician. He is very much an “old style” politician. He came up through the corrupt Chicago political system and has all the skills of a Chicago politician. If you open the doors to his past, you find corruption ran rampant. He got to positions by knowing people, not on what he knew. That is the way he expects to get to be President. He expects to get there by who he knows, not on what he knows. He is as corrupt as the day is long. He knows less about what is going on in the world than I do and I live and work in Arizona. He lives and works in the center of power of the greatest nation in the World. That says a lot about a candidate when he knows nothing and revels in the fact that he knows nothing. It says a lot about people who would vote for someone who knows nothing and revels in that fact. Those people are not responsible enough to be trusted to vote.

There should be some kind of a test to see if people are responsible enough to vote. Unfortunately, the test would naturally be biased. If I wrote the test, not liberal would ever be allowed to vote because they could not pass the test. If a liberal wrote the test, no conservative would ever be allowed to vote. That is why there is no voting test. It is just that I spend so much time learning about candidates and what they believe to make sure my vote is cast intelligently. My vote is worth as much as the person who only looks at campaign slogans and never tries to figure out what will happen if the candidate gets elected. That is the way the system was set up and it is the best system in the world. Any tinkering with the system would make it worse.

Listening to the Laura Ingraham show on the way in to work today, I was struck by her comments about cell phones. She said that it is a growing problem of parents sending cell phones with their children to summer camp. They will even hide them in stuffed animals and other secret locations so they can keep in touch with their children.

I grew up in a simpler time. We did not have cell phones. When I went to summer camp, I was out of communication with my parents the entire time. One of the reasons was that camp was a “get back to nature” experience. Another reason was that I was to learn how to stand on my own two feet. I thank my summer camp experience for helping me learn how to get by on my own initiative. I also treasure the “back to nature” experiences that camp gave me. Sometimes I may have complained about the lack of modern conveniences, but I grew from having to do without those modern conveniences.

When my boys were growing up, I took them to summer camp with the Boy Scouts. The Boy Scouts do not allow any electronic devices in camp at all. At least they did through the experiences me h ad with my boys. That is getting a little bit dated, but I still believe that electronic devices would be banned.

Not having electronic devices at camp was a wonderful thing. It made us reliant on our own initiative. We had to learn how to make the things we needed to live with nature. We taught the boys to lash together dining tents and other camp devices to help make the camp more enjoyable. We cooked using Dutch ovens and open fires. We also had some gas powered stoves along to make meals when a fire was either not possible or not allowed. I must say that we lived well. The food was well prepared and very good to eat. There was plenty for everyone to eat and drink.

The boys learned how to rely on their own. We taught them how to survive in the wild by themselves. We taught them how to take care of nature when they were in the wild. Our camps were always cleaner after we left than they were when we arrived. Other than footprints and tire tracks, you would have a difficult time telling that we had been there at all.

As leaders, we taught the boys how to do things and then got out of the way when they were actually doing them. That was a good system. It taught the boys to be responsible adults. I do not know where all the boys are that were scouts with me, but the ones I do know are responsible adults. They are not perfect, nobody is perfect. But, I would put any ten of them up against any ten others and they would be at least more responsible as, probably more responsible than the others. I am not patting myself on the back. I had a hand in teaching the boys responsibility, but others also had a hand. I taught them what I could with my law enforcement background. Others were better at teaching them other things. Together, we added up to a whole that was much more than our parts. We could not have done that if electronic devices were allowed into camp. They would have detracted from the things we were trying to teach. The boys would have been more concerned with what was going on back home and not with what was going on around them.

When my 9 year old granddaughter eventually goes to camp, she will not have a cell phone. She will be there to commune with nature and learn how to live without my wife and me. That will make her a better adult. That is the way the world was built. Kids have to learn how to survive on their own by making their own decisions and living with them. Going to camp is a chance to do just that on a small scale. You do not want their first independent decision being something that could be life changing. You want them to build up to the big decisions. Nagging at them with cell phones all the time is not the way to build independent adults. Turning off the cell phone occasionally and letting the child learn how to live on his/her own is the way to build up independence.

Barack Obama and his people seem to think that they are more important than the United States. First, they replaced the Great Seal of the United States with the Great Seal of Barack Obama. Then, on this world tour, they replaced the American Flag on the plane with the Obama flag. That is showing that they do not respect the United States or its important symbols.

Symbols are important to people. They mean things. Symbols have deeper meanings besides the superficial meaning that the actual symbol means. The Great Seal of the United States has deeper meaning than just a good photo opportunity. The Obama crowd thinks that since the Great Seal looks good in Presidential pictures, they will replace it with their rendition and it will look good in Obama’s pictures. That thought lasted just one outing. The outcry was enough to put that thought on the back burner. The outlandish symbol that they came up with was part of the problem. They came up with something that was better drawn in some cartoon as a joke. They were taking themselves seriously when they used the symbol. They got their hands slapped and have not used it again.

Now, they have taken the flag off of the plane used to transport a person who wants to be President of the United States. That is an incredibly stupid thing to do, especially since they replaced it with some symbol that the campaign uses. That is putting the campaign above the American people. Candidates for President have to have the flag present all of the time. They need to have it on their lapels. They need it on the stands when they speak. They need it as a backdrop when they are seen anywhere. They also need it on the transportation they use. Removing the flag is another slap in the face of the American people. It is like saying that they are campaigning for President of Obama country. I for one do not live in Obama country and do not intend to live in Obama country. I live in the United States of America and do not intend to live anywhere else.

The people running the Obama campaign need to realize that he is running for President of the United States of America. They need to quit putting the campaign’s symbols over the symbols of the United States. As a United States Senator, he is entitled to use certain symbols. He should use those symbols and no others. He does not want to make the voters that are patriotic upset. They represent a sizeable voting bloc and can make sure that he does not get elected President. Right now, he is seriously damaging his campaign to use campaign symbols over the expected symbols of the United States of America.

The other thing that is interesting is the media bias. There are probably at least a hundred media people travelling with Obama on his vacation around the world. So far, this vacation has produced nothing of substance and few pictures of note. They are trying to make Barack Obama look like a world leader when he is a neophyte. They may pull it off with the people that do not know what time of day it is, but not with anyone with at least two brain cells.

John McCain went to New Hampshire yesterday and was greeted by one reporter and one photographer. That is disgraceful for the news media. All three major networks should have been present as well as Fox News and CNN for a minimum. The major print media should have had representatives present. He should have had a minimum of twenty news media with about the same number of photographers. The news media in general has decided that McCain is not newsworthy no matter what he says or where he goes. That is a disgraceful performance for news outlets or outlets that say they are news outlets. They do not have to root for McCain to win, but they do have to cover his campaign.

Barack Obama has been on his world tour for a while now and the most interesting thing coming out about the tour is the lack of information. There have been a few random pictures and some stories of him meeting with this person or that person, but no real stories. There have not even been the fawning “he walks on water” reports from the people who call themselves reporters.

That is an interesting development from this world tour. It was billed as a substantial tour with lots of meat. It seems to be a typical Congressional tour with lots of fluff built into the tour. There are the usual photo opportunities, but little else. The world leaders do not seem to be impressed as they do not hold news conferences with Obama. If he were someone they thought was important, they would pull out the stops and make him seem important. They are doing what they do to upstarts that are lightweights that have no business being out in the world unescorted.

We could label the tour a flop, but the tour is not yet over. He could pull something out of the hat in the last few days of the tour, but I doubt it. He has not shown any ability to make news himself. The world leaders do not seem to be knocking themselves out to meet this upstart. The only people that seem to be impressed are the terrorists. They have almost stopped their activity while Obama is near any kind of area that they like to claim as theirs. That says a lot about who wants to see him elected. The terrorists know a soft target when they see one. They see one in Barack Obama. He proves it every time he opens his mouth and tries to say anything off the cuff.

Obama is great when he has a prepared speech. He can deliver a speech with the best of them. He is terrible at thinking on his feet. In fact, he will lose the election because he is unable to think on his feet. When he gets to the Presidential debates, he will be at a total loss because of his inability to think on his feet. Right now, he tries to minimize where and when he is put in that position. So far, his handlers have managed his time rather well. Now that he is the nominee, the demand that he meet Senator McCain in a debate increase. He will not be able to duck a debate much longer. He will be forced to meet Senator McCain in some kind of debate format before the Democrat Convention in Denver. That could derail his chances if he flubs up too bad in that debate.

Obama has gone on this world tour with his mind made up. It is a wonder that he even made the trip. It is a waste of his time to go on a trip. He could have spent his time better campaigning in the United States instead of trying to look Presidential. That look generally is difficult for a person to achieve. Some do not get it even after winning the office. Others have the look from the beginning. President Reagan looked Presidential from the time he took the microphone at the debate and said that he had paid for the microphone. From that time on, he was Presidential. President Ford never achieved the look of President, even after being President. President Carter has never looked Presidential at all. At least President Ford has looked like he has tried to be President. President Carter has always looked out of place, kind of like the “Beverly Hillbilly’s”. I am afraid that Obama will be a repeat of President Carter, especially the bad parts and none of the good parts.

Since the Obama’s tour is not working out like the media would like, they have basically buried the tour on page 2 or later. If something ever happens, they would be glad to put it on page one. Right now, the tour has been a real stinker for Obama. It does not look like it will improve any time soon.

This past week, both candidates spoke to La Raza. Barack Obama said the usual Democrat things that are sure to please the La Raza crowd. John McCain, on the other hand, was handed a dilemma. He could pander to the La Raza crowd and anger his base or he could speak to his base and anger La Raza. Or, he could choose a third way that tries to wend its way through the two different approaches to find some sort of a middle ground. John McCain tried to find that supposed middle way.

In trying to find the middle way, he did not please either crowd. He told the La Raza convention that he wants amnesty tied to border control in the same bill. In the question and answer phase, he said that the border control language was to appeal to the people who want to secure the borders. That does not sound like someone who is committed to securing the border first. Then, after the border is secure, we can begin talking about what to do with the illegal aliens that remain. I believe that when the borders are secure and we are enforcing the law, many of the illegal aliens will pack up and move back to where they came from. They will not have a safety net and they will not have jobs. There will be no reason to stay. I could be wrong, but I do believe that a lot will move. Many are moving out of Arizona and Oklahoma right now because of tough laws that are being enforced.

When McCain talks like this, he makes me and a lot of other conservatives, not want to vote for him. We want our borders secure and the laws enforced first. After the laws are enforced and no more illegal aliens are coming across our borders, then we can talk about what to do with those that are left. The children that grew up in the United States and know no other country should be easily granted citizenship, if they want it. For those that broke the laws, there should be penalties imposed before there is any talk of them gaining a path to citizenship. Those penalties should be real penalties, not the phony ones discussed during the recent amnesty discussions. The discussions had the illegal alien paying taxes for three out of the last five years as a penalty. They should have to pay taxes for all five years and then have a stiff penalty put on top of that. A citizen would have to pay the taxes for five out of the last five years; an illegal alien applying for citizenship should have to do the same. They were also breaking the law and should have to pay a fine for that. The stiff penalty would be in place of the fine for breaking the law.

Another requirement is that the person applying for citizenship will have to take a written essay test in English as a requirement for citizenship. The test would cover important topics in our history. The person’s English would not necessarily have to be perfect, nor would their spelling have to be perfect. The English would have to be able to be understood and the topic would have to be discussed rationally. The English should be at least as good as that written by a student in middle school (grades7-8).

I have many students that are not fluent in English that take my Biology class. I require a 5-10 page paper as part of the class. I require that the science be perfect, I do not require that the English be perfect. As long as the paper is readable and understandable with good science, the paper is acceptable. My reasoning is that this is their first paper to write in science. Perfection in English is probably too big a goal. That would come with a second attempt at writing a science paper. They would have the science perfected; they could then concentrate on the English. Plus, they would have been speaking English longer and have a better understanding of English.

If this sort of plan is pursued by McCain, he would be applauded by conservatives. He will satisfy the first rule which is secure the border and enforce existing laws. He would also appeal to those that want citizenship for those who are here illegally. There would be a path available for them and a goal to achieve. Everybody wins with this plan. The only people that lose are the rabble rousers that want illegal aliens here in ever increasing numbers. That would include those in the Democrat Party leadership, including the Obama messiah.